Last Weekend's "little" accident

[redacted]

Trust memory? Trust labels? Analyze every tank?

 

[dumpsterDiver]

Trust memory? Trust labels? Analyze every tank?

I analyze all my nitrox tanks and label them at the shop, but if you don't look at the freaking label, because you already "know" what tanks you brought on the boat...

 

[tanksforthememories]

Brave to share. A good lesson for us all. Thank you.

 

[Just_Me]

I still consider myself a diving student. I have more experience than many but far less than others. With that said in my professional life I am a trainer and consultant (not diving related).

I have found that it is the experienced and trained individual that is more likely to become complacent. The beginner is still doing checks that an experienced person has over looked because "in my experience, that is never a problem" or "I knew that was..."

It usually takes a situation like this, fortunately in this case no harm was done, to shake off the complacency for a while.

The killer really is in the details. In anything that we seek to succeed in no detail is too small to double check.

Thanks for posting, everyone can benefit from a reminder like this.

 

[daniel f aleman]

OK. Do you have a gas analyzer? At the dive site you check the tank for gas contents, then you mark those contents on tape with a sharpie and stick the tape on the tank, then you attach your regulators/SMG, then you... you know the rest.

 

[dumpsterDiver]

No I don't have an analyzer. I use the one at the shop. I never re-check at the dive site.

 

[TSandM]

Thanks for posting this.

A while back I posted about failing three separate places in my pre-dive procedure to check the pressure in the tank I was diving.

I haven't yet failed to check the label on a tank, but it will probably happen.

One of the reasons I try desperately to stick to the highly regimented pre-dive protocol I was taught is that, if you do those things, errors like this just don't happen. The problem is that it's really hard to get people, even very smart, motivated people, to do repetitive, onerous things, when experience has slowly convinced them that all will be well anyway.

We have all fallen into the complacency trap, if we have dived long enough! You got through this one unscathed -- one question: Do you intend to make any changes in procedure to prevent this from happening again?

 

[openmindOW]

I've been diving nitrox for maybe 15 years; many hundreds if not a thousand times,,, and still screwed up.. All I can blame it on is complacency. No amount of training would have helped me..

I am never one to shy away from giving people crap for doing stupid stuff, so I kinda felt some sort of obligation to fess up

Thank you for sharing your experience here on SB, DumpsterDiver. By doing so, you are helping other divers to learn and to be safer.

I will only quibble with your view of "giving people crap." That is NOT what should happen here on SB, especially with new divers. If we want people to admit their own errors, as you bravely did, then we should not bash them publicly for doing so.

 

[dumpsterDiver]

Thanks for posting this.

A while back I posted about failing three separate places in my pre-dive procedure to check the pressure in the tank I was diving.

I haven't yet failed to check the label on a tank, but it will probably happen.

One of the reasons I try desperately to stick to the highly regimented pre-dive protocol I was taught is that, if you do those things, errors like this just don't happen. The problem is that it's really hard to get people, even very smart, motivated people, to do repetitive, onerous things, when experience has slowly convinced them that all will be well anyway.

We have all fallen into the complacency trap, if we have dived long enough! You got through this one unscathed -- one question: Do you intend to make any changes in procedure to prevent this from happening again?

Maybe, maybe I will be more aware of what tanks I load, but it is very common for me to mix air tanks and nitrox on the same trip, so it is a constant danger and I HAVE already caught myself hooking up a nitrox tank for a 190 ft dive before. I just need to pay attention to the tape.

And people may laugh at this one, but I deliberately fill my pony with air, my thinking is that if I ever do screw up on a deep dive and feel bad, like an impending oxygen hit (maybe from the wrong mix), I could bail to the pony of air immediately.

Thank you for sharing your experience here on SB, DumpsterDiver. By doing so, you are helping other divers to learn and to be safer.

I will only quibble with your view of "giving people crap." That is NOT what should happen here on SB, especially with new divers. If we want people to admit their own errors, as you bravely did, then we should not bash them publicly for doing so.

I think criticism and discussion is a good way for people to learn. I tend to hold back (to some extent) on my criticism of people and stupid things they report (or defend), but this is primarily because the moderators will do it for me, if I can't.

 

[agilis]

At the BHB Marine Park, av depth 8 to 16 feet deep, Nitrox is a silly wasted expense....and for divers doing 3 to 5 days in a row there, 4 to 5 hours per day ( Sandra has done this) Nitrox can cause Hyperoxic Myopia....

Nitrox may or may not be a silly wasted expense at BHB marine park with avg. depths of 8 to 16 feet, but I've never dived in that place, or even heard of it. Who knows what conditions or habits may commonly occur there?

The incidence of hyperoxic myopia (nearsightedness caused by overexposure to O2) seems to be a temporary problem that occurs mainly to personnel in hyperbaric chambers and people using closed circuit breathing devices with excess O2 injection at much higher pressures than those that occur at 1.3 to 1.6 atmospheres, especially when using open circuit scuba. In any case this seems to be a rare phenomenon that quickly disappears, measurable largly by subjective eye chart type methods, since the length and shape of the eyeball itself appear unaffected, and no clear cause is discernible, as far as I know. I think it's the beer, at least in some cases, or a tendency to try to read the tiny lettering under cable tv programming descriptions.

It would be interesting to determine if presbyopia is simultaneously affected in the individuals affected by hyperoxic myopia, making it impossible to read gauges while afflicted by the heartbreak of transitory myopia.

I use approx. 28% Nitrox in water as shallow as 5 feet and as deep as 20 feet while collecting biological specimens. I do this because the gas is available to me almost free, but so far no eye problems. Sometimes I'm thrown to the ground by acid flashbacks, but not nearly often enough, and I suspect the real cause is a huge Hindu religious symbol painted on the graduate student's gear room door.

In any case, and in complete seriousness, is it the depth at which the Nitrox is used that may cause a reaction, ocular or otherwise, or is it the frequency? I suspect the latter.