Preventing mask loss vs a spare

[danvolker]

I have to say, I have been diving heavily since 1976..in some of the most challenging conditions the ocean can throw at a diver......and have yet to be exposed to a situation where I could even imagine losing my mask underwater....maybe at the dock or the airport though
I think the real issue is peripheral awareness.....if you have it, or you develop it, I don't think losing a mask is worth thinking about....without the peripheral awareness--mask loss and MANY OTHER bad things are likely to happen, sooner or later.

 

[Mike.D]

In my technical training, we spent a lot of time working on blind decompression stops. This usually--not always--assumes you have a buddy who can see. On one of my training dives, the instructor took both our primary and backup masks, thus simulating the loss of 4 masks. We completed our (simulated) decompression stops

Wow I'm impressed. A few questions then.

How do you read your gauges to fulfill deco obligations without a mask?
Under what diving circumstances/environments do you feel carrying a spare mask is essential or outweighs the (very negligible) inconvenience of carrying it?
Why is carrying a spare mask a lower priority than all the other forms of gear redundancies?
Cheers

-Mike




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[boulderjohn]

Wow I'm impressed. A few questions then.

How do you read your gauges to fulfill deco obligations without a mask?
Under what diving circumstances/environments do you feel carrying a spare mask is essential or outweighs the (very negligible) inconvenience of carrying it?
Why is carrying a spare mask a lower priority than all the other forms of gear redundancies?

With a seeing buddy, it is pretty easy. The buddy keeps track of deco obligations and lets you know what to do. You know your depth and can maintain it because you shot a bag to the surface, and you have knots in the line every 10 feet. Keep a knot between your fingers and you know where you are.

If you are both blind, hopefully you can remember your deco plan (not as hard as it seems) and you go from knot to knot counting off the time in your head. This is a really, really remote possibility, and I wonder if it has ever happened in real life.

If you have a more complicated deco plan and are worried that both of you may experience what I have never seen in my life (a lost mask), then at least one of you needs to have a spare.

I carried a spare mask the last couple of days because I was doing some more complex cave dives, and not having a mask would hamper my exit. I do not always carry a spare mask in a cave, though. I think it through ahead of time.

If I am in the open water, where the exit is up and uncomplicated, I figure I can always handle that without a mask, and I usually don't carry a spare.

About priorities, let's say that I am diving a wreck in current at 150-200 feet, and I want to shoot a bag to do my ascent so that the boat can follow as I ascend. Assuming I am with a buddy, we make sure we have redundant bags and lines in case we screw up shooting the bag and lose it. That is more important than each of us carrying a spare mask. A spare bag of a different color may be used to signal an emergency as well. The danger of being alone at sea without the boat able to find me is more likely and more serious than the inconvenience of having to ascend with blurred vision.

The other factor in mask choices, as others have pointed out, is the extreme unlikeness that you will need it. When I asked my cave instructor about it, he said carrying one was up to me, but he had been diving in caves for 35 years and had never met anyone who had lost a mask, so he didn't carry one. In contrast, he carried 5 lights. You can see where he placed his priority.

---------- Post added March 8th, 2014 at 06:23 AM ----------

BTW, if you found that level of training impressive, you should know that what I described was pretty early in the training. One time my training partner and I were put in a situation in which we did the last two deco stops with me blind and us having only one working tank/regulator between us, meaning we had to buddy breathe.

Situations like that are so extremely unlikely that it could be argued that there is no point in preparing for them. The real point of such preparation, though, is not so much the specific situation but in the understanding you develop that no matter how the caca finds its way on the fan, you should have the skills and the presence of mind to work out a solution.

 

[Mike.D]

With a seeing buddy, it is pretty easy. The buddy keeps track of deco obligations and lets you know what to do. You know your depth and can maintain it because you shot a bag to the surface, and you have knots in the line every 10 feet. Keep a knot between your fingers and you know where you are.

If you are both blind, hopefully you can remember your deco plan (not as hard as it seems) and you go from knot to knot counting off the time in your head. This is a really, really remote possibility, and I wonder if it has ever happened in real life.

If you have a more complicated deco plan and are worried that both of you may experience what I have never seen in my life (a lost mask), then at least one of you needs to have a spare.

I carried a spare mask the last couple of days because I was doing some more complex cave dives, and not having a mask would hamper my exit. I do not always carry a spare mask in a cave, though. I think it through ahead of time.

If I am in the open water, where the exit is up and uncomplicated, I figure I can always handle that without a mask, and I usually don't carry a spare.

About priorities, let's say that I am diving a wreck in current at 150-200 feet, and I want to shoot a bag to do my ascent so that the boat can follow as I ascend. Assuming I am with a buddy, we make sure we have redundant bags and lines in case we screw up shooting the bag and lose it. That is more important than each of us carrying a spare mask. A spare bag of a different color may be used to signal an emergency as well. The danger of being alone at sea without the boat able to find me is more likely and more serious than the inconvenience of having to ascend with blurred vision.

The other factor in mask choices, as others have pointed out, is the extreme unlikeness that you will need it. When I asked my cave instructor about it, he said carrying one was up to me, but he had been diving in caves for 35 years and had never met anyone who had lost a mask, so he didn't carry one. In contrast, he carried 5 lights. You can see where he placed his priority.

---------- Post added March 8th, 2014 at 06:23 AM ----------

BTW, if you found that level of training impressive, you should know that what I described was pretty early in the training. One time my training partner and I were put in a situation in which we did the last two deco stops with me blind and us having only one working tank/regulator between us, meaning we had to buddy breathe.

Situations like that are so extremely unlikely that it could be argued that there is no point in preparing for them. The real point of such preparation, though, is not so much the specific situation but in the understanding you develop that no matter how the caca finds its way on the fan, you should have the skills and the presence of mind to work out a solution.

Excellent write up! Thank you for your detailed answer.
After thinking about it I have to agree with your point of view completely.
And yes i did find it very impressive

I am yet to undergo any tech training but I am hoping to take fundies soon. I hope my training will be as intense and thorough as yours evidently was/is.

I'm unsure if this question has been answered, but would a neoprene cover for your mask strap be detrimental to the security of the mask on your head? Does GUE/tech divers avoid this or is it a negligible risk?
Cheers

-Mike


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Akimbo]

Wouldn't any deco dive be potentially life threatening if you've lost your mask?
Applying your logic to this would mean that any/all deco dives is not a suitable choice for scuba…

All diving is “potentially” life threatening. However I didn’t use the word potentially but did use the word personally.

…Personally, a dive that is so demanding that losing a mask would be life threatening leads me to the conclusion that Scuba is not the appropriate choice...

It isn’t like you are blind without a mask so you can still estimate depth… except maybe in black water. Serious decompression in black-water is in the realm of surface supplied divers.

Losing a mask during a penetration dive isn’t any different than getting silted out — you are effectively blind. Spare me the nonsense about frog-kicks and neutral buoyancy. That does nothing when shifting debris puts the lights out. You find your way out by feel and you shouldn’t be in there if you can’t.

Everyone makes individual decisions when conditions become too unsafe to dive. What is unsafe in Scuba probably isn’t unsafe when surface supplied by a competent team. All deep mixed gas saturation diving is unsafe on Scuba. I have no heartburn with divers that consider all decompression diving unsafe for them. I do have some reservations with this guy though:

 

[Akimbo]

…How do you read your gauges to fulfill deco obligations without a mask?...

The same way you fulfill decompression obligations with a mask when one or both of your computers fail. Have you been planning on certain death if your computers fail? Of course not.

Anyone competent enough to perform decompression dives “should” have a good idea what their decompression obligation is. You aren’t likely to have serious stops deeper than 20' unless you are packing more gas than you can carry on deck or on a rebreather (yeah yeah, RGBM is biased toward short deep stops but you won’t die if you use a different algorithm).

You can estimate the stop’s depth without a mask and just breathe down your gas when in doubt about the time. Most computers will give you +/-5' at your stop.

It amuses me that so many divers on this board worry about losing their mask on a decompression dive but have no idea where the nearest chamber is or happily dive anyway when it is a day or two away.

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

I've never lost a mask, never even came close. I just check the strap once in a while and make sure it's in good shape. I make sure it's adjusted well and not too loose. I learned to place the strap on the bottom side of the back of my head so it would have to actually stretch a bit to get over the hump of the back of my head to come up and off. I also use an old style oval mask occasionally with a rubber skirt and it has a thick rubber strap (from a save a dive kit) with the old style side buckles, kind of how stock jet fin straps are attached except a mini version of that. It's a very sturdy setup and rock solid.
I tried putting the strap under my hood but didn't like it because it allowed water in and wouldn't let my hood seal well. It also would be a pain to have to pull my hood down to adjust the strap if needed. An ice cream head ache would be worse to me then losing a mask.
Last, I don't tech dive anymore and rarely go beyond 80 to 100 feet, more like 50 to 60 feet most of the time. If I completely lost a mask, missing - gone, then I would just work my to the surface and go home.

Being a minimalist, I am into getting rid of as much unneeded crap as I can, not adding stuff and then trying to figure out where to store it.

 

[scubadada]

To each their own, I will not be carrying a replacent mask. Hope I don't learn otherwise that this was the wrong decision.

 

[rivers]

I have yet to lose my mask but, I carry a spare mask in my drysuit pocket. It takes up very little room, and I can still fit my wetnotes and back-up dsmb in there. I've also practiced air share maskless ascents. In those situations, the seeing buddy(s) lead the ascent and use touch contact to signal to the maskless diver when to stop. It's not my favourite activity in the world, but at least I know if I lost both of my masks, I could make it to the surface. My eyeballs might freeze, but that's it

 

[CuzzA]

While reading a different thread I came across this one Akimbo linked so I thought I would share my solution. I'm not a tech diver yet and I can see where carrying a spare mask with a ceiling would be a wise choice. My decision to come up with an idea to prevent losing my mask (and GoPro) was mostly influenced by spearfishing and seeing videos and reading stories of guys getting their mask knocked off their heads by an angry fish.

It's pretty simple really. Take 2 mountable zip ties, the ones with a hole to screw it down to a surface. 2 brass swivel snaps and a piece of nylon line. Remove one or both of the swivels, I left one on. Put one zip tie on the back of your octo necklace and the other around the hem of your neoprene mask strap (add a little glue to prevent tearing) and then clip the two points together.

This was about the most minimalist way I could figure to do it. You never realize it's there. It hugs the back of your head/neck so there's virtually no entangle point. And even in the unlikely event something did get tangled through it, it's easy enough to cut with any typical cutting tool a diver carries. And finally, it's cheap and you may already have all the pieces in your garage and tackle box. I did.

If my mask is knocked from my head, it will likely be sitting on my neck or shoulders, even if I can't reach it, I can simply follow the line from the necklace. I will admit I don't use it all the time. The dive determines if I'll use it. Shallow dives, not worth the trouble; deeper dives, yes. The viz in the Gulf where I dive is unpredictable and mostly hazy, so trying to find a mask on the seabed once removed would be difficult.

Anyway, hope this may help someone looking for a solution.