I cannot do justice to the opinions expressed in all the letters and articles in these three issues of NAUI News from 1981. I did write several of the articles, and concluded with this letter that I am about to reproduce.
Before I do so, let me say that much of what I wrote in the articles and letter below I have gained from personal experience. This experience has been confirmed in my mind over the years, and I'll explain it a bit more after the letter. I will show the letter below, along with the Editor's Notes before and after the letter:
(Editor's Note: Articles on "Buddy Diving," the theme of the May/Jun issue of NAUI News, continue to inspire a stream of letters from divers and NAUI members. There appears to be as many divergent opinions on the subject as there are divers).
I have some additional thoughts concerning both the buddy system and solo diving.
In all the coverage fo the buddy system, there was no mention of the buddy line. The buddy line is an invaluable aid for maintaining buddy contact when water visibility is low.
I have made two belts, with parachute harness "D" rings sewn into each side of the webbing, and a 1/4 inch nylon line with brass snaps on each ead to serve as my buddy line. Keep the line short, 4-6 feet long, to avoid entanglement problems.
I feel that the buddy line is the best method for assuring positive buddy contact while diving in dirty waters.
Solo diving should be considered a specialty. A course outline needs to be drawn up, such as Tom Hemphill mentioned, so that divers can be taught these skills.
Three separate aspects of solo diving need to be dealt with: solo surface snorkeling, solo breath-hold diving, and solo scuba diving. Solo surface snorkeling is a relatively safe activity when compared to swimming. The diving equipment allows the snorkeler, who is warm and can rest whenever necessary, much more latitude than th swimmer.
Solo breath-hold diving is a hazardous activity which requires special training and constant vigilance on the part of the diver. Shallow water blackout is a hazard which needs to be considered every time the diver submerges. A diver is solo diving even if a buddy is on the surface if he or she is out of the buddy's sight during the dive. The margin of error is about as big as a trout's scale; the diver needs only to be held up 10 to 30 seconds to die.
Solo scuba diving, in the context presented in my article, is also a relatively safe activity. The diver has all the equipment, including an air supply. Time can be taken if a problem develops. To be sure, all of the hazards of scuba diving are still there. However, these hazards can be minimized by good judgement and pre-dive planning.
I wish to be clear on one point; my article was concerning solo scuba diving and not breath-hold diving. I consider solo breath-hold diving to be extremely dangerous. Those without thorough training or experience, who don't know their limits and the hazards involved are inviting disaster. I feel it is a common myth that scuba diving is more hazardous than breath-hold diving, when experience has taught me the inverse.
May I suggest a topic of "Physical Fitness and the Diver" for an upcoming issue? Congratulations on a fine publication.
John Ratliff, NAUI 2710
Winchester, OR
Ed. Note: John Ratliff contributed an article on the "Theories on the History of the Buddy System" in the May/June issue of NAUI News.
That's the letter, and was my last work on solo diving.
I did want to comment on two things from experiences after this was published. I became the Finswimming Director for the Underwater Society of America when I began finswimming for physical conditioning. These were solo surface swims, many done on my noon hour in the local Winchester Reservoir of the the North Umpqua River. When others were running, I was swimming in the river during the summer.
I used long competition full-foot fins, a mask and snorkel, and a wet suit top and hood. The wet suit top was built custom and to my specifications, with 3/16 inch thick body and 1/8 inch thick arms. I still have it, but the beaver tail has been torn apart. It was a pull-over, with an upside down zipper and a neck seal. I had a separate hood.
The swims were either upstream to the rapids, and then swimming in the rapids against the current, or around the reservoir. The upstream swims took about 45 minutes, and the reservoir swim took an hour or so. This is very good for working out, and with a good snorkle and form-fitting free-diving mask, very streamlined it the water. I regularly chased fish!!! It was also quite safe, as I could swim without fear in open water of drowning due to a cramp, as I could always breath. There were almost no boats at that time to contend with in Winchester Reservoir. This confirmed what I said in my letter about the safety of surface finswimming.
On the other side, I wrote about the lack of safety for "free-diving," or breath-hold diving. I had at that time relatively recently lost a friend, Nate Holt, in Hawaii to spearfishing. He had tried to find a fish he had speared in a cave, and never came out. I now have two issues of
Hawaii Skin Diver, the breath (Spring 2004, and Summer 2004), which report sadly the deaths of three well-known breathhold divers in Hawaii. They are Shinnho "Steve" Seo, Jason Matsuo, and Gene Higa during spearfishing activities. These were "expert" breathhold divers, yet they were lost.
I nearly lost my own life to breathhold underwater swimming in about 1963, when I was on the swim team. I had a contest with another swimmer to see how for I could swim underwater. Tom had just finished four lengths of a 20 yard pool. I was determined to better him. So I hyperventilated for about a minute, until my hands tingled, took a deep breath and dove in. I swam a modified breast stroke, and felt very good for two lengths. I was okay on the third length, and began "hurting" on the fourth. Approaching the end of the pool, I told myself that I would make my turn, push off, take one stroke underwater and surface. That is exactly what I did. The only thing is, I don't remember anything after the pushoff. I don't remember surfacing, or swimming to the side of the pool. I "woke up" hanging onto the side of the pool. I told the coach, and she suspended any more underwater swimming contests.
I did not know how close I had come until I read reports of drowning incidents in a physiology paper some years later. People reportedly swam underwater until they were dead! They had blacked out, and continued swimming until their body could not do it anymore with no direction from their conscious mind. They were brain dead within moments from the time they came out of the water, as they had been without oxygen for more than three minutes by that time. They were not resuscitated, and died.
The hyperventilation blows off CO2, which is the body's "must breath" signal. Without that CO2 level to build up, the oxygen level can fall below what keeps the mind going (about 16% in the blood, if I remember correctly--but don't hold me to that), and the person "blacks out." But in underwater swimming, the stroking can continue for trained swimmers (this is somewhat different for "Shallow Water Blackout" as a different mechanism is at work there involving the release of pressure).
All this confirms my contention that solo breath-hold diving can be extremely hazardous for the uninitiated, who do not accustom their body to breathholding over an extended, rhymic time period. Even with a buddy above, it may be too late. I think I may write Mr. Kaya, the editor of the magazine above, about this problem too--that's way too much suffering for the diving community.
Solo breath-hold diving is different from apnea finswimming, as those races are supervised, and confined to 50 meters length. The other underwater races are using scuba in finswimming activities, and are also safe if one knows the physics and physiology of scuba. Because of the extreme physical activity of the sport, there is no potential for holding one's breath for an extended period of time when participating in underwater finswimming races with scuba. It's all about time, and not about holding your breath. For instance, the world record for a 50 meters apnea (breathhold) underwater swim is less than 15 seconds (and that, my fellow divers, is very, very fast underwater swimming!).
I may post the article on the buddy system later, but it's about time to do the dishes (wife's expectation
).
SeaRat
