Panicked diver- what to do...

[Tfast78]

Battles2a5,

Now that you have many more dives and your stress and rescue class behind you; what would you do differently this time around in the same exact senario?

 

[DevonDiver]

1. When I turned the group, my priority was to get everyone to the anchor line, ascend, and then (presumably) share air during the safety stop if need be. We were 25 miles offshore in big enough seas and strong enough currents to where you are not going to be able to swim to the boat, and there is a chance you would not be seen. We were not too far from the anchor line so I didn't think it would be an issue getting there. Afterwards, however, I told myself that I should have passed him my (full) pony bottle. I had plenty of air, he didn't. I could have clipped my pony to him before we swam back. So is that what I should have done? Or do you think the additional task loading and time consumed by the activity would overwhelm a diver? I guess the shrug he gave me indicated that he was comfortable with the situation, so I never viewed this as an imminent incident.

It may help to pre-determine an appropriate 'turn-point' for your dive. Such a turn-point should be dictated by two factors - NDL limit (not an issue in this case) and air consumption (the issue in this case). That air consumption turn-point is arrived at when the first diver in the group reaches a pre-calculated pressure. You'd need to brief that..and have them signal it... assuming bad diver awareness, you'd also have to monitor it closely during the dive.

Whilst the priority to get the group back to the line is important (especially given other safety factors), the over-riding factor is to get everyone safely to the surface. Never forget that.

The pony cylinder was a resource at your disposal. You chose not to (or didn't think to) utilize that resource. You may want to do so, next time.

The diver's perceived 'comfort' or 'confidence' with being low-on-air at depth is irrelevant. Their lack of risk perspective should never form the basis of your own risk assessment. Being low-on-air at depth is an incident. Whether it becomes an emergency...or worse, an accident, is determined by what procedures and sense-of-urgency are used to address it. Examine your actions and attitudes in respect of that....

A final point - I never, never let divers go to zero air. I will share air when they reach 'low gas' (300psi certainly counts as low). This preserves a contingency gas in their cylinders - which is critical should you become separated, have to deal with other issues (someone else goes OOA, whilst you are sharing with a LOA diver)...and for them to achieve and retain buoyancy on the surface etc.

2. What do you do if you donate your octo and the guy bolts to the surface? This guy was way bigger than my buddy so there would have been no way to physically overpower him. My thought would be to get behind him and try to get him in a head-down or horizontal attitude using the tank valve and BC as leverage, then guide him/her to safety. Aside from not donating your octo, what do you do once they have it and then panic?

The Rescue Diver course teaches actions/procedures for a panicked diver ascent. I'd disagree that it is impossible to prevent such occurences, regardless of size differential between rescuer and victim.

You need to control two functions: propulsion (fining) and buoyancy... not overpower the whole diver.

Here's how I teach it (with a background as a Jiu-Jitsu instructor):

As the victim swims upwards, reach out and link your arms around their torso or take a firm grip on their BCD. Dump your own air. Use your legs to encircle and trap their legs (around the thighs)...and then slide downwards so that your legs are now tightly gripped around/below their knees. That prevents them from effectively fining (upwards propulsion). Having achieved this, take control of their LPI and dump their air, if required. Keep yourself pulled tightly in against their body/torso to prevent accidental contact/knocks. Once slowed, begin to establish communication and re-exert control through calm gestures.

That works for my rescue/DM students, regardless of size (need to get a video of that next time, for demonstration).

FWIW, I just signed up for my Rescue class, and will start in a couple weeks.

Also... 5 years from the original post... OP is now a DM... wondering how the poster has managed to answer their own initial questions through progressed experience...

 

[dumpsterDiver]

Didn't read other responses. My opinion.. it was incredibly dumb to turn your back on a diver who was at 300 psi and expect them to swim horizontally to a anchor line... Ridiculous really. Negligent...I would have put the diver on my octopus, grabbed hold of them, tried to determine if they were really calm.. If calm then MAYBE swim to the anchor line. If my spider sense tingle.. then we head up immediately. I don't give a crap about finding an anchor line.. I want people on the surface safe.

 

[Tom Winters]

Hey, a resurfaced 2007 thread. Cool beans.
So you have a guy at 95' with 300psi left. I would have grabbed the guy - I can't use the word "idiot" or "moron" anymore since these are apparently medical terms indicating specific levels of intelligence. Calling this guy with you at 95' an idiot or moron really offends the real idiots and morons on the board - so I would have grabbed him, shook him a couple of times to say hello and jammed my octo into his mouth. At that point, being nice has left the building. If he gave me crap, I'd pull his mask off while we slowly ascended. I had a number of these incidents over the years, and people always responded well to this. I learned the mask trick when I had a student at 40' who decided that she didn't want to be there so she started clawing up to the surface after she pulled her own mask off. After I grabbed her, shook her a little to let her know that I was there and put my octo in her mouth, she was fine on a long slow ascent even without her mask. We were all happy at the surface.
If someone whom I could have grabbed at depth flies up to the surface and dies, I can't fix that. I can jumpstart a near-drowner though. Too bad you had to dive with that divetar... ah shoot, I can't use that word "retard" word anymore either.

 

[DivemasterDennis]

I think the most constructive point I can add is that getting a low ion air diver onto someone's alternate air source is less stressful and less likely to lead to panic than doing so with an out of air diver. I would have put the 300 psi person on my octo and slowly surfaced where we were, holding on to each other. At the depth of a safety stop, if appropriate, I would put them back on their own air. Then a surface swim to the boat. I would have done that because of the remarkably rapid depletion of air (nitrox) by the low on air diver. If it was someone with whom I am familiar, and their consumption was not so vastly different from mine, I might have just surfaced with them, monitoring their gas supply.
As to what to do if a diver to whom you donated air bolts to the surface "dragging" you, I have not had this happen. Perhaps years of training and dealing with situations like this has helped me, but I have ( up to now) been able to control anxious or nearly panicked divers. If one actually started to drag me up, I would hope to have the presence of mind to either a0 have the strength and presence of mind to tug the octo from them, or b) grab their legs and stop their kicking, or c) cut the octo hose if it was necessary to avoid injury to me. Those are the actions i can think of at the moment. I hope I never have to do any of those things.
DivemasterDennis

 

[windapp]

I would like to put another spin on this.

By re-aranging the buddy teams the way this was done, the "air diver" was left without support for the ascent, and the effectiveness of the remaining buddy team was diluted by the addition of a third diver. If the diver in question had been made to ascend on the line with his buddy, he probably would not have gone OOA. Even if he did, the buddy would have had more control keeping him from taking off due to the presence of the anchor line.

I suspect that narcosis may have been at play here, and the lack of regard for the low on air situation, and subsequent panic during the OOA situation may have been mitigated once the diver reached the shallower depth. I realize that each diver is responsible for him/herself, but below 80 ft, I think it is also the responsibility of each buddy in the team to watch out for unusually unsafe behaviour at depths below 80 ft. This task becomes far more difficult to accomplish when there is more than two divers in a buddy group.

 

[TheBeardedAdventurer]

I generally try and steer clear of these kind of discussions but I wanted to ask a few questions and by doing so maybe make my point in one swoop.

Why/HOW did the diver run out of air??!?! I cannot really understand how I read so often about divers running out of air. In terms of standard procedure, it is up there with forgetting fins or not turning your air on in the first place. You would NEVER dive without fins. You would (hopefully) never dive without checking your gear is in working order so why is it that I hear divers running out of air? It is a, if not THE most fundamental aspect of diving. As an entry level diver it is drummed into you that you should check you air regularly ESPECIALLY if you are exerting yourself and/or diving in difficult conditions. So why did this not happen? Mini-rant over. (Sorry).

In general, the use of pony bottles is great if EVERYONE in the team know what they are doing and so perfect for club or team diving situations although this occurrence has highlighted some of the weaknesses as well. Maybe we should think back to the old 'proverb' of PLAN THE DIVE AND DIVE THE PLAN. That will negate the need to pony bottles 99% of the time anyway and also reduce the need for (difficult) task-loaded decision making on a dive with divers we are not used to diving with.

It appears that the individuals involved in this situation REACTED well however most of these problems could have been solved PROACTIVELY as Meisdadoo mentioned. Check you air maybe?

While we are here, my heart sank when I read that one of the 4 divers had planned to split from the group. If you have to change buddy groups or plans at LEAST keep buddies together no?

I am sorry if I have ranted a little bit. I am glad that everyone was ok and THAT is the most important thing of all.

Take it easy everyone

 

[kaerius]

While we are here, my heart sank when I read that one of the 4 divers had planned to split from the group. If you have to change buddy groups or plans at LEAST keep buddies together no?

I reacted to this as well. Someone should have bit the bullet and stayed buddied with the air diver. Nothing happened to the air diver, but it's still bad form. I have had dives where buddy teams have split up during the dive, but in these cases it's been the DM(working) who ascended with the low on air diver, while the people with more air continued on(this group had two instructors in it).

 

[agilis]

The way that I handle such situations is by diving solo whenever possible. When vacationing , if I'm diving from a boat with a group of people I do not know well, I refuse to 'buddy up'. I make that very clear. I let the divemaster know that I'll just follow the group and expect to be left alone. I refuse to be drawn into any of their silly plans, especially if a group of people are involved that I know knothing about. C cards are absolutely useless: AOW, master diver, rescue diver, instructor, all of them are, to put it mildly, unreliable indicators.

Not that long ago I was forced to pretend that I was going to stay on the boat. Then I quietly slipped in alone when the rest had departed, pissing off the two boat tenders. Just another way of diving solo. There are no reliable statistics available, but my own calculations suggest that diving as part of a group is more dangerous than diving alone. Diving with a mixed group which includes morons who expect the DM to monitor their air supply is about as dangerous as it gets. Always be careful not to get left behind, or become injured by some clumsily flailing AOW while reboarding.

 

[FinnMom]

I never leave people anyone anymore. It puts such a dent in my piece of mind that it's just not worth it. Someone deciding to & experienced in diving solo is an obvious exception, but otherwise I will see the 30 yrs experience and 2,000 dives guy all the way back to the boat. And whether sharing air for fun or in real need, I would also start sharing air when the other person still has a fair bit of their own air. It keeps them calmer, and makes sure they can inflate on the surface. If panic is what kills in the end, then maintaining a distressed diver's cool is a huge priority. This story makes me think I should put more effort into noting what else I could do to keep a DD calm.

The story also made me happy that on sunny afternoons in a shallow quarry we often share air just for fun. We do this to so a double-tank buddy can help a single-tank buddy have a longer dive, and also to provide a little challenge & entertainment while practising a worthwhile skill. It's hugely better practise than just passing a reg back and forth between divers hovering face to face. You practise how to give the reg to the OOA diver, how to immediately free your whole length of hose when when you donate, how to grip and HANG ON to a hose donated to you from another diver, how to swim in formation w/o colliding and w/o OOA diver pulling on the hose, and how to stow the long hose properly when you get it back underwater. Knowing they have successfully shared air for extended periods of time should make a diver calmer in a real OOA situation. I know it's made me calmer about being deep, or being a fair distance from the hole when under the ice.

BTW I also like to orally inflate our BCD/Wings just a bit before every single dive. It's part of the pre-dive check. My hope is that this puts the option of oral BCD/Wing inflation into the base, physical memory.