Recreational Pony Bottles, completely unnecessary? Why or why not?

[BoltSnap]

You are probably talking about several decades ago, when UHMS study found that CESA was the part of training most likely to lead to a fatality. As a result of that study, a number of changes were made to the CESA and especially its training. The biggest problem was the old requirement that the student take the regulator out of the mouth during the ascent, supposedly proving that they were not inhaling. This led to drownings when they did inhale. Current instructions emphasize retaining the regulator in the mouth.

In my experience, this hasn't been the case. I went through the NAUI "Basic" training course in 1984 and I was always taught to retain the second stage and to exhale with attempts to inhale to get a breath here and there with air expansion as you ascend. I became an instructor in 1987 and never heard of any special problems with CESA training. The only skill that was an issue and was debated and eventually eliminated was "Buddy Breathing" using one second stage between the two divers when sharing air in an OOA situation. There were reported a number of fatalities due to drowning while attempting to buddy breath.

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

In my 50 years of diving there are MANY emergency skills that I learned and/or taught but never needed any of them in real situation. I still practice them and teach them. What may not happen to you, it may happen to many others. Also, some of the skills taught in a course are confidence builders.

In my experience, this hasn't been the case. I went through the NAUI "Basic" training course in 1984 and I was always taught to retain the second stage and to exhale with attempts to inhale to get a breath here and there with air expansion as you ascend. I became an instructor in 1987 and never heard of any special problems with CESA training. The only skill that was an issue and was debated and eventually eliminated was "Buddy Breathing" using one second stage between the two divers when sharing air in an OOA situation. There were reported a number of fatalities due to drowning while attempting to buddy breath.

2021-1984 = 37.

Math isn't your forte, is it Burhan?

 

[BoltSnap]

2021-1984 = 37.

Math isn't your forte, is it Burhan?

2021 - 1971 = 50 years. 1984 is the year I got NAUI certified in the US but not when I started diving in Libya and trained by a BSAC professional.

 

[Celt]

I made an emergency assent from 120 feet in a wet suit , no BCD and wearing twin steel 12 ltr. Donated my reg. to an OOA diver and couldn’t get it back. I got a breath from his reg. on the way up.

 

[MichaelMc]

I made an emergency assent from 120 feet in a wet suit , no BCD and wearing twin steel 12 ltr. Donated my reg. to an OOA diver and couldn’t get it back. I got a breath from his reg. on the way up.

Imagine if you had had a pony. You could have breathed off of it really easily and with much less drama.

Why did you have only one second stage, was this a while ago? And how good was your pre-dive evaluation of how useful their responses would be in an incident?

 

[scubaozy]

Imagine if you had had a pony. You could have breathed off of it really easily and with much less drama.

Why did you have only one second stage, was this a while ago? And how good was your pre-dive evaluation of how useful their responses would be in an incident?

I take it from the description that this happened in the days ponyzaurus were roaming the earth so they did not have alternate air source of any type.

 

[Celt]

Imagine if you had had a pony. You could have breathed off of it really easily and with much less drama.

Why did you have only one second stage, was this a while ago? And how good was your pre-dive evaluation of how useful their responses would be in an incident?

I had twins with one reg. never used an octo. A diver came to me OOA. My standby was on the surface.

 

[Wibble]

And how good was your pre-dive evaluation of how useful their responses would be in an incident?

Aren’t you supposed to offer assistance to anyone that needs it?

Obviously nowadays contemporary equipment is considerably improved since the days of yore. Two second stages for a start, not to mention the SPG. Training too is, to some degree, more cautious. The advent of a dive leader (a.k.a. DiveMASTER) to herd novices around underwater should mitigate some risk.

Novices do need to learn how to dive post-training. Just like when you’ve passed your driving test, you actually learn to drive when you realise your actions have consequences. Novices need the space to develop. They need a degree of monitoring and mentoring to be safe, difficult in a commercially driven diving industry addicted to selling packaged 'courses' rather than mentoring. Non-profit clubs like BSAC are probably much better in this respect.

Where we dive and what we dive on has a big bearing on the type of equipment we take. I can't remember the last time I saw someone diving a single with no secondary gas. This is largely due to the depths, towards the top (bottom?) of the recreational range, but also that these people tend to be more experienced and value self-sufficiency as a high priority.

 

[scubaozy]

DAN SA produces pretty nice content. Recent one mentions Swiss cheese model on how accidents happen. Even final event seems that you run out of air, there are so many independent conditions have to be met before it becomes a real incident. We humans usually react to that 1 final condition. So in other words, we have poor base diving skills, we make simple mistakes often but usually we ignore them due lack of negative outcome but once several smaller mistakes come into 1 severe incident, we blame it to last 1 incident thus we focus on to the final event.
In another older DAN fatality related content, presenter gives example of how a not correctly secured tank band (triggering event) escalating to emergency ascents and double fatalities.
Bottom line is the incidents will occur in a very random manner. While you are feeling prepared that you have a pony and you practiced it, this is just the tip of the iceberg, you are prepared for a very limited scenario and focusing on that just 1 event. I think this could be exactly what I see in bsac incident reports, not much detectable increase of safety despite pony is in the picture.
Here are the content I mentioned:

 

[Wibble]

The well known "incident pit" isn’t just confined to diving. Stupid, almost inconsequential errors lead to other errors which escalates into a full-on life-threatening emergency. Most rescues at sea have this pattern.