lamont
Contributor
Had a good dive yesterday that ended in an incident that has been kind of bugging me every since.
After coming back from a dive, we were surface swimming into shore as a group of three were leaving the shore and heading out. One of the divers in the group started complaining about being winded and needing to go back. The other divers proceeded to start giving him crap about it. They left him (!) and started heading out while he started in. He started complaining of not being able to breathe, started thrashing around a lot, dropped his weightbelt and still kept complaining about shortness of breath and couldn't manage to keep a straight course back to shore. His buddies continued to head out on their surface swim to do their dive.
We finally caught up with him, my buddy went down to get his weightbelt while I wound up towing him into shore. He was halfway into a panic, but could still take instructions, so I had him offer me his tank valve and towed him back into shore that way. I had to tell him to stop kicking and just relax. My buddy helped him with the exit while I stayed in the water with all my equipment on. We got him standing up on the shore and heading back to his car with his equipment.
Probably a lot of lessons here. The guys he was diving with should really have some sense beaten into them. I hope he read them the riot act, but I'll bet that with 2 vs. 1 that they just won't get it. We probably should have noted who they were and stuck around to have a chat with them, but We were done with diving for the day and needed to scoot.
We really should have debriefed the guy after we took him out of the water, too. It was definitely educational for me that he managed to work himself halfway into a panic in about 6 ft of water, about 30 ft from the shore where there was no current, no waves/surf, and he'd dropped his weight belt and had to be at least 25-50 lbs positively buoyant. I suspect that his BCD was constricting his chest when he had it fully inflated and he couldn't breathe (not to start a poodle jacket vs. BP/W flamewar -- i might be biased there, but i haven't thought of a better explanation yet). I also think the guy could have used an offer to dive with some people with slightly better buddy skills.
I don't know who taught the classes that his 'buddies' got their OW cert from, but I kind of would like to have a talk with that person as well.
After coming back from a dive, we were surface swimming into shore as a group of three were leaving the shore and heading out. One of the divers in the group started complaining about being winded and needing to go back. The other divers proceeded to start giving him crap about it. They left him (!) and started heading out while he started in. He started complaining of not being able to breathe, started thrashing around a lot, dropped his weightbelt and still kept complaining about shortness of breath and couldn't manage to keep a straight course back to shore. His buddies continued to head out on their surface swim to do their dive.
We finally caught up with him, my buddy went down to get his weightbelt while I wound up towing him into shore. He was halfway into a panic, but could still take instructions, so I had him offer me his tank valve and towed him back into shore that way. I had to tell him to stop kicking and just relax. My buddy helped him with the exit while I stayed in the water with all my equipment on. We got him standing up on the shore and heading back to his car with his equipment.
Probably a lot of lessons here. The guys he was diving with should really have some sense beaten into them. I hope he read them the riot act, but I'll bet that with 2 vs. 1 that they just won't get it. We probably should have noted who they were and stuck around to have a chat with them, but We were done with diving for the day and needed to scoot.
We really should have debriefed the guy after we took him out of the water, too. It was definitely educational for me that he managed to work himself halfway into a panic in about 6 ft of water, about 30 ft from the shore where there was no current, no waves/surf, and he'd dropped his weight belt and had to be at least 25-50 lbs positively buoyant. I suspect that his BCD was constricting his chest when he had it fully inflated and he couldn't breathe (not to start a poodle jacket vs. BP/W flamewar -- i might be biased there, but i haven't thought of a better explanation yet). I also think the guy could have used an offer to dive with some people with slightly better buddy skills.
I don't know who taught the classes that his 'buddies' got their OW cert from, but I kind of would like to have a talk with that person as well.
I get teh jacket squeeze from my students during the rescue portion of the OW course. They seem to prefer a highly inflated BC when they get me to the surface.
