Near Incident - Dive with a Divemaster, Instructor and Family of 4

[bowlofpetunias]

Under the circumstances I would be inclined to check out other instructors before making a final decision! More training/experience is always worth while..

 

[wilde100]

I disagree with TS' account of the events. First off, it's not clear to me, who was your dive buddy. Was it meant to be a 3-way buddy group between you, the DM and the mother? Sounds like there was an assumption made here.

Second, I will state categorically that I personally, NEVER decide not to abort a dive early because one customer is more important than another. That statement is unfair to the DM unless you have other facts to support it.

I do agree with the other comments on this thread and commend your decision to make a safe, controlled ascent with adequate reserve. Without jumping the gun that this was a near miss, I suggest you may wish to communicate your dive expectations more explicitly with future DMs. Dear DM, when I hit 100 bar, I will signal you; I will also start to ascend to shallower depth to begin my safety stop. I would appreciate if you helped me by... (how?).

I have on occasion, in needing to manage my air or NDT, ascended to shallower depth while continuing the dive - ie the dive group was couple meters below me. I made sure to signal my intention to both my dive guide and buddy before doing this. The shallower depth was boring to be sure, since there's not much to be seen when you're so far above the reef, but satisfied my need to be closer to the surface (lower air consumption/ increase my NDT). Perhaps this is something you could consider if a similar situation presents?

 

[halocline]

None of us were there to see exactly what happened, but my impression was, okay, you had 100 bar, about 1/2 tank, at 20 meters, not very deep, and you started to feel some real anxiety about running out of air. That's not a good sign if you're thinking about technical diving. Then you surfaced on your own to ensure you had sufficient reserve, fine, but I'm not sure where the anxiety was coming from. Was it just lack of experience of managing your own dive, or feeling abandoned by your buddy to surface alone? Did you lose trust that the DM would determine from your SPG when it was necessary to surface? Or were you convinced that you needed to surface but unable to communicate that? It should have been very simple to do so, just give the thumb up and it should have been very clear.

Anyhow, you surfaced without incident, but you felt anxious during this, and you did leave the divers you were with. It doesn't sound like you panicked, but it does sound like you had enough anxiety about the situation to not clearly communicate and to act a little rashly, like leaving the group so you could surface from a moderate depth with almost half a tank. You apparently have good safety concerns, (something many divers could use more of) maybe you just need some more experience so that a situation like this does not generate anxiety. I don't see anything in your description that sounds like an emergency situation, to be honest.

 

[TSandM]

I don't think there was, or was described, any emergency. There was a diver who had reached what he thought was a gas limit where he wanted to move up in the water column, or end the dive. He was, at that time, diving with a DM and another client. He thumbed the dive, and was waved off by the pro.

As a pro, I'm stuck in the situation where I have one diver who clearly wants to end the dive, and another who does not. If the signaling diver believes I am his buddy, I am really obligated to ascend with him, and if the other diver is not capable of or not willing to remain in the water alone (as I think most divers are and should be) she needs to come up with me. The one thing I wouldn't do as a DM (and I am a DM) is allow a diver who thinks I'm his buddy to ascend alone. I'm not sure I would allow a diver who thought he was diving as part of a group to ascend alone!

The OP did the right thing, according to his thinking. He may not have navigated well, and may not have controlled his buoyancy well -- how many relatively inexperienced divers have done a free, blue water ascent by themselves? But this whole story illustrates the grave weakness in gaggle diving. If everyone in the group is looking the lone pro as their "buddy", how do you, as the pro, satisfy everyone's desire for a good dive, and everyone's desire for a buddy for safety?

The takeaway message from this story is to have a buddy who understand that you are buddies, and to have a plan for buddy behavior in the face of low gas or any other desire to end the dive, before you get underwater.

 

[halocline]

He thumbed the dive, and was waved off by the pro.

The one thing I wouldn't do as a DM (and I am a DM) is allow a diver who thinks I'm his buddy to ascend alone. I'm not sure I would allow a diver who thought he was diving as part of a group to ascend alone!

The OP did the right thing, according to his thinking.

I'm not sure he did actually signal thumbs up, he did not say so. He said he showed the DM his SPG, which still read close to half a tank. He did write a message on the slate, but still, he did not give the common signal for aborting the dive. If I was guiding and a client showed me a SPG reading 1/2 tank, I would not take that as a sign that it's time to surface from 20 meters. It's hard for us to know how this was perceived by the DM. Typically there would be clear pre-dive communication with a set pressure for ascending. Unless this was an out-back dive in which the ascent was more of an underwater return to the shore rather than a straight ascent to the surface followed by a surface swim, I don't think that the agreed upon ascent pressure would be 100 bar.

Apparently the DM did surface at the same time, although not directly with the OP, because he did say when he got to the surface, the DM was there. We just don't know how clear the communication was and who exactly left whom.

You're right, he did do the correct thing according to his thinking at the time, but to me that does not necessarily make it the best course of action. We really don't know, and it's likely that some 'responsibility' for the way things transpired was shared among the two people involved. We don't really know the conditions of the dive, apparently there were some visibility and/or navigation challenges, but the OP was able to do a successful solo ascent with safety stop and SMB. That's got to be a positive learning experience for a new diver.

I absolutely agree that this type of group (although this was at least a very small 'group') presents difficulties for the guide. If the dive is intended as a group dive, meaning everyone stays together, and one diver leaves that group, what do you do? Follow the diver, or stay with the other divers who are also your responsibility? In this case, it appears as if the DM did follow the diver, taking along the remaining client, to the surface. My suspicion is that she simply didn't realize that the OP was intending to surface immediately until he started doing so.

 

[xyrandomyx]

I don't think there was, or was described, any emergency. There was a diver who had reached what he thought was a gas limit where he wanted to move up in the water column, or end the dive. He was, at that time, diving with a DM and another client. He thumbed the dive, and was waved off by the pro.

As a pro, I'm stuck in the situation where I have one diver who clearly wants to end the dive, and another who does not. If the signaling diver believes I am his buddy, I am really obligated to ascend with him, and if the other diver is not capable of or not willing to remain in the water alone (as I think most divers are and should be) she needs to come up with me. The one thing I wouldn't do as a DM (and I am a DM) is allow a diver who thinks I'm his buddy to ascend alone. I'm not sure I would allow a diver who thought he was diving as part of a group to ascend alone!

The OP did the right thing, according to his thinking. He may not have navigated well, and may not have controlled his buoyancy well -- how many relatively inexperienced divers have done a free, blue water ascent by themselves? But this whole story illustrates the grave weakness in gaggle diving. If everyone in the group is looking the lone pro as their "buddy", how do you, as the pro, satisfy everyone's desire for a good dive, and everyone's desire for a buddy for safety?

The takeaway message from this story is to have a buddy who understand that you are buddies, and to have a plan for buddy behavior in the face of low gas or any other desire to end the dive, before you get underwater.

I'm wondering (just thinking out loud): was the OP actually better off ascending on his own in this situation? Setting aside any discussion about whether 100 bar was too conservative (or not conservative enough) as a rock bottom pressure, about half that gas was (technically) intended as a reserve in case his buddy ran out of gas. That means he still had plenty of gas to get himself to the surface had everything gone OK. Had he stayed down and he or his buddy lost all their gas in some catastrophic failure, they would presumably have had some gas between the two of them, but not enough to make it to the surface -- they might have needed to blow off the safety stop or perhaps do an emergency ascent for some of the way. If one of them lost all their gas while he was ascending alone, they'd have no gas at all -- since they weren't together to share air. And, although very much possible, catastrophic loss of gas is fairly unlikely -- if something else had gone wrong, he'd given up the potential assistance from his buddy.

I can think of a few counter-arguments already, but I'd be quite interested to hear others' input. Of course, I'm entirely in agreement that it's better to try avoid this situation entirely, by making sure that things like turn-around/ ascent pressures are discussed before getting in the water.

 

[Edward3c]

My experience of “turn up and dive” warm water diving is there are no buddy pairs. The guides are there purely as guides (irrelevant of their certification). Its normal for those getting low on air to notify the guide and go up.

Its also the norm for women to have better air consumption rates than men.

Kind regards

 

[Bob DBF]

I was told and under the belief that the divemaster would be my designated dive buddy.

If I had paid for a DM to be my dive buddy, I would have just asked for my money back, and logged it as a solo dive.



Bob
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I may be old, but I’m not dead yet.