It would seem to me that, as we gain experience and go through some minor glitches on dives, we should increase our capacity to tolerate issues underwater. I'm wondering what could cause an experienced (say, more than 200 lifetime dives) diver to become distressed enough to lose rational thought. Has anyone here (who meets those criteria) been through a panic event? What caused it, and what did you do?
Question Panic in the experienced diver?
- Thread starter TSandM
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Fear, fight or flight response, or other mental activity that distracts from problem solving and corrective actions wastes valuable time in a real crisis. IMHO, one of the greatest values of experience is to minimize overreaction so an inconvenience doesn't escalate into a perceived crisis.
The only personal crisis (excluding major physical trauma) that demands rapid, not necessarily immediate, action is oxygenation. I believe it is a primal reaction to take frenetic action at sudden lack of breathing gas, at least past the early newborn range. It probably served evolution well in that it can repel attach or get your face above water, at least for a short time.
Unfortunately, if my hypothesis is even remotely correct, this bit of evolution does not serve divers well. Most forms of crisis training are highly dependent on habituation as a key component. Habituation is not necessarily achieved in training or from experience as recreational divers know it.
My recommendation to a disciplined individual who hopes to become a great diver is:
1. Master buoyancy, not as a diver but as a swimmer: Understand that the only thing that needs to be above water during the times you are actually breathing is your mouth and maybe your nose. Any other part of the body, especially the high density skull, that is above water is a waste of energy.
2. Master swimming: You don't have to set speed records or learn all the strokes; you are after endurance. The value here is knowing that you have plenty of time. An embarrassing number of diver drownings occur on the surface. It is incomprehensible to me how anyone can drown in a wet or drysuit at or near the surface. DUMP WEIGHT!
3. Learn basic diving physics and physiology: Pick up a book or video to learn about pressure, gas compressibility, displacement & buoyancy, and principals of oxygenation. By this time, much of it will reinforce what you have discovered in earlier steps. Don't worry about decompression, embolism, and oxygen toxicity at this point.
4. Learn to snorkel and freedive: You can learn to snorkel from friends and gain a lot of experience. When you feel ready, pay the big bucks for a good freediving course. You will learn how to safely extend, test, and learn, your limits. Tell the instructor you want to experience hypoxic blackout under their guidance. Pool static training will give you ample opportunity. Again, the end objective is to learn you have time.
5. Buy an old used regulator and Scuba Tank: Put a paint-ball sticker on it if you have to in order to get it filled. Take the second stage apart and see how it works. Really play with it. Just don't take it in the water yet. Try to take apart and reassemble the first stage if you are mechanically inclined.
6. Take Scuba courses through Nitrox, add rescue if you are inclined. Diving Nitrox is not the objective, gaining the in-depth understanding of diving physics, and to a lesser extent physiology is the goal. In the process, find an instructor who will guide you through free ascents starting in a swimming pool and graduating to as deep as you like. Avoid instructors who view BCs as elevators, free ascents and dangerous, and self-learning as lost income.
IMHO, this process will give most people the habituation, education, and most of the experience to make you self-reliant, confident, and capable. Individuals with the discipline and dedication to follow this path are also likely to become highly competent divers in a relatively sort number of logged dives.
This foundation will serve you well regardless of how much farther you want to go. At that point technical diving, rebreathers, or commercial diving through saturation becomes far more about mastering systems than diving.
The only personal crisis (excluding major physical trauma) that demands rapid, not necessarily immediate, action is oxygenation. I believe it is a primal reaction to take frenetic action at sudden lack of breathing gas, at least past the early newborn range. It probably served evolution well in that it can repel attach or get your face above water, at least for a short time.
Unfortunately, if my hypothesis is even remotely correct, this bit of evolution does not serve divers well. Most forms of crisis training are highly dependent on habituation as a key component. Habituation is not necessarily achieved in training or from experience as recreational divers know it.
My recommendation to a disciplined individual who hopes to become a great diver is:
1. Master buoyancy, not as a diver but as a swimmer: Understand that the only thing that needs to be above water during the times you are actually breathing is your mouth and maybe your nose. Any other part of the body, especially the high density skull, that is above water is a waste of energy.
2. Master swimming: You don't have to set speed records or learn all the strokes; you are after endurance. The value here is knowing that you have plenty of time. An embarrassing number of diver drownings occur on the surface. It is incomprehensible to me how anyone can drown in a wet or drysuit at or near the surface. DUMP WEIGHT!
3. Learn basic diving physics and physiology: Pick up a book or video to learn about pressure, gas compressibility, displacement & buoyancy, and principals of oxygenation. By this time, much of it will reinforce what you have discovered in earlier steps. Don't worry about decompression, embolism, and oxygen toxicity at this point.
4. Learn to snorkel and freedive: You can learn to snorkel from friends and gain a lot of experience. When you feel ready, pay the big bucks for a good freediving course. You will learn how to safely extend, test, and learn, your limits. Tell the instructor you want to experience hypoxic blackout under their guidance. Pool static training will give you ample opportunity. Again, the end objective is to learn you have time.
5. Buy an old used regulator and Scuba Tank: Put a paint-ball sticker on it if you have to in order to get it filled. Take the second stage apart and see how it works. Really play with it. Just don't take it in the water yet. Try to take apart and reassemble the first stage if you are mechanically inclined.
6. Take Scuba courses through Nitrox, add rescue if you are inclined. Diving Nitrox is not the objective, gaining the in-depth understanding of diving physics, and to a lesser extent physiology is the goal. In the process, find an instructor who will guide you through free ascents starting in a swimming pool and graduating to as deep as you like. Avoid instructors who view BCs as elevators, free ascents and dangerous, and self-learning as lost income.
IMHO, this process will give most people the habituation, education, and most of the experience to make you self-reliant, confident, and capable. Individuals with the discipline and dedication to follow this path are also likely to become highly competent divers in a relatively sort number of logged dives.
This foundation will serve you well regardless of how much farther you want to go. At that point technical diving, rebreathers, or commercial diving through saturation becomes far more about mastering systems than diving.
goonsquad
Contributor
IMHO- This is BS. It's not that you won't panic, its just that you haven't.
Can you give any equivalences in other agencies? My experience is with IANTD, TDI, BSAC and PADI.
Blackwood
Contributor
The way it's used around here, tech 1 level is like IANTD's Adv. Rec. Trimix and Tech 2 level is like IANTD's Normoxic Trimix.
There is also the UTD lexicon which places Tech 2 about at the Adv. Rec. Trimix level, Trimix 1 at the Normoxic Trimix level, and Tech 1 in a somewhat unique position.
Even though this is roughly UTD central, the older (GUE) terminology is more prevalent, and is often used to describe dive depths regardless of agency background.
Unifiedteamdiving.com has a course equivalency chart that includes GUE, TDI, IANTD and maybe others. I've seen it, but am having trouble locating it (mobile browser).
I'll share my story. At this time I had about 1,000 lifetime dives, and had been trained in wreck penetration diving.
I was diving in Cyprus in February on the wreck of the Zenobia. It was just me and the guide, no one else being stupid enough to dive when the water was that cold. After day 1 of non-penetration diving, it was just too cold for a wetsuit so we took day 2 "off" for the instructor to teach me to use a drysuit. That all went fine, so on day 3 it was back to the Zenobia. The instructor was sufficiently confident from our diving so far that I was not an idiot so we planned various penetration dives.
From an early stage I was a little uneasy. I was trained for penetration, but it was clear that the instructor hadn't been, although he had a lot of experience. We were diving with singles, and no redundant gas. We also were not using guidelines. The instructor assured me that he knew the wreck so well that the entanglement hazard of lines was a risk which outweighed the benefit. I believed him, but that would not help me if we should get separated.
The first penetration dive had gone well enough, although I had been fairly concerned about the amount of silt which he tended to kick up as he lead me through one of the lorry decks. I was also pretty sure half way through that should I lose him we had taken enough twists and turns that I could not find my way back out. I was also highly conscious that this was only my third dive in a dry suit, and although it had all gone well, I was very aware of stories about suddenly loss of bouyancy control.
The second dive, counter intuitively, he told me would be the deeper dive. We would go down to about 140 feet and then work our way back up through the chain locker, out again, through the bridge, out the Captain's quarters and back up. I was not worried about the NDLs, but I was worried about gas. I had switched to a smaller tank (11 litre, equivalent to an Al 80) which worked fine at the depths to date, but we might be cutting it closer going deeper. I didn't like the number of corners being cut, but I had flown thousands of miles for this, so I wasn't going bail unless things started to get really tight.
I probably did have the wrong frame of mind as we descended, and as a result I was carving through my gas faster than normal (which I was aware of, but couldn't get it under control). When we hit 140 feet the alarm on my dive computer went off. I could not figure out why (just a little narced) and I could not clear it. At the surface I worked out that my ppO2 had gone over 1.4 but at the time I was just frustrated and my concern was growing. We penetrated the chain locker and that went find, although I found bouyancy difficult as I spent a lot of time vertical.
I kept a close eye on my gas, but I had switched my wireless pressure gauge to bar at the request of the instructor (who wasn't familiar with PSI, and I thought that would be more reliable than my mental arithmetic). But because the units are smaller 110 bar feels like a lot less gas than 1750 PSI (especially if you are not used to it). A lot of different things preying on my mind were starting to eat up at me. Penetrating without sufficient gas reserves, burning through my gas quickly, still worried about what might happen if I lost bouyancy control, lost my guide, etc. etc. I was not panicking but I could really feel it welling up inside of me. Because we had set an aggressive course my guide was finning strongly towards our next entrance point so probably was less aware of my discomfort than he might otherwise have been.
We came to the bridge and started to penetrate, so far so good - at least this penetration was taking us up, towards lower gas consumption and closer to home. But when we came to the fissure through which we need to travel to get to the quarters I had a really bad stab of panic. It was really, really narrow. I was not at all happy, and really felt I might do something rash if he plunged in.
He didn't. He stopped and looked back and asked me if I was OK. I gave the signal for "no, not comfortable". He could clearly tell from my body language that going insider was not on, and it was a question of whether or not to call the dive. He suggested we call the dive. I thought about it, and then decided that was probably the best course. So we swam back to our tie in and ascended.
No one died. No one got bent. No one actually flailed all over the place. But I spent a lot of time outside of my comfort zone, and as they often say: when it starts to feel wrong, it doesn't get better. With hindsight I could certainly have correct things at an early stage (probably on the surface before the dive), but I didn't, and I learned from that.
I was diving in Cyprus in February on the wreck of the Zenobia. It was just me and the guide, no one else being stupid enough to dive when the water was that cold. After day 1 of non-penetration diving, it was just too cold for a wetsuit so we took day 2 "off" for the instructor to teach me to use a drysuit. That all went fine, so on day 3 it was back to the Zenobia. The instructor was sufficiently confident from our diving so far that I was not an idiot so we planned various penetration dives.
From an early stage I was a little uneasy. I was trained for penetration, but it was clear that the instructor hadn't been, although he had a lot of experience. We were diving with singles, and no redundant gas. We also were not using guidelines. The instructor assured me that he knew the wreck so well that the entanglement hazard of lines was a risk which outweighed the benefit. I believed him, but that would not help me if we should get separated.
The first penetration dive had gone well enough, although I had been fairly concerned about the amount of silt which he tended to kick up as he lead me through one of the lorry decks. I was also pretty sure half way through that should I lose him we had taken enough twists and turns that I could not find my way back out. I was also highly conscious that this was only my third dive in a dry suit, and although it had all gone well, I was very aware of stories about suddenly loss of bouyancy control.
The second dive, counter intuitively, he told me would be the deeper dive. We would go down to about 140 feet and then work our way back up through the chain locker, out again, through the bridge, out the Captain's quarters and back up. I was not worried about the NDLs, but I was worried about gas. I had switched to a smaller tank (11 litre, equivalent to an Al 80) which worked fine at the depths to date, but we might be cutting it closer going deeper. I didn't like the number of corners being cut, but I had flown thousands of miles for this, so I wasn't going bail unless things started to get really tight.
I probably did have the wrong frame of mind as we descended, and as a result I was carving through my gas faster than normal (which I was aware of, but couldn't get it under control). When we hit 140 feet the alarm on my dive computer went off. I could not figure out why (just a little narced) and I could not clear it. At the surface I worked out that my ppO2 had gone over 1.4 but at the time I was just frustrated and my concern was growing. We penetrated the chain locker and that went find, although I found bouyancy difficult as I spent a lot of time vertical.
I kept a close eye on my gas, but I had switched my wireless pressure gauge to bar at the request of the instructor (who wasn't familiar with PSI, and I thought that would be more reliable than my mental arithmetic). But because the units are smaller 110 bar feels like a lot less gas than 1750 PSI (especially if you are not used to it). A lot of different things preying on my mind were starting to eat up at me. Penetrating without sufficient gas reserves, burning through my gas quickly, still worried about what might happen if I lost bouyancy control, lost my guide, etc. etc. I was not panicking but I could really feel it welling up inside of me. Because we had set an aggressive course my guide was finning strongly towards our next entrance point so probably was less aware of my discomfort than he might otherwise have been.
We came to the bridge and started to penetrate, so far so good - at least this penetration was taking us up, towards lower gas consumption and closer to home. But when we came to the fissure through which we need to travel to get to the quarters I had a really bad stab of panic. It was really, really narrow. I was not at all happy, and really felt I might do something rash if he plunged in.
He didn't. He stopped and looked back and asked me if I was OK. I gave the signal for "no, not comfortable". He could clearly tell from my body language that going insider was not on, and it was a question of whether or not to call the dive. He suggested we call the dive. I thought about it, and then decided that was probably the best course. So we swam back to our tie in and ascended.
No one died. No one got bent. No one actually flailed all over the place. But I spent a lot of time outside of my comfort zone, and as they often say: when it starts to feel wrong, it doesn't get better. With hindsight I could certainly have correct things at an early stage (probably on the surface before the dive), but I didn't, and I learned from that.
Since I have both, I would say that UTD's Tech 2 is almost, but not quite, the same as TDI's Trimix (normoxic). A Tech 2 diver can dive normoxic trimix to 160 feet, use a stage bottle, and use one deco gas. Trimix I is also close to TDI Trimix because it really does not add that much to what a Tech 2 diver is certified for. A Trimix I diver can go to 200 feet and use a second deco gas. UTD also has two more trimix certification levels beyond that.
JCAT
Contributor
Great thread. I wanted to comment on something I heard in several posts though, and that is that everyone has a panic threshold. I doubt this is true for everyone. I imagine there are folks out there so cool and confident, that in a situation that would induce panic in just about everyone else, say for instance, OOA and severely entangled, They could continue to try to work through their predicament without panic right to the very end.
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