Lessons for life...diving stories with morals and analysis

[Scuba-Jay]

Hi guys. Ive been reading through the "lessons for life" archives on scubadiving.com and thought i'd post a link here. Although not all the stories have happy endings, they do provide valuable lessons and give you tips on what and what not to do when diving. Read one every night, think it over, and you are sure to take something away from these.

Jordan

 

[MikeFerrara]

From the second one in the list titled "A Bad Bargain"

First of all the guys problem was dive skills and buddy skills. A malfunctioning reg should never create a life threatening situation. A free flow shouldn't be big deal and they're pretty common especially in cold water.

Micheal Ange, the author, goes into how bad three man teams are. I disagree but let's leave that.

The main issue of the article...the reg. the authors assertion is that a qualified technician would have caught the problems during prepurchase inspection. They blame metal shaving in the reg and the resultant damage to the first stage seat for the free flow. The author states that dealers are required to inspect each reg. That's sort of true but if you read a bunch of dealer agreements you might conclude otherwise. In either case, no one requires the first stage to be disassembled. Without disassembly, the metal shaving may very well go un-noticed.

This is a manufacturing problem I spent 17 years in various manufacturing related engineering positions and the manufacturing process, 100% test and audit processes need to prevent rediculous defects like this. A dive shop technician would only catch this if it caused the reg to fail in the short time that he would likely have it under pressure to be checked.

The lose port plug. He states that the o-ring was extruded. Air pressure against an o-ring that isn't secure is what causes it to extrude. As long as air is going out, I doubt much (or any) water was going in. BTW, I'd guess that o-ring popping out was the pop, the diver heard behind his head...but maybe not.

This accident did not happen because the victim baught on the internet, as suggested. It happened because the diver, like so many others, doesn't know how to dive in a team, doesn't know how to manage a free flow and doesn't know how to inspect his equipment which should be done before every dive and not just when you buy the regPort plugs and hose connections should be inspected often. they are o-ring sealed, don't need to be very tight and especially hose connections can losen. Check them. Regulators should be tested for function before every dive, including and especially a negative pressure test. A leak in the second stage because of a damaged or dirty diaghram, cracked housing or a lose/torn mouth piece is a sure way to end up sucking on water. Simply plug the HP intake (or connect to a tank valve with the valve turned off) and suck...you shouldn't get anything. If you do, there is a leak someplace. Not only that but if you test the reg out of the water and on't do this test, the reg will appear to work fine. A little secret here is that dive shops often miss this one but no matter because you should do it before every dive. You never know when the second stage will get damaged or get some dirt in just the right place. Additionally, the most common time for regs to fail seems to be immediately AFTER servicing by a technician. Testing the reg your self may be more critical at this time then at any other so you had better know how.

IMO, SD took what could have made a really good example and a good discussion and turned it into cheap dive shop...don't buy on the internet propoganda lamost completely ignoring all the real issues.

I appreciate you suggestion to study accidents and learn from them but all too often SD is so far off that the reader really needs to do their own analysis.

 

[james croft]

Mike expressed just what I was thinking about in A Bad Bargain. Sounded like propaganda to me as well.

 

[MikeFerrara]

In "Twice the Tragedy", did the author even mention that the real problem was diving an overweighted and unbalanced configuration in the first place. Even with a total BC failure, you should be able to swim your rig up. A properly weighted recreational diver will only be heavy by the weight of the breathing gas they carry...6 pounds in an 80 cu ft tank. Swimming that up isn't a problem.

When significant suit compression occures at depth you become even heavier. You should still be able to swim it up but if you feel the need for ditcheable weights, you don't need all your weight to be ditcheable. Losing it on accident and suffering a rapid ascent probably happens more often than getting weighted to the bottom. divers are always popping up and we're always finding lost weight pouches on the bottom. You only want enough ditcheable weight to make the load manageable keeping in mind that your wet suit is going to expand on the way up.

Naturally, even being plactered to the bottom isn't a real problem if you have something to breath and both these divers had plenty of air. It seems to me that all they had to do was use it...back to dive skills again.

 

[Carribeandiver]

well yea, one could get all that from SD Mag's explanation, BUT, what I got was - 1)always make sure your dive buddies keep you in sight and you keep them in sight; 2) always check your equipment before every dive; especially o-rings; 3) be prepared for the unexpected - take the rescue course, it might save your life or the life of a buddy.

 

[MikeFerrara]

I thought "Broken Rules, Bent Diver" was a good one too.

Did I read that right, it was the instructor who got fowped trying to deploy the lift bag? Learn how to deploy one and that won't happen especially if you put it on a spool instead of a reel.

The recent trimix grad panics after the instructor is dragged off by the lift bag and skips all his decompression and heads for the surface? Time to look at standards and experience requirements but that's not real quantifyable so lets go on.

It's not clear from the article that gas supply was really a causal factor at all but the author states

Both Antonio and Juan failed to follow the rule of thirds, a gas management technique where divers use one-third of their gas to ascend and descend, use one-third to explore the site, and hold one-third in reserve for emergencies. Had they followed their training, the team would have turned the dive well before Antonio reached 500 psi in his main cylinder.

I see this as a complete mis-statement of what the rule of thirds even is.

 

[MikeFerrara]

well yea, one could get all that from SD Mag's explanation, BUT, what I got was - 1)always make sure your dive buddies keep you in sight and you keep them in sight;

"In sight" is good but in clear water you can see pretty far. Team members need to be close enough that they can quickly respond to a problem and they need to be aware enough to realize that there is a problem. Not only is distance important but so is position. IANTD includes a skill in some of their courses that I used to like when I was teaching IANTD classes. Two divers are swimming single file with some distance between them. The diver in back goes out of air and needs to overtake the diver in front in order to get some. If you aren't using lights for constant communication do you want to be single file at all? I don't. For my money, without good lights, it's side by side at the same depth and no more than a kick or two away. No single file and none of this above and behind stuff. If you're going to swim around in a divers blind spot, he can't see you and you don't have a buddy. He doesn't know if he has a buddy or not. Add lights and know how to use them and you have a little more latitude in positioning because you will always be able to see your buddies light beam.

Positioning, awareness and control on ascents and descents are even more important because it's a dynamic portion of the dive where problems are most likely to occure. Face to face (or side by side), horizontal and at the same depth. Being horizontal gives the most control over movement in all directions. Up/dpwn is controlled primarily with buoyancy and foreward/backward is done by kicking. This way divers can maintain a constant distance between them....get a little far away and kick forward, get a little too close and kick backward. If you need to get up or down really fast to get to a buddy, You can alter attitude and kick. the point is that you want to be positioned so that with one good kick you can instantly be in your buddies face. None of this, "meet at the bottom" nonsense or having divers spread all over the water colum.

There is just no end to the number of buddy seperations that happen because divers are never taught to ascend or descend with a buddy. It's not hard to find exaples of such seperations on dives that result in injury or death either. If a diver can't do controlled ascents and descents staying with and aware of the buddy, they need to be in the pool or other confined water working on it before they go back out diving. They sure don't need to be doing AOW deep dives, diving Devils Throat or any of that stuff.

The magazines don't discuss it, DAN doesn't flag it (not directly anyway) and the agencies just seem completely oblivious.