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

[Nemrod]

The difficulty of buddy breathing is way over stated. I actually have done it for real. Circa 1979 maybe it was 80, don't recall exactly, with my new wife. Long story, no need to get into it. Just that we did BB and she was a freshly minted YMCA diver. Her course stressed buddy breathing and we practiced it some at first. I was the OOA diver. We were around 90 feet give or take. We buddy breathed up to about 60 feet or so at which point I declined further breaths and simply made a direct ascent keeping her in my FOV the whole time should she need me and rejoined on the surface (drift diving out of Ft. Lauderdale). I was not stressed, neither was she. We still practice hand offs and of course, deploying our octopus seconds.

It is pretty important, especially if you buddy with a diver you are not familiar with to learn their equipment and I always demo my means of sharing air to my buddy and discuss it, which is pretty conventional and similar to what at least 90% (per my observations probably closer to 99%) of the diving world. I do have a long hose on one of my regulator rigs. Works fine too.

In my quest to reduce travel weight, the long hose on that rig may have to go, too heavy and the long Miflex hoses seem to tangle and droop all over so not really a solution.

N

 

[roydude]

mmm ... feels like we're getting off course here somewhat. The BB only popped up because it was suggested that it could've been used in a real-life OOA incident that escalated due to the octopus being 'lost'. I don't think anyone here would agree to a plan for alternate air based on the fact that 'if it gets lost we can always just buddy breathe'. It's a final 'all else fails' plan for air.

 

[Scott L]

In my quest to reduce travel weight, the long hose on that rig may have to go, too heavy and the long Miflex hoses seem to tangle and droop all over so not really a solution.

Put in your carry on bag along with your regs, computers and back plate, if applicable.

 

[Diver0001]

I don't think anyone here would agree to a plan for alternate air based on the fact that 'if it gets lost we can always just buddy breathe'.

Agreed

It's a final 'all else fails' plan for air.

Don't agree with that.

Now that BB has been taken out of the curriculum it's not the last resort. It's a total non-starter. I know what the book says but the last resort, in my mind, is now the CESA (or even a positive ascent if you're somehow unable to perform a CESA).

The problem is that BB, while fairly simple in itself, is not something you want to "learn" how to do when you're in the middle of an emergency. That would be like doing CPR for the very first time on someone having a real heart attack.... only worse because two people trying to BB with no prior experience or training are somewhat more likely to make 2 victims out of the emergency instead of 1.

I personally think that Dan is right about this. As much as I hate to admit it, I think that removing BB from the system is a direct result of agencies recognizing that basic OW divers lack an acceptable level of comfort to perform the skill adequately under stress.... and instead of dealing with the "comfort zone" issue, they took BB out of the system instead.

I think that was a mistake. a poorly motivated BIG mistake.

R..

 

[rhwestfall]

a.k.a. - "watered it down", "dumbed it down", etc......

---------- Post Merged at 07:22 PM ---------- Previous Post was at 07:14 PM ----------

fftopic:

FWIW - traversing a pool 10 times, no surfacing, no touching bottom, swimming through hoops, and all with our masks off (yes, up hill both ways, barefoot, in the snow, in the dark.....) in a BB drill seemed to produce some competent divers....

No, cant likely pull that off in a weekend cert....

:focus:

okay, I feel "better" now.... sorry....

 

[boulderjohn]

During the days that buddy breathing was regularly taught, there was a very extensive Australian study on dive deaths (the ANZ series of diving fatalities). It was quite thorough, breaking down the causes of deaths as much as possible. I fund this nice summary of that study, the DAN studies, and the NUADC studies. One of the reasons for fatalities was failures related to buddy breathing. Here is that part of the summary:

4% of fatalities were associated with failed buddy breathing. In a study of failed buddy breathing conducted by NUADC, more than half were attempted at depths greater than 20 metres. In 29% the victim's mask was displaced and the catastrophe of air embolism occurred in 12.5% of cases.

One in 8 victims refused to return the demand valve, presumably to the righteous indignation of the donor. In one reported instance, knives were drawn to settle the dispute! Nevertheless, donating a regulator rarely results in the donor becoming the victim.​

 

[Diver0001]

a.k.a. - "watered it down", "dumbed it down", etc......

Well.... yeah. I'm afraid there is no other possible conclusion. But if my thinking is right about it then the "dumbing down" isn't removal of BB. That's just a symptom. The real "dumbing down" would have to be neglecting basic comfort which leads them to the conclusion that divers should probably not try to buddy breathe.

In fact (making a link to another discussion I'm involved in), courses like DIR-F are also a direct response to this. In main lines, DIR-F is nothing more than a course in buoyancy control, the buddy system with respect to emergency protocols and gear familiarity. These are all things that everyone SHOULD have had in OW... but obviously the course falls so short of giving people the comfort that they're seeking that they'll take an additional course for about the same price they paid for OW (or more in some cases) in order to have the bar set to where they emotionally believe it should have been set to begin with....

*sigh

R..

 

[Thalassamania]

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

But there isn't enough time to teach the new divers to BB or deploy and recover a long hose?

Agreed


Don't agree with that.

Now that BB has been taken out of the curriculum it's not the last resort. It's a total non-starter. I know what the book says but the last resort, in my mind, is now the CESA (or even a positive ascent if you're somehow unable to perform a CESA).

The problem is that BB, while fairly simple in itself, is not something you want to "learn" how to do when you're in the middle of an emergency. That would be like doing CPR for the very first time on someone having a real heart attack.... only worse because two people trying to BB with no prior experience or training are somewhat more likely to make 2 victims out of the emergency instead of 1.

I personally think that Dan is right about this. As much as I hate to admit it, I think that removing BB from the system is a direct result of agencies recognizing that basic OW divers lack an acceptable level of comfort to perform the skill adequately under stress.... and instead of dealing with the "comfort zone" issue, they took BB out of the system instead.

I think that was a mistake. a poorly motivated BIG mistake.

R..

I agree completely.

a.k.a. - "watered it down", "dumbed it down", etc......

---------- Post Merged at 07:22 PM ---------- Previous Post was at 07:14 PM ----------

fftopic:

FWIW - traversing a pool 10 times, no surfacing, no touching bottom, swimming through hoops, and all with our masks off (yes, up hill both ways, barefoot, in the snow, in the dark.....) in a BB drill seemed to produce some competent divers....

No, cant likely pull that off in a weekend cert....

:focus:

okay, I feel "better" now.... sorry....

Good translation. I agree completely.

During the days that buddy breathing was regularly taught, there was a very extensive Australian study on dive deaths (the ANZ series of diving fatalities). It was quite thorough, breaking down the causes of deaths as much as possible. I fund this nice summary of that study, the DAN studies, and the NUADC studies. One of the reasons for fatalities was failures related to buddy breathing. Here is that part of the summary:

4% of fatalities were associated with failed buddy breathing. In a study of failed buddy breathing conducted by NUADC, more than half were attempted at depths greater than 20 metres. In 29% the victim's mask was displaced and the catastrophe of air embolism occurred in 12.5% of cases.

One in 8 victims refused to return the demand valve, presumably to the righteous indignation of the donor. In one reported instance, knives were drawn to settle the dispute! Nevertheless, donating a regulator rarely results in the donor becoming the victim.
​

John, as usual the data set needs to be split and divers "pre-padification" and "post-padification" of the industry need to be compared. My memory of the details of data is that there was a change over time, with the percentage of BB incidents starting to rise in the late 1970s early 1980s. I have serious doubts about "knives were drawn to settle the dispute." I rather doubt that a diver without air would have enough self control to draw a knife, they'd claw for the surface.

The diving acumen of the author of the summary is, I fear, displayed here (in bold):

4% of fatalities were associated with failed buddy breathing. In a study of failed buddy breathing conducted by NUADC, more than half were attempted at depths greater than 20 metres. In 29% the victim's mask was displaced and the catastrophe of air embolism occurred in 12.5% of cases.

One in 8 victims refused to return the demand valve, presumably to the righteous indignation of the donor. In one reported instance, knives were drawn to settle the dispute! Nevertheless, donating a regulator rarely results in the donor becoming the victim.

The use of an octopus rig or (more sensibly) a complete separate emergency air supply (e.g. "Spare Air") would appear to be a more satisfactory alternative, having the added advantage of providing a spare regulator for the owner in the (not so rare) event of a failure of the primary air supply.

Can we do poodle vests and fins next? Please, please, please.

 

[roydude]

Now that BB has been taken out of the curriculum it's not the last resort. It's a total non-starter. I know what the book says but the last resort, in my mind, is now the CESA (or even a positive ascent if you're somehow unable to perform a CESA).

Okay sorry, that wasn't put well - what I was meaning was that it was the last resort for air (and I meant as in 'for getting some air' as opposed to a CESA). A misunderstanding which boils down to: I'm agreeing with you there.

But there isn't enough time to teach the new divers to BB or deploy and recover a long hose?

Well, um ... when major scuba agencies start asking me for my opinion on curriculum changes I'll be sure to raise all kinds of personal suggestions, but until then ...

Clearly time isn't the issue - they removed it for other reasons.

I was taught BB and don't remember it being such a big stress. In my experience I often see students (even pretty nervous ones) coping without a regulator for about the same length of time when removing and recovering a regulator - BB's actually less stressful than that since the reg's not 'missing' and needing to be recovered from somewhere out of sight while they're without it.
I doubt it would be more stressful than, say, swimming without a mask, or mask removal and replace (in cold water especially) which seem to generally be the most 'out of comfot zone' to new divers in my experience, so it does seem like an odd thing to pull out.
My guess is that the agencies that decided to drop BB figured they were buying into the 'two regs' philosophy 100% and assume that people would be disciplined enough to always make sure that option was going to work correctly (and yes, that seems like a naive assumption, but that'd be my guess). I doubt such a relatively straightforward skill was dropped because it was causing too much of a drop in revenue. Do you know anyone who failed to qualify with an agency and just gave up on the whole idea because they couldn't handle a BB drill?

All this guesswork would be better handled by a Course Director or wotnot who knows for sure what the reasoning behind dropping this was. Are there any on here we can drag into this conversation for a definitive answer?

In the meantime ... long octopuses tied in a knot? Anyone?

 

[TSandM]

I believe there was a time when people used the long hose on a regulator they did not breathe, but intended to donate. The hose was doubled over and bungied to the tank. It was not a good solution, because it had some of the shortcomings of the "traditional" octo -- the donor had to FIND the regulator; he had to be able to get it free, and if one practiced the drill, the long hose had to be refolded and restowed by the buddy, because the diver couldn't do it himself.

The wrapped Hog loop solves those issues. The hose length is nicely used in the wrapping; the regulator is immediately available, since the donor is breathing it, and if you want to practice the drill, it is absolutely trivial to restow.

I would never advocate a long hose on a backup regulator. Why? The long hose on the primary works so well, and the backup is for the diver's own use.