Recreational OW diving with long hoses (or the 'usual' r/h hose routing) ...

[Diver0001]

People argue that a diver who has taken a working regulator from a buddy will bolt to the surface, putting the buddy in peril, but that same diver in a buddy breathing situation will calmly take two breaths, hand the regulator back to the buddy, and then wait patiently with no regulator while the buddy takes two breaths.

I have some real-world experience with this.

In the summer of 1985 I assisted the LDS with rescue training by being the "victim". My gear, and the gear of the students in training did include a proper octopus (which was far from universal back then) but stowing it where it could be found easily was not yet the norm.

On a particular day I was in 30ft of water laying face down on the bottom waiting to be found. There were no safety divers in the water and I was solo. The rescue diver (who was also solo) found me face down and did some things wrong, which started by rolling me over in such a way that his arm got in between the regulator hose and my body and pulled the regulator out of my mouth on the roll. This he didn't notice.

He then proceeded to "lift" me but in the process had both of my arms held in such a way that I couldn't get either of them loose. Obviously I couldn't retrieve my regulator. I initially thought I would just hold on until we got to the surface since most divers ascend way too fast with this scenario. This time, however, the ascent was painfully slow. About 1/2 way to the surface I realized that I wasn't going to make it. It was like he had ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD, which was NOT how I was feeling just then!

I struggled to get an arm free but the more I struggled the firmer his grip became because he thought it was part of the scenario (or so he told me after the fact).

Realizing that struggling wasn't going to do it, I let my body go limp until his grip loosened and then I RIPPED one of my arms free, which caused him to turn around with the following look on his face:



at that point, I ... er... "acquired" his primary and started breathing from it. I hadn't reached the point of panic yet but my body was heaving to take a breath and I wasn't about to go looking for my own reg or take "no" for an answer. So I just took his primary... and to his credit he let me have it without pause.

This lead to us buddy breathing since neither one of us had any idea where his octopus was. Initially I didn't think to give it back until he reminded me by tugging on the hose. That was all the reminder I needed to start buddy breathing "by the book". We finished the ascent in this manner.

I'm not saying that my reaction is indicative of how every diver would have responded in that situation but I got some insights from this that affected my diving, including how I teach AAS:

- 1. If someone wants a regulator, give them one. I have a 5-alarm allergy for instructors who teach to expose the octopus and "hide" the primary in case an OOA diver tries to take it. In my opinion, that's just plain wrong. Wrong Wrong Wrong. The answer to this is flexibility. If that guy (despite his mistakes) had refused to give me his primary then I may have drowned. His flexibility in that situation was instrumental in handling that emergency. That's a big part of my "A" from ABC. Give the diver whatever he needs and stay flexible if they don't follow protocol.

- 2. Never ever EVER attach your octopus in such a way that you are unable to retrieve it yourself and/or don't know where it is. That's kind of related to "A" because A means "air for everyone" and if part of your response to an OOA diver means you give them your primary then you bloody well better know where your own octopus is because you're going to need it. Especially now since buddy breathing has been taken out of the curriculum and you do not want to try figuring out how it works when the poop is already flying. Moreover, someone who takes your primary may need to be reminded to give it back (as I was) and depending on personalities the reminder may not be enough. I "snapped out" of it with a gentle reminder but I teach my students that if someone takes your primary that you should let them have it and then use your own octopus in the "A" phase. This is the main reason why I think the long-hose and bungee backup is better, because no matter what happens you always know where the octopus is.

- 3. Once the air situation is sorted out the stress subsides fairly quickly and you can move on to other things. In this case we already had a hold of each other but the seed of my "B" from ABC got planted here too because what made the buddy breathing ascent work for us was the reflex that we both had to get neutral and then give each other an 'OK' and "Ascend" sign (the "C").

R..

 

[rhwestfall]

On a tangent to this, since so few where I am dive the LH/BO, I specifically discuss the OOA situation with my "insta-buddy" that his source for air from me is my primary (not to look for an octo). I discuss that he is allowed to force-ably take it from me should I fail to understand his need or he fail to display it (I have had guys think they signaled, but in fact didn't - long story for somewhere else). Food for thought....

 

[roydude]

The yellow color makes the regulator easy for the OOA diver to spot in an emergency. The regulator in the diver's mouth is pretty easy to locate.

Makes sense - gracias.

... if I am on a recreational, open water dive, somehow find myself OOA (which is inconceivable in itself), and find taht my buddy has no working alternate, I will CESA every time, unless I am with a buddy I have absolute faith in, and even then I might CESA first. As for being the donor, I never, ever want to be in a situation where I have to hand my only working regulator to a potentially panicked diver.

Got to agree with that too to be honest (also, not sure about other agencies but 'buddy breathing' isn't part of the PADI or BSAC curriculum any more).

 

[danvolker]

Got to agree with that too to be honest (also, not sure about other agencies but 'buddy breathing' isn't part of the PADI or BSAC curriculum any more).

But there is NO EXCUSE for it to not be...

 

[roydude]

The nail in the coffin of my 'issues' with hog loops in rec. ow ...



Well played sir, well played.

Still struggling to understand my other point though: standard 'octo' setup with a long hose. No option to only donate part of the full length and still carrying the chance of the above situation happening (and to deal with the extra length in this config. ... it gets tied in a knot! ):


The only explanation I've had for this is that it's more comfortable for the donor to dive with, and when you notice a diver is low on air you can untie it in preparation for any issue. ... again I say: .

Does anyone on here dive with this? What do you do in the event that an OOA diver suddenly appears in you face needing help?

---------- Post Merged at 07:37 PM ---------- Previous Post was at 07:32 PM ----------

But there is NO EXCUSE for it to not be...

Any diver who's confident and even a little disciplined should be able to share one reg with another diver without too much difficulty. It was removed from curriculum because our agencies train on the premise that there'll be two 2nd stages always. Therefore you should always have a 2nd reg to breathe from (now we train alternate air source ascent).

---------- Post Merged at 07:44 PM ---------- Previous Post was at 07:32 PM ----------

... This lead to us buddy breathing since neither one of us had any idea where his octopus was.

Godammit!!

 

[lamont]

If an OOA diver takes the long hose (whether that's primary or octopus) then to me this adds a serious risk. An OOA diver will usually be a tad stressed at the very least. He may just want to be on the surface as quickly as possible, regardless of training (it happens!).

So to put that another way: someone holding onto you by a 7' hose is now ascending at an unsafe speed and trying to drag you with him :shocked2: ! I can't think of a worse situation for the donor - you can't reach him to purge his bcd / calm him down / get control of the situation, all you can do is dump air and try to slow him down (hoping he doesn't rip your hose off in the process)!

Quickly because I need to leave:

- On dive #20 I was the inexperienced OW diver out of gas (technically valve was mostly closed, so no access to my gas), on a long hose and while I floated up 4' above the diver giving me gas, I managed to get things under control. So, it worked for me there.

- I've never read of a long hose donated to an OW diver causing a problem in nearly the past ~10 years of diving.

- I've also been involved in a recovery where one diver failed to deliver an octo to another person.

And based on my experience, I'd say that your argument is flawed and while it might look good on paper things don't work out that way in real life. And I'll go with the long hose actually being the better all around solution. It does take a little more training to avoid trapping the long hose, but overall it has a better success record than the classical octo config.

 

[danvolker]

Any diver who's confident and even a little disciplined should be able to share one reg with another diver without too much difficulty. It was removed from curriculum because our agencies train on the premise that there'll be two 2nd stages always. Therefore you should always have a 2nd reg to breathe from (now we train alternate air source ascent).

You could say it was necessary to demonstrate the level of comfort any diver should have in the water, to deserve a c-card...and I think many agency decision makers decided that many students BEING certified, COULD NOT pass this skill reliably, and the attempt may in fact cause severe accidents. To prevent the major loss of revenue it would cause to make this skill a standard ( meaning losing maybe 20% of the students to be considered uncertifiable) , the skill was removed, and the claim about the 2 regs took it's place.

The sad fact is there are students being turned out, that are afraid to pull the reg out of their mouth on an 80 foot deep dive. This is a real problem, and the original buddy breathing skill would have largely eliminated this. To be clear on the issue here--having this fear is proof that the diver in question is not competent at this depth, and maybe not competent even on a 40 foot dive. Either lots of required training is missing, and this is causing the fear problem....or...the diver is prone to major panic, and should not be a diver.

 

[Thalassamania]

No, I don't think so.

Some agencies do not even allow it to be taught at the OW level, because experience has shown that even well-trained divers in buddy breathing can often screw it up when it happens in real life, resulting in two casualties rather than one. Even in my technical training, when I had to do a training dive that was so screwed up (as part of the instructional plan) that my buddy and I reached the point that we had to buddy breathe, the key point of the exercise was that buddy breathing is an absolute last resort, and it would seem to me that it would be better to prevent that from happening by wise choices ahead of time than to count on it working instead.

I must disagree. I learned to BB in the old days, we used it often, we practiced it at the start of EVERY dive. It worked just fine, in practice and in real emergencies. In fact ... it worked so well that I really don't even think of the times we had to BB as emergencies, just as an alternate way of doing things. If BB is an absolute last resort, then almost by definition it will not be successful because it will not be taught with sufficient repetitions (remember Glen's 17 reps? That was for BB), and it will not be assiduously practiced, so when the rubber meets the road ... it's not going to work. But that is a problem with training and diver practice, that can be overcome if you choose to.

What I love about these discussion is that we start off with a premise that divers who are taking a working alternate air source in an OOA emergency are in such a panic that they will not calm down and will continue to act in a panicked frenzy even after attaining a working regulator. On the other hand, if they find out that there is no working regulator to be had and must instead rely on buddy breathing, they will immediately calm down and follow the buddy breathing procedure perfectly. People argue that a diver who has taken a working regulator from a buddy will bolt to the surface, putting the buddy in peril, but that same diver in a buddy breathing situation will calmly take two breaths, hand the regulator back to the buddy, and then wait patiently with no regulator while the buddy takes two breaths.

I question that.

In my experience well trained and practiced divers calm down immediately when provided with a working second stage, they even calm down (if trained and practiced, as above) when BB is initiated. The key is adequate training and continued practice, regardless of the technique. How many divers that you know do as I do ... practice OOA on every single dive? Therein, I fear, lies the real issue.

The yellow color makes the regulator easy for the OOA diver to spot in an emergency. The regulator in the diver's mouth is pretty easy to locate.

And one more point on buddy breathing....

If know how to buddy breathe. I am sure I can do it with the right partner if I have to. However, if I am on a recreational, open water dive, somehow find myself OOA (which is inconceivable in itself), and find taht my buddy has no working alternate, I will CESA every time, unless I am with a buddy I have absolute faith in, and even then I might CESA first. As for being the donor, I never, ever want to be in a situation where I have to hand my only working regulator to a potentially panicked diver.

It used to be that you could have absolute faith in each and every buddy, but those days are long gone. Practicing OOA on every dive, however, does give you rather a good idea of what sort of behavior(s) you can expect.

Makes sense - gracias.

Got to agree with that too to be honest (also, not sure about other agencies but 'buddy breathing' isn't part of the PADI or BSAC curriculum any more).

That's because of the depauperate curriculum that has been "streamlined" to churn out a diver in 20 hours, or less, not because of some inherent issue with the skill.

But there is NO EXCUSE for it to not be...

Quickly because I need to leave:

- On dive #20 I was the inexperienced OW diver out of gas (technically valve was mostly closed, so no access to my gas), on a long hose and while I floated up 4' above the diver giving me gas, I managed to get things under control. So, it worked for me there.

- I've never read of a long hose donated to an OW diver causing a problem in nearly the past ~10 years of diving.

- I've also been involved in a recovery where one diver failed to deliver an octo to another person.

And based on my experience, I'd say that your argument is flawed and while it might look good on paper things don't work out that way in real life. And I'll go with the long hose actually being the better all around solution. It does take a little more training to avoid trapping the long hose, but overall it has a better success record than the classical octo config.

Again, the issue, I think, is solved with the surrender of the primary and the diver taking personal responsibility for the location and deployment of the secondary. Burdening the stressed dicver with determining where the secondary is located and figuring out how to deploy it is akin to putting the ripcord for your reserve suit in a different random location on each and every jump ... that is to say, "Farm animal stupid!"

 

[roydude]

For the record: I can understand some of these comments if aimed at PADI, but BSAC is a club and tends to make very few decisions based on financial gain (it's something the members of BSAC are pretty proud of). Also, BSAC students aren't churned out in 20 hours, but are released into the world when the instructor is convinced they're ready. If that takes a month or a year it makes no difference to the instructor or BSAC.

... just for the record

 

[Scott L]

For the record: I can understand some of these comments if aimed at PADI, but BSAC is a club and tends to make very few decisions based on financial gain (it's something the members of BSAC are pretty proud of). Also, BSAC students aren't churned out in 20 hours, but are released into the world when the instructor is convinced they're ready. If that takes a month or a year it makes no difference to the instructor or BSAC.

... just for the record

So, another hour devoted to long hose deployment wouldn't make much difference.