Recognizing Potential Problems

[Big Jim Slade]

I would like to hear from people regarding a recent dive I had.

Started out with a pretty long surface swim. No problems there. Relax for a bit before beginning descent. As we begin our descent, my buddy starts having problems with a leaky mask. A couple quick adjustments to the mask at the surface and we start heading down. We got to our planned depth with no problems and away we went on our heading. Within a minute I notice my buddy is having a problem with the mask leaking again, but nothing major. I'm very familiar with this buddy and I just got the feeling that something wasn't right. I know where this buddy likes to be in the water compared to me and every time I looked over they were vertical in the water and either behind me in respect to the direction we were going or foot below or above me depth wise. These are all things out of character on our dives together. So I made it a point to keep checking that everything was OK. Then the buddy started cramping up. Buddy would remove one and then get another and remove again. Each time I got the OK sign. At this point I just had a bad feeling about the dive. The body language was out of the ordinary throughout the entire dive for my buddy and the more I thought about it the more it made me nervous. So I gave the signal to ascend to our safety stop at 15ft. My buddy was unable maintain neutral buoyancy so I held onto their BC and kept us both at that depth for 5 minutes just hovering to try and avoid any more cramping problems while swimming. We finish our ascent and talk about all that went wrong. My buddy asked me why I called the dive so soon (25 minutes into dive we planned for about 40 minutes). I just said that too many things seemed to be going wrong and I had a bad feeling about it.

So I guess what I'd like to hear from people is how they have dealt with similar situations. Did I wait too long to call the dive? Should I have recognized the out of character body language in my buddy sooner? Did I overreact to the situation given that my buddy didn't feel the need to call the dive? Any input is appreciated.

 

[aquaregia]

If I had a bad feeling that my buddy was having a bad feeling but not telling me, I'd call the dive.

 

[damage]

Good call, if you dive frecuetly with him you can talk about "calling off" a dive, if you sre interested, take the rescue diver course, it can teach you how to identify some signs of potential problems, or distress sympthoms.

Neither my buddy or I are cave divers, but we adopt some system from this divers: anyone can call a dive anytime and doesn't have to explain why, except if he wants to. Takes a lot of pressure off and usually we do later a debriefing about the situation.

 

[Sas]

Yea that was a good call! That's one of the good things about diving with regular buddies as I think it makes it much easier to know when something is going wrong. I can always tell with my regular buddy when there is something wrong these days as his trim will be a bit off or he won't be in his usual position in relation to me, or light movements will be different, or he'll be swimming a bit too fast.

 

[AfterDark]

Better to call a dive and have some questions, than not to call it and have regrets. Sounds like a good call to me.

I've called 2 out of 13 planned dives in the last 6 weeks and another was called by the captain of the boat. I'll be diving this weekend.

 

[fnfalman]

Good call on the OP's part. I can't believe that the buddy had asked what's wrong if his limbs had been cramping up that early into the dive. He should have been the one that called off the dive.

 

[lavachickie]

Sounds like a good call to me. That's one of the good things about having a well known, reliable buddy: the ultimate in redundancy! =-)

 

[Louie]

I believe you made the right call. Unless a problem is resolved or dealt with and the person with the problem is happy to continue, it will not resolve itself. It will only escalate.

Accidents are often the result of more than one thing going wrong. It can start out with a leaky mask then cramps and so fourth. It's the combination of circumstances and problems that will lead to something serious.

The fact is, people are different in their reactions (some will be very cautious while others may be more reluctant to call off a dive for what they perceive to be problems). Unfortunately, this reluctance can result in accidents. Sometimes, it's factors such as stress in unknown environments, narcosis or nervousness that will bring on behaviours that are out of the ordinary for a diver.

One of the very important abilities that come with experience and training is the ability to recognise stress, nerves and potential problems in ourselves and in others and prevent serious mishaps.

There are probably some who would not have been as observant or diligent as you were with your buddy. I know of many instances where a buddy was no where to be seen when a diver encountered problems. It's good that you're giving thought to this matter.

 

[knowone]

You recognized, monitored and called the dive. Your buddy followed you up. You are the perfect buddy.
Discuss the circumstances with your buddy again.

I'm supposed to be the tough one, four of us, private boat, diving to a 39m sub. I had put on some weight and grabbed my skinny wetsuit instead of my fat one. Down to 20m, suit to tight, told my buddy I would slap him if he followed me up. I looked until he joined the others, played with a seal for a couple of minutes and surfaced. Caught some rays until they surfaced. They knew my suit was to tight and no one said anything, other than good call.

 

[TSandM]

This is teamwork.

First off, you knew your buddy well enough to know that a whole bunch of things just weren't right. Then, you cared enough to call a dive I assume you wanted to do . . . and I'll bet your buddy was thinking, "Man, whatever's wrong today, I'm just not comfortable . . . but I'll keep trying, because I don't want to cut my friend's dive short." You relieved him of that responsibility.

I have called a dive because I just wasn't happy, and it was one of the hardest things I've ever done in diving. It was on a trip, so we were diving a site we couldn't just go back to any time. People had made an effort to be there with us. I wasn't happy, and I didn't want to be there, and I kept trying to make it work until it just didn't. You saved your buddy from having to make that call.

Next time, he may do the same for you.