Pony Bottle / Spare Air

[Gerbs]

I understand.

Within the typical warm water, high visibility diving that most newbie’s enjoy a pony is nothing more than a potential confusion, source of weight and drag and hampers proper dive techniques.

Agree. Stay together, if you get separated (hard to do in clear water) - surface. You can do the safety stop on Octopus easily enough. Warm water also makes regulator failure unlikely.

The time spent "configuring" a pony and conceiving of ways to "deploy" it would be better served simply by analyzing the reasons the pony itself would be assumed to be required.

Simply put: if you think you need a pony, you have to ask why you think you are going to run out of gas in the first place? And why is your buddy not able to help you in that situation?

Too often the only reasons for carrying one are "my buddy may desert me", "more air is more air" or "I like the feeling of security". All of these reasons are faulty and the last one is laughable.

<Little girl mode> I want a Pony! </Little girl mode>

OC gear works. The buddy system works. Dive training for OOA situations works if done correctly.

Fumbling with a "redundant" source may work but the time invested during an emergency would be better spent following the proper learned procedure. Grab your buddy, share their air and surface. That or do a CESA

If you are really afraid of an equipment failure and consider yourself alone there is no reason not to dive with two first stages on your primary gas source.

Dive safe

There is one problem with dual redundant regulators on your single tank. Usually, the most likely failures of regulators results in free-flow. Now, can you turn off your own regulators or are you relying on your buddy? Also, in the unlikely event of a loss of tank-o-ring or burst disk underwater, your dual regulators still have a single point of failure. Clogged dip tube, anyone?

This is one reason why I am going to change my set up. I cannot turn off my own regulators on the single tank I have. If one free flows, I have to ask for help to conserve my gas supply.

Here, a pony (with accessible valve) is better. Better still would be the doubles with accessible isolation manifold. Which is going to be my next scuba purchase. (twin 12L/300 - nearly 230 cu.ft at 4400 psi )

Gerbs

 

[Gerbs]

Carying a pony and having a alternate second stage regulator on your main cylinder is just confusingly redundant and totally un-necessary. Those people have no idea what they are doing, probably have not thought through the process and reason behind what they are doing, and just make me think that European divers don't have the training or don't really think about what they are doing.

Well, since American divers aren't trained in divining (they just buy the card from PADI) and especially don't dive in cold water... :mooner:

But yes, there are a lot of idiots in our waters as well. Usually diving school rather than club trained, it seems.

I heard about one guy diving with three 2nd stages (Octopus rig + redundant 1st) in Egypt. Got one jammed between his BCD and himself, vented all his air. Shot up, massive hit, now confined to a wheel chair.

Having two second stages on a single first stage stops making sense once water temperature gets below 10-15°C/50-59F anyway.

However, some thoughts:

If I were to take a pony (defined here as "Redundant gas supply not included in regular dive plan"), I would still have my two regulators on my H valve - this is the set up I practice with, why do I need to change it? I have a skill set for diving that I add the pony (and skills) to, no need to retrain everything, just the additional tank handling.

So, when I dive a deep dive in the morning, add the pony (filled with air, because how I dive, air is always breathable. Trimix users may smile sadly at this point). Normally, a regulator failure would force the diver to his secondary and cause the dive to be turned. Further regulator failures would be either gas sharing (using nitrox, for example, to have equal decompression schedules) or to the donated pony (with extra allowance for using the nitrogen heavy gas). Here, the assumption is that the pony is carried for the group, so the diver with a regulator issue gets the insurance against further failures clipped to his harness. Omit, if all divers carry ponies, but the sequence would still be: On Failure switch to secondary (and prepare pony for use). On secondary failure, (switch to pony or) gas share.

For the second dive, all is the same, only that the pony stays ashore, because the dive is such that time on someone else's gas supply is short and I can shorten/drop the safety stop if something happens. The sequence is: On Failure, switch to secondary (and ascend). On Secondary failure, (ascend or) gas share.

The underlying procedure is the same, just that my alternatives change. When the situation is back under control, I can evaluate the best course of action, but my emergency response is effectively the same. Why should I change my procedure with the pony? And why should I make my Pony my secondary? Any tank I am not breathing off needs to be secured to ensure no accidental free flows empty it before I notice it on the spg (assumption: I check the spg on what I breathe). My secondary needs to be available quickly, so a secondary on a closed tank is sub-optimal.

Things look different for Solo diving, which is not actually common around here. For Solo diving, I would venture that multiple second stages on a single first stage never makes sense.

Gerbs - club trained (or is it tainted?) diver

ps. Having a designated gas-supply-guy with a set of extra-large doubles and carrying the stages is about the only excuse for having multiple 2nd stages on one 1st stage. Borrowing regulators and only having access to octopus rigs while still wanting two first stages is a valid excuse as well. Neither shows very good planing. The diver here was American, incidentally.

 

[GeorgeC]

.....Simply put: if you think you need a pony, you have to ask why you think you are going to run out of gas in the first place? And why is your buddy not able to help you in that situation?..........

......Fumbling with a "redundant" source may work but the time invested during an emergency would be better spent following the proper learned procedure. Grab your buddy, share their air and surface. That or do a CESA......

Dive safe

Catastrophic failure comes to mind! Such as, but not limited to, O-Ring Failure.

I don’t see how “fumbling” for that slung pony regulator sitting in the Triangle would be a waste of time. No different than reaching for an octo. How is the CESA a better option than quickly resolving the problem, doing a controlled ascent and performing the necessary safety stop?

What about the insta-buddy system that is commonly deployed on dive boats. Everyone assumes you are going to have this perfect buddy, the one you have been diving with for 15 years, the type of diver who can tell by the look on your face that you are peeing in your wetsuit. Unfortunately for me, I don’t have that type of buddy. I plan every dive as if I don’t have a buddy at all. I take my safety and options into my own hands, plan the dive as if is a solo dive and welcome that insta-buddy.

 

[BrotherBear]

OK, so I'm new to this forum and to diving in general, but I'm NOT new to newsgroups and have learned to do my own follow-up before taking anyone's word for anything.

I read this thread because I am considering a back-up air supply (at this point it looks like a small pony bottle is the better choice.). I am giving this serious consideration because the thought of running out of air due to some kind of failure scares the CRAP out of me. This is the only thing about diving so far that moves beyond healthy respect into outright fear. I'm not certain that I wouldn't panic if I drew on my regulator and got nothing.

Typically I'm a level headed "panic later" kind of guy and very, very comfortable in the water so my fears may be unfounded. However I am not willing to bet my life on that. I instead am very willing to bet my life on the idea that, knowing I have two fully independent sources of air, I will be able to hold off the panic long enough to try the other one if the one in my mouth fails...no matter which is which. The knowledge that I have enough seperate reserve to get either to another diver or to the surface would be an enormous comfort. Perhaps when I have much more experience this will become unneeded and I will stop carrying it, I won't know that until I get said experience.

As to Dr. Wu's examples...if these indeed were randomly chosen then I want him picking my lottery numbers. I went through every DAN report from the most current back to 1992 and so far as I can find he cites the only 3 in that entire time span that had anything to do with using the pony in error. The other 10 incidents in 17 years where a pony bottle was even mentioned included panic attacks, illness, drugs, and defective equipment. Other than being present (and sometimes not used at all) the pony bottles had no direct bearing on the fatalities that I could see...other than the inference that carrying a pony bottle somehow made the victim act unwisely, but that is mind reading I don't care to attempt.
There would be a stronger case for dive knives causing stupidity. I'll bet a far higher percentage of diver fatalities had a knofe with them than a pony bottle, and the diver in incident #5594 who was entangled in an anchor line had a 2" dive knife in nearly unusable condition...oh, didn't that get mentioned in Doc's post? Oh, how about the part where his buddies on the boat waited a full hour before even starting to look for him?

Remember, if you torture the data long enough it will admit to anything!

With no more numbers available to me than what I cited here I'd be willing to bet that 3 incidents in 17 years adds up to a vanishingly small percentage of divers who use pony bottles being somehow killed by them. Thanks for helping me make up my mind, Dr. Wu, I think I'll get one before my next dive trip!

From randomly selected DAN Annual Diving Reports. It took about 5 minutes and I only looked at two years.

For the sake of space I limited the cites to cases where the diver mistakes the pony for the main tank. (which was the "con" that seemed the most confusing to some)

There are lots more. BSAC has a bunch too.


DAN RECORD NO: 7294

A 35-year-old male went down to set the anchor prior to a group dive on a wreck in cold water. Visibility was poor, amd when he did not return the other divers assumed he had continued along the wreck. The descendant&#8217;s body was found seven hours later with his pony bottle empty and his main tank full.

DAN RECORD NO:5594

The descendent was a 58-year-old male who was an experienced underwater photographer. The sea conditions were calm and the weather was warm and sunny. The diver was found dead with an empty pony bottle and 2950psi in his main tank.

00-18 Out of air, breathing off wrong
regulator
This 53-year-old male had been certified for
two years and had advanced open-water qualifications.
He was making a dive to 50 fsw / 15
msw but first began to descend without his
regulator in his mouth. After returning to the
surface, the decedent again descended. This
time he made the ascent with the regulator
from his pony bottle in his mouth After 10 minutes, the
decedent was low on air and panicked. He
made a rapid ascent and became unconscious
shortly after reaching the surface.
Resuscitation procedures were unsuccessful.
The scuba tank that was connected
to his primary regulator was full.

Please provide documented incidents to substanciate your statements. Otherwise I do not agree with or even believe most of your points.

 

[muddiver]

Swollowing a pony bottle has also been proven to cause fatal and near fatal injuries.

 

[Reg Braithwaite]

The knowledge that I have enough seperate reserve to get either to another diver or to the surface would be an enormous comfort.

It sounds like your mind is made up! I agree that the data on people with pony bottles being killed is not statistically significant. As they say, "the plural of anecdote is not data."

But following the same reasoning, what evidence do we have that not carrying a pony bottle will get you killed? An enormous number of people jump in the water with scant training, laughable skills, and a single AL80 tank filled in a litigation-free business environment. How many are killed? What is the real risk involved in diving a single tank?

Carry a pony bottle if you like. I won't fault you for it, that is for certain. But I do wonder sometimes if we are tilting at windmills here. perhaps our money is better spent doing more dives (therefore getting more experience), obtaining more training, or spent on other risks to our life and limb, like buying a safer automobile at home?

 

[GeorgeC]

...........But following the same reasoning, what evidence do we have that not carrying a pony bottle will get you killed? An enormous number of people jump in the water with scant training, laughable skills, and a single AL80 tank filled in a litigation-free business environment. How many are killed? What is the real risk involved in diving a single tank?

....... perhaps our money is better spent doing more dives (therefore getting more experience), obtaining more training, or spent on other risks to our life and limb, like buying a safer automobile at home?

Good point..However, we can’t limit our scope to how many people will be killed without a pony. We need to include how many cases that divers who had to do a CESA due to lack of a pony. How many were bent due to OOA and needed to avoid the safety stop. How many less than death injuries were avoided because of a pony. Don’t know if there are statistics about this and most likely stories such as my best friends brother’s, sister-in-law’s, uncles cousin had a pony that saved his life.
We also don’t know how many cases where the pony was given to a buddy who was out of air allowing a safe un-attached ascent (Safe for the donor). I did the training, added dives under my dive belt and progressed towards a pony. It was the experience and training that shifted my thought process towards the pony. I like to keep my options open.

 

[Reg Braithwaite]

Good point..However, we can&#8217;t limit our scope to how many people will be killed without a pony. We need to include how many cases that divers who had to do a CESA due to lack of a pony.

I'm getting out the popcorn for this one:

The very premise of your statement begs your conclusion. When you talk about something happening due to the lack of a pony, you are implying that the lack of a pony was the cause of their misfortune.

If you point to someone doing a CESA without a pony, I would like to understand where their buddy was, what training they had in gas management, when their equipment was last serviced and so forth. I would like to know why they chose to do such-and-such a dive and why they didn't thumb it at some point.

I have no objection to anyone choosing to dive with a SpareAir, pony, doubles, or anything else. Rock on. But there's a world of difference between saying you do it because you want to do it and saying you do it because given the empirical evidence it's the best and highest strategy to pursue.

FWIW, I object similarly to claims that the evidence proves a pony is a poor choice. We can't even do a randomized, double blind trial since there is no way to trick someone without a pony into thinking they have one.

For example, if we really do study all of the data and discover that some class of people survive more often without ponies than with them, that may only prove that ponies lead divers into reckless, overconfident behaviour, not that the pony when properly employed is unsafe.

Conversely, if we discover that divers with ponies have a much higher survivability than divers without ponies, we might conclude that the pony makes them safer. Or we might conclude that the kind of person who buys a pony is the kind of person who spends a lot of time thinking about failure scenarios. Perhaps such people have a higher level of survivability with or without ponies simply because they care.

I think where dive safety is involved, there are lies, damn lies, and statistics

 

[SkimFisher]

Good point..However, we can’t limit our scope to how many people will be killed without a pony. We need to include how many cases that divers who had to do a CESA due to lack of a pony. How many were bent due to OOA and needed to avoid the safety stop. How many less than death injuries were avoided because of a pony. Don’t know if there are statistics about this and most likely stories such as my best friends brother’s, sister-in-law’s, uncles cousin had a pony that saved his life.
We also don’t know how many cases where the pony was given to a buddy who was out of air allowing a safe un-attached ascent (Safe for the donor). I did the training, added dives under my dive belt and progressed towards a pony. It was the experience and training that shifted my thought process towards the pony. I like to keep my options open.

Of all the OOA incidents reported, how many were NOT because of diver error? To that end it seems to me that the solution is not to carry a pony - it's to pay attention and not kill yourself.

Dive thirds and pay attention. Employ good decision making.

 

[tomfcrist]

Of all the OOA incidents reported, how many were NOT because of diver error? To that end it seems to me that the solution is not to carry a pony - it's to pay attention and not kill yourself.

Dive thirds and pay attention. Employ good decision making.

I see it like this, most car wrecks are because of driver error. 99% of the adult population drives a motor vehicle. You could say the best way to avoid a wreck is to pay attention and drive safely, so why should we wear seatbelts? Because of the 1% of the time when your axle breaks, a tire falls off your car at 65mph, and you bury your car in the guard rail, you will wish you had been wearing one.

I'll keep diving my pony beyond 60ft. Just in case..........