Last Weekend's "little" accident

[VMI08]

Thanks for the honesty DD! I have done similar things myself! Divers need to remember that complacency kills and that no matter your experience level... whether it be 5 dives, or 500 dives, doing the simple things like checking a label on a tank each dive will ensure that you are still with us and diving in the future.

 

[jadairiii]

Forget labels, colors, segregating tanks, etc. When you set up your tank at the site you analyze the mix you are about to breath, then mark (or re-mark) your tanks.

If you don't own an analyzer then buy one, they are cheap compared to all the other gear you all own or death or DCS or ox-tox…..

 

[aquamannz]

Forget labels, colors, segregating tanks, etc. When you set up your tank at the site you analyze the mix you are about to breath, then mark (or re-mark) your tanks.

If you don't own an analyzer then buy one, they are cheap compared to all the other gear you all own or death or DCS or ox-tox…..

I fully concur with jadairiii. I was taught during my EANx certification to confirm the O2 content of the tanks with a pocket analyzer to either confirm or adjust the marking on the tank from filler. I plan to get one myself (i.e. Nuvair O2 Quickstick, Maxtex MaxO2, Analox O2EII, anything as long as it is not made in China), and make it a determined, "do not dive unless..." habit of checking tank O2 content, prior to applying BCD.

I know this sounds like I, less than 25 dives, am teaching someone like DD to 'suck eggs', yet I have seen so many suffer from arrogance and assumption and then be destroyed by such...
What Shultz (in the video) said that went off the rails in my view in her talk is when she said "we just do not know when we are wrong, there is no sensation of 'wrongness'".
I disagree. In my whole entire first hand experience of life in this physical body here on this planet, I have always had a 'sensation' of when things were about to go 'tits up'.

Call it intuition (gotta listen to the inner voice for it to work for you), call it "higher self", whatever - there is always a warning from that within (spirit, soul, god, non-physical, call it what you will), just before an intended course of our own action shall lead us to harm.
I am grateful the OP shared his experience. It takes courage to admit a series of conditioned assumptions, followed out of experience-generated arrogance nearly led one toward a perilous condition. A second chance has been handed to you.

 

[dumpsterDiver]

Wow I wish I knew every time I made an incorrect assumption or mistake! I am willing to analyze once at the dive shop

 

[rhwestfall]

R-t-f-l

 

[DivemasterDennis]

Several years ago I dropped several hundred dollars on an O2 analyser. It was an extravagant opurchase at the time ( long since dwarfed by other purchases of equipment. I later added a CO analyser. I have a habit of keeping these two devices with my tool/parts kit, taken on every dive, local or elsewhere on the planet, and early on developed a habit of checking each tank for CO immediately before a dive, and also ppO if diving nitrox. My wife/dive buddy always participates, so there are two of us to remember the task. DD presents the situation as a great teaching moment. Good for you it was a "harmless error."
DivemasterDennis

 

[sphyrnidus]

I read this thread and it reminded me of stupid things I've done in my life and as I am still here I seemed to have learned from them. Most of my serious mistakes are like the one of the OP and were made when I was young.
As I've been diving quite a while, the mistakes that are still in my brain to keep me on the straigt and narrow, were like this:
Back then we didn't have a depth gauge or a gauge to meassure the tank pressure. We measured at home what was in the tank and we had a J-valve at the end of the dive when there was 300 psi left. I was a acting as a divemaster for a local club. I was diving 5 days a week.
So I went to the filling station, filled to bottles and went diving with a student. Of course the tanks were filled, we saw it happen, didn't we? So as we went to the site, jumped in the water, went down to 60 ft, I noticed the breathing was heavy, huh? I thought this is not good, pulled the reserve and we aborted the dive. Assumption is the mother of all ...
It ended well, I learned never to trust a filling station, check what's in the tank always...

A bit scarrier was the experience I'll tell you next.
We were on a boat diving on the coast of Venezuela, the Aves Islands. We didn't have a compressor in those days. We went for a three day trip, so everyone had to bring three tanks. As I didn't have any equipment myself (at 21) I had loaners, in this case from professional divers. Two of the tanks were from a double set, taken apart, so I had 3 single tanks. Nobody had told me, also not the instructor, who was also my buddy, that in this case the J valve had been turned upside down. So when it was time to pull the valve for the last 300 psi, the bottle was completely empty at 75 feet, my buddy some 45 ft away, of course also at the end of the dive and air.
Luckily we had just introduced the octopus in our club in 1971, this happened in 1973 so I swam to him, eyes bulging and feeling a headache comming right up. We safely reached the ship. I was totally exhausted and lay panting on deck for 10 minutes and had a bad headache, that subsided after 30 minutes.

So since I've always checked what was in the tank, the same now with nitrox. And when diving with rental equipment (mostly the tanks of course) when abroad I always check everything very thoroughly and now 40 years and 2500 dives later, I can safely say that I've never again fallen in to this type of mistakes again!