Limits: what they are, why they are important and how to establish them

[Akimbo]

Something to remember about buddy dependence:
Not everyone is fortunate enough to dive in warm clear water. The ability to maintain visual contact with another diver is much less reliable in <10'/3M of visibility and in a kelp forest or in high currents. Depending on your buddy is not always a reliable strategy -- especially if you are diving with a macro photographer.

Depending on your buddy is fine for Plan A, but what about Plan B, C, and D? In diving or industry, problems that cause injuries rarely come to the party solo.

 

[The Chairman]

Depending on your buddy is fine for Plan A, but what about Plan B, C, and D? In diving or industry, problems that cause injuries rarely come to the party solo.

Sounds like a tech dive to me. If I'm diving solo, I have a completely different set of limits in regards to redundancy.

 

[Akimbo]

Sounds like a tech dive to me. If I'm diving solo, I have a completely different set of limits in regards to redundancy.

Perhaps, but OW students learn to dive in these conditions all over the world and very few are exposed to appropriate self-rescue skills. I think it is important to "normalize" these comments for all of us geographic unfortunates.

This problem can really get ugly when divers get certified at a warm water resort course. Their card is good-to-go in the North Atlantic on both sides of the pond and the northern Pacific coast. Unfortunately, certification doesn't cover good sense. Sure divers are warned about "new conditions" but the mentality of learning to dive in harsh conditions is much different, even when it doesn't show up in the curriculum.

 

[Coztick]

. Training should give you a basket of mental "tools" to work with. It's up to you to perfect those skills and hopefully before you take the next class.

My point exactly. Without practicing ow skills, small issues are crisises.
Divers die when they cannot handle "woopsies" they're unprepared for.
Ooa is an obvious one. Bc failure or inflator disconnecting on a drop with no hard bottom can also be life threatening.

Take away? Your buddy's limits are just as important as yours are. Be a buddy and act like one

Totally agree.
How can you develop good buddy skills without practicing the actual procedures. Saying you will do this or that means nothing if you haven't proved you can.
I was suggesting rigorous practice in the safest environment first to start the progress.
No one has died sharing air on shore.

(Agreeing, not debating. But it is a good setup for my ongoing rant.)
Taking it to the more advanced level, running OOA (Out Of Air) "should" never be a crisis either -- whether caused by a planning underestimate or equipment failure. Carry an in independent backup if you are deeper than you have proven to yourself that you can safely make a free ascent. Free ascents are the worst case option but the surface is the only 100% reliable backup air supply.

Studying diving accident reports beyond very newly trained divers clearly shows that injuries and fatalities are usually caused by a series of fairly innocuous events -- often three or more. I submit that using your buddy's Octo is not a sufficient OOA backup plan alone. Buddy separation AND a getting too distracted to check your SPG should be a life lesson, not a death sentence. Now add a third screw up to your crisis management plan and dive accordingly. Oh, don't forget a serious OOA condition also means you can't inflate your BC.

I carry a 2 liter pony on EVERY dive that i don't use doubles for.
The main reason is to mitigate the risk of the "instabuddy" but i do take comfort in having an additional independent source of gas.
I refuse to do without breathing for much longer than it takes to do a reg swap, period, end of dive plan. I don't ever have to choose between catching a buddy who decided to dart away to look at something or a CESA from 90'. In fact that's the only skill i won't practice.
An equipment solution for a skills problem?
Yah whatever. My daughter doesn't dive and my wife won't, so no lifelong buddies for me yet. Forget the ponies for now and practice all the basics swap regs, shoot bags, oral inflation, loss of buoyancy drills etc. Then add no mask to all of it. Practice decents and accents mask to mask without contact.
If you're doing drift dives and fossil hunts, you probably have the buoyancy and propulsion skills to progress.
My intent was to stress the need to practice for what almost never happens.
I do notice that many tragic accidents happen to divers with hundreds and sometimes thousands of dives.
Be warned though, if you do practice enough, others may assume you are technical divers!

Happy diving, Kevin

 

[The Chairman]

An equipment solution for a skills problem?

Solo dives have a different set of limits and ways to ameliorate the hazards within those limits.

This problem can really get ugly when divers get certified at a warm water resort course.

Even when teaching in the Keys, I had a place I could take them where the vis was always nasty and sometimes bordered on "derepmet". Instructors owe it to their students to expose them to as diverse a set of situations as they can. I like at least one "scary" dive with my students to test their readiness to call the dive as well as to show them strategies for maintaining buddy contact.

 

[Coztick]

Solo dives have a different set of limits and ways to ameliorate the hazards within those limits.

Even when teaching in the Keys, I had a place I could take them where the vis was always nasty and sometimes bordered on "derepmet". Instructors owe it to their students to expose them to as diverse a set of situations as they can. I like at least one "scary" dive with my students to test their readiness to call the dive as well as to show them strategies for maintaining buddy contact.

I submit that any dive where i am not familiar with my buddy may essentially be a solo dive for me. I will be as attentive as I can but feel some are not. All are told i will follow but not chase.
Some have been great while others i won't dive with again. Getting a blank stare to basic questions is a great indication that you maybe solo and possibly a babysitter.
I say that with no malice. I was there not long ago. Unprepared and unaware following a dm anywhere. I must say that I've had a couple great instababysitters who have helped tremendously.
SB is an amazing resource hosted, staffed, supported and visited by scuba's finest who will generally destroy anyone imparting bad advice. I'm just another new diver sharing a viewpoint.
Now I enjoy babysitting the right people. Had a kid on his first night dive 3 yrs ago who was quite worried predive. He really enjoyed it once he realised i was 3 feet to his left at all times. The first 5 minutes, he must have glanced over 30 times though. I could feel the nervous energy turn to excitement. That was fun.
I wish all divers had the level of training Pete provides his ow divers but I would bet 90% don't and 75% never practice a safety drill beyond ow class.
I never expect to have a serious issue but would never bet my life on it. For me, it is self reliance first. I know I can play nice with others, but can't expect the same in return. That's life.

 

[The Chairman]

who will generally destroy anyone imparting bad advice.

Gosh, I hope not. Hit the report button if that ever happens. It's way OK to have differing opinions about lots of things diving. Passion is OK but it's not OK to 'destroy' anyone.

FWIW, I have called a dive because I couldn't trust my buddy and didn't have enough redundancies, mostly air. I don't want to go into a dive with a half-assed solo mindset. That's just not honoring my limits. If I'm getting on a dive boat without a buddy, then you can bet I've set my gear and mind to dive solo that day. Rarely happens, but it does.

I wish all divers had the level of training Pete provides

Thanks for the overly kind words, but don't automatically blame the instructor for the diver's performance good or bad. I had crappy instructors: two of them. Most everything I learned about limits, I learned in the suds or right here on SB. I became a good diver in spite of my instructors, not because of them and that can be true for everyone. You don't need a "me" to become a safe diver. Your buddy doesn't either. There is an instructor here on SB, and it might be @NWGratefulDiver, that mentioned they don't train students: they train buddies. I've adopted that approach and you don't have to be an instructor to mentor someone. IOW, don't blame anyone else for not having a safe buddy, if you aren't actively trying to mentor a few along the way.

 

[boulderjohn]

SB is an amazing resource hosted, staffed, supported and visited by scuba's finest who will generally destroy anyone imparting bad advice.

Gosh, I hope not. Hit the report button if that ever happens.

I assume Coztick's use of the word "destroy" was simple hyperbole, and if it is, I believe it is both accurate and positive. While Pete is right that people who give bad advice should not be "destroyed" through personal attack, bad advice should certainly be corrected. I concur that this does happen regularly on ScubaBoard, and it is one of the reasons I enjoy the site.

I say this with great certainty because I spent a fair amount of time this past year participating on a site where that was not true. A big part of the problem was that the site did not use the kind of structure this one does, in which people can easily quote portions of posts (as I did here) and respond specifically to those portions. When that happens, the person being quoted gets an alert about the quotation and the response. This way bad advice is easily identified and corrected--hopefully with polite respect.

On the other site, responses flood out in a way that favors quick responses with little chance for explanations. It is clear from those responses that most people are responding without reading. If you see a response that is inaccurate and correct it, there may be a response or two to your correction, but that exchange will soon be buried in the mix, and the same inaccurate information will be repeated again and again and again by others. A week after you corrected the misinformation, that misinformation is till being repeated confidently by others. I couldn't take it any more and stopped participating.

 

[Akimbo]

SB is an amazing resource hosted, staffed, supported and visited by scuba's finest who will generally destroy anyone imparting bad advice.

Edit: Oops, John's post above went up while I was composing mine.

If you wrote something like "destroy bad advice" I would agree and add that it is a good thing. It is also typical of all Internet forums, not just diving related. There are ways to destroy an argument without diminishing the individual behind it. I can't remember bad or dangerous advice given that was malicious. Incorrect for sure, but never with the intent to do harm. Even valid arguments that come across as personal attacks rarely end well.

Corrections do need to be made, and sometimes forcefully. First, correcting the the person who unintentionally put out the bad information keeps them from propagating it; on the the Net and in person. Second, it educates all readers because the justification for the counterargument must be explained -- often in great detail. Third, everyone learns to be careful that what you write because someone could get hurt.

At the other extreme of "bad advice" is when different techniques and experiences are shared. Sometimes a really clever method is suggested that blows away the others, even when they are all functional. There are even cases where the prevalent method is sent down in flames, not because the argument is harsh but because the method is simply that good.

It all comes down to the reasons we are on Scubaboard. I believe that most of us are here to learn something, and second to repay the favor where we can.

 

[boulderjohn]

I would like to offer an example of something that appeared on that other site I mentioned. Someone displaying his contempt for the way modern scuba instruction has been degraded offered this example: back in the glory days when he was trained, the CESA was taught with the diver discarding the regulator and ascending with nothing in the mouth, in contrast to the poor modern instructional practices being used today, in which divers train while leaving the regulator in the mouth. He therefore recommended doing it the proper way that he was taught decades ago--with the regulator hanging at your side as you ascend. If he had made that recommendation on ScubaBoard, people would have pointed out....

• There is absolutely no benefit to the diver to ascend with the regulator out of the mouth. That practice was done decades ago so the instructor could clearly see that the student was not inhaling, not because it was the right thing to do during a CESA.
• The practice was changed by nearly every agency in the world after a (UHMS Undersea & Hyperbaric Medicine Society) study showed that drownings initiated by inhaling water during CESA was the number one cause of fatalities during instruction.
• The cylinder is not actually out of air in a real OOA situation. A diver who is doing a CESA will almost certainly get at least one breath of air from the cylinder if the diver attempts to inhale through the regulator during ascent as a result of decreasing ambient pressure.
• A diver who inhales even a little without the regulator will gag and probably begin to drown.
• Research on instructional methodology shows how important it is to train as closely as possible the way you will perform a skill in a real event, and in a real event, a diver should absolutely never discard the regulator during a CESA, for the reasons described in the previous bullets.

that is what would have happened on ScubaBoard. In that other forum, many readers learned instead how important it is to practice the CESA without a regulator, the way it was done decades ago in the golden age of scuba instruction.