Out of gas - what happens next?

[Nikole]

Haha here's my story.. We are on a beach dive in 1-2ft waves, kicking out to a reef 200 yards away, and then we drop down into a 20-25ft deep reef.
I'm wearing a 63cu tank and the other 2 have 80's. The rule is that the first person in the group who reaches turn pressurr first, we turn the dive.
There was a current underwater so it was basically a drift dive. Anyway due to the small tank of course I hit 1800 psi quick. They still have 2500, and they don't want to turn the dive! I can't leave alone so we keep swimming. Conditions change de under water (it switched from low to high tide during the dive and the waves were coming in more forcefully, and higher.l and more rough. Kicking against the current underwater going back towards the beach made is consume more air so I ended up consuming fast and we all had to surface swim!!! And it was a LONG swim back. The length of a pier, plus a couple more feet was how far we surface kicked. And during the condition change it was MUCH harder to kick on the surface than the bottom. This dive was a prime example of why they say you should maintain a level of fitness as a diver. We didn't have to share air but this was one of those Low on air situations

 

[Doby45]

Haha here's my story.. We are on a beach dive in 1-2ft waves, kicking out to a reef 200 yards away, and then we drop down into a 20-25ft deep reef.
I'm wearing a 63cu tank and the other 2 have 80's. The rule is that the first person in the group who reaches turn pressurr first, we turn the dive.
There was a current underwater so it was basically a drift dive. Anyway due to the small tank of course I hit 1800 psi quick. They still have 2500, and they don't want to turn the dive! I can't leave alone so we keep swimming. Conditions change de under water (it switched from low to high tide during the dive and the waves were coming in more forcefully, and higher.l and more rough. Kicking against the current underwater going back towards the beach made is consume more air so I ended up consuming fast and we all had to surface swim!!! And it was a LONG swim back. The length of a pier, plus a couple more feet was how far we surface kicked. And during the condition change it was MUCH harder to kick on the surface than the bottom. This dive was a prime example of why they say you should maintain a level of fitness as a diver. We didn't have to share air but this was one of those Low on air situations

In 25ft of water on a reef, I would never dive thirds. Hell I would dive it down to 500psi and surface, even with crappy surface conditions as you said it was just as bad down below.

 

[Neilwood]

Haha here's my story.. We are on a beach dive in 1-2ft waves, kicking out to a reef 200 yards away, and then we drop down into a 20-25ft deep reef.
I'm wearing a 63cu tank and the other 2 have 80's. The rule is that the first person in the group who reaches turn pressurr first, we turn the dive.
There was a current underwater so it was basically a drift dive. Anyway due to the small tank of course I hit 1800 psi quick. They still have 2500, and they don't want to turn the dive! I can't leave alone so we keep swimming. Conditions change de under water (it switched from low to high tide during the dive and the waves were coming in more forcefully, and higher.l and more rough. Kicking against the current underwater going back towards the beach made is consume more air so I ended up consuming fast and we all had to surface swim!!! And it was a LONG swim back. The length of a pier, plus a couple more feet was how far we surface kicked. And during the condition change it was MUCH harder to kick on the surface than the bottom. This dive was a prime example of why they say you should maintain a level of fitness as a diver. We didn't have to share air but this was one of those Low on air situations

I would have ascended alone. Better to be on the surface low on air than under it. As Doby suggests though I would not be diving thirds though- I would just allow a 50 bar/500psi reserve

 

[KevinNM]

If your dive buddies don't respect your wanting to turn the dive you need new buddies. Particularly when it's gas supply related.

 

[Trace Malinowski]

Hi,

In another thread, we were discussing strategies for donating gas, and the question came up of what happens in real out of gas situations. I have frequently heard that an OOG diver will grab another diver's primary reg, but other instructors have said that they have experienced divers more calmly taking an octo (invited or not).

Does anyone have any actual experience with this situation? What do real OOG divers actually do?

Mike, it depends on the diver(s). Thanks to the genius gas planning of my friend, a world famous instructor, who refused to let us plan a tech dive assuming a 1 cuft/min SCR (even though he taught me to do just that), I ran out of gas 3 times on one dive. Nitrox50 bottle cached. went to back gas. Back gas cached. Signaled OOG and was on my buddy's deco bottle until it was cached. Signaled OOG and was on his back gas until we surfaced. Gave him the "I told you so" look with a bovine excrement eating grin each time I started flashing "Attention!" with the light and giving the slashing motion at the throat signal.
A third diver in our team ran out of deco gas and back gas. The team leader was carrying a Tech 2 package and had bottles to spare if it turned out we were right about not breathing .4 cuft/min. We were right! And, just laughing each time someone signaled OOG.

No panic. No stress. We trained harder than the war we fought so to speak so not having regulators in our mouths and being OOG seemed normal. The countless S-drills paid off. But, had we just planned the dive correctly there would not have been a reason to test it in reality.

 

[oldschoolto]

In my 44yrs of Diving... I have never run out of air.. So it is a waste of time to even think about it.....

Jim.

 

[Neilwood]

Mike, it depends on the diver(s). Thanks to the genius gas planning of my friend, a world famous instructor, who refused to let us plan a tech dive assuming a 1 cuft/min SCR (even though he taught me to do just that), I ran out of gas 3 times on one dive. Nitrox50 bottle cached. went to back gas. Back gas cached. Signaled OOG and was on my buddy's deco bottle until it was cached. Signaled OOG and was on his back gas until we surfaced. Gave him the "I told you so" look with a bovine excrement eating grin each time I started flashing "Attention!" with the light and giving the slashing motion at the throat signal.
A third diver in our team ran out of deco gas and back gas. The team leader was carrying a Tech 2 package and had bottles to spare if it turned out we were right about not breathing .4 cuft/min. We were right! And, just laughing each time someone signaled OOG.

No panic. No stress. We trained harder than the war we fought so to speak so not having regulators in our mouths and being OOG seemed normal. The countless S-drills paid off. But, had we just planned the dive correctly there would not have been a reason to test it in reality.

Are you sure he is really your friend? Or have you mentioned him in your will?

Correct me if I am wrong (I have zero experience of tech diving but it was my understanding that gas planning should be done on whatever you consider reasonable - if you decide that 1 cuft/min is the correct rate then that is what it should be.

IMHO your gas consumption rate should not be getting second guessed.

 

[RayfromTX]

There are no victims, only volunteers. I've always liked this concept, never more so than with regards to scuba and dive planning.

With regards to Trace's story, I suspect his experience and knowledge made this OOG incident a calm, matter of fact annoyance, not a life threatening emergency. I'm enjoying and learning from this thread.