real cases where U really needed to drop weight

[bracko]

or you needed more weights, or somthing went wrong with it (zipper breaking on soft weight system, ripping a pocket etc...)

maybe also task loading for new divers could be a reason for completing it.

 

[captndale]

I think the emphasis on learning to ditch weights in an emergency comes from the early days of diving when most divers started out as skin divers. A skin diver would be weighted to make himself neutral under water. In an emergency or when exhausted he would ditch his weights to make himself slightly buoyant. In the early days of scuba this was incorporated into scuba training. Now, with the advent of BC's, it is a skill no longer appropriate but remains in the training regimen because no one will dare remove such a basic skill from the curriculum.

 

[ScubaFeenD]

I can think of only two situations I would ditch weight. Either at the surface or if I have a massive dry suit integrity failure.

 

[burna]

If correctly weighted, you should still be able to swim up even with a total drysuit flood/failure, shouldn't you??

 

[ScubaFeenD]

I imagine I would lose a good amount of buoyancy with a full flood, and since I dont carry too much ditch-able weight I cant imagine it would be a bad idea. Why hold on to it if I dont need to.

 

[Van Isle]

Around dive 20 or so I had a leaky inflator on my BC. The way the hose got jammed the BC wouldn't hold air, even with oral inflation, it just leaked out past the QD fitting for the hose. I also couldn't manage with my cold hands (end of dive) to disconnect the hose. I was also in a dry suit, but the neck seal may have been a bit loose and kept burping air so the dry suit alone couldn't keep my head comfortably above water for the long surface swim.

In the end I didn't "need" to ditch my weights, but it was a great option that I was very happy I had and I was very very close to using it. Things are certainly different when you're a beginner using rental gear with buddies the same level - or less - experience as you than when you've become more experienced. If the same situation were to somehow happen to me again, I would ditch a weight pouch (10lbs) in a heart beat.

VI

 

[TEArrington]

I've never had to, but if you were at depth diving in a warm climate and not wearing a dry suit or other redundant buoyancy control device (e.g., wing with dual bladder) and experienced a problem with your bcd/BP&wing while wearing double tanks, it is possible that dropping some weight might be helpful in getting you to the surface. Of course, you might be wearing little if any ditchable weight at that time.

However, I have had several instances where a buddy accidently dislodged my integrated weights and I was suddendly positively buoyant in a way that required immediate attention to avoid an uncontrolled ascent. Fortunately I have kept my wits about me each time and been able to find something to grab on to and could get to a line to carefully let my self back up to the surface, safety stops included!

With regard to another poster's question about remove and put weight belt back on, I can think of several reasons why this is useful. I've seen people lose or almost lose their weight belt during their giant stride entry. I've seen people whose self and buddy checks failed to notice that their weight belt wasn't properly positioned with a clear right hand release until they were underwater. And most often I've seen people need to add weight once they are already in the water. In all of these situations, the easiest thing is to remove and replace the weight belt in the water, rather than scrambling back on a boat or on land just to fix a small problem with the weight belt.

 

[Wookie]

I've only done it once. I was diving 100 miles offshore, in 4-6 foot seas, in february, wearing a 7 mil john and steamer semi dry. Either the semi dry had shrunk, or I had expanded since the last time I'd used it. I was up beside the boat, I felt as if I couldn't get enough air, I got a little water in somehow, and I let the 24 lbs go to the bottom. At that point, I popped up like a cork, and life became good again. Never wore that wetsuit again. At the time, I had over 1,000 logged dives, so it's not just newbies that can get in trouble.

 

[eponym]

I think (I could be wrong) the DAN statistics say that 90% of post-surfacing fatalities happen because the diver in trouble subsequently went back under. One could speculate that many of those outcomes could have been prevented had the diver dropped weight.

I know of one incident where four divers surfaced, were adrift with no boat in sight, and attempted to reach an island over a reef/surf zone. The two who ditched all their gear survived and the two who kept their gear on did not. But this was ditching all scuba kit, not just weight.

-Bryan

 

[Dave1981]

You should have enough ditchable weight to be able to swim your rig to the surface if your bc fails at the start of the dive at max depth wearing a wetsuit.

I would say you have to have enough non ditchable weight to be able to hold a stop at 20' in that scenario