Running out of air- a perspective

[Osric]

There is a lot wrong with the mathematics/statistics in the article. The author needs to redo it to get people to focus on the interesting issue, which is "how can we reduce SCUBA fatalities?"

Someone has already hit on it earlier in the thread: if we want to reduce fatalities we must practice our skills repeatedly. I used to be a manual transmission maniac. I'd tell all my friends how I loved manual, because I had more control; I could brake without brakes, I could downshift, I could do all these things they couldn't do in an automatic. A few years later I drove a series of cars around a torturous test track. The manual transmission car was impossible to control because I hadn't sharpened my skills repeatedly. As a result all that extra flexibility got me was trouble, because there was more to manage in the heat of the moment. I drive an automatic now. It's boring, but it's safer.

OOA triggering a series of events leading to a fatality is the same thing: the diver's recovery skills aren't sharp enough. This could be because the divers don't have enough situational awareness; because they don't keep enough reserve for their buddy; because they panic due to lack of training. I believe the #1 cause of fatalities is lack of situational awareness leading to loss of the buddy.

Diving statistics show that divers die at a rate of about 15-30 deaths per 100,000 divers, or about 3 deaths per 100,000 dives. 41% of those are triggered by OOA situations. On the other hand, I've been on just a handful of dives and have seen OOA or LOA situations on as many as 1/10 dives. So actually while OOA frequently occurs in cases of fatility, it is also often handled just fine. Something else must be going on.

The more relevant stat is that 86% of dive fatalities occur to a diver who is alone. Sure, running out of air is inexcusable. But where's the buddy? My casual observation suggests that OOA happens often, but in the presence of other aware divers is not fatal. The statistics suggest to me that lack of awareness is the dominant factor in diving death.

Superior training, in the form of repeated practice on actual dives, and rigid adherence to the dive plan is, in my view, the required remedy.

Osric

P.S. Reference for statistics: http://www.divingmedicine.info/divingmedicine/Welcome_files/Ch 34 09.pdf

 

[DevonDiver]

As I said before... the training given doesn't match the dives undertaken. Any mis-match between training and requirement fails to mitigate risk.

You can increase the training...or expect divers to practice post-course OR you can limit your diving appropriate to the training you recieved (in line with agency recommendations).

OW course is what it is. What it is NOT...is a license for solo diving, overhead diving, deep diving etc

 

[merxlin]

.............The more relevant stat is that 86% of dive fatalities occur to a diver who is alone. Sure, running out of air is inexcusable. But where's the buddy? My casual observation suggests that OOA happens often, but in the presence of other aware divers is not fatal. The statistics suggest to me that lack of awareness is the dominant factor in diving death.................
Osric

P.S. Reference for statistics: http://www.divingmedicine.info/divingmedicine/Welcome_files/Ch 34 09.pdf

I think your quoted stat is a bit misleading. It implies all these divers were diving solo. They list several reasons in the citation for why the deceased diver was alone at the time of death. From the report you cite:

In spite of this, only 14% of divers who perished still had their buddy with them, and in the Hawaiian series it was 19%. In 33% of the ANZ cases, the deceased diver either dived alone or voluntarily separated from his buddy beforehand, 25% left their buddy after a problem developed, and 20% became separated by the problem. Of those who started diving with a buddy in the DAN series, 57% were separated at the time of death. A common cause of separation was one diver (the subsequent casualty) having inadequate air, OOA or LOA. In this case, the buddy often continued the dive alone,

 

[Osric]

I think your quoted stat is a bit misleading. It implies all these divers were diving solo. They list several reasons in the citation for why the deceased diver was alone at the time of death. From the report you cite:

Oh! That wasn't my intention at all. I was trying to say that I think the major cause of death is poor buddy skills. Thanks for clarifying.

Osric

 

[vladimir]

First of all, the logic here doesn't work for me.

Yes, the logic got a little bit murky there when he was comparing statistics.

It was not until my Fundies class that I learn the gas on my back is a team resource. In addition to carrying gas for me, I was also carrying gas for my buddy/buddies in my tank(s).

If I had to turn the dive at the deepest portion of the dive because my buddy/buddies had a gas failure, do I have enough gas to get my buddy/buddies and I back to the boat/shore safely while doing all our required stops? They do not teach that in OW training.

Team gas planning makes a lot of sense, no doubt, but how many out-of-air deaths occur because a buddy team runs out of air? I guess that most of these deaths occured because the team couldn't manage an orderly air share, or because the team was no longer intact. While clearly not the optimal strategy, I bet if these divers had a pre-planned turn pressure and abided by it (with no rockbottom calculation, but reserving the 500 psi they were probably taught), stayed with their buddies, and occasionally practiced an air-share, that most of these deaths would have been prevented.

 

[Belce]

Early in my diving I ran out of air. It was the first of two dives that day for me. Mainly happened because when I got low on air, getting back to the line up didn't happen as quickly as would have been hoped. Being new to this when I saw the guage go below 500 I became concerned and started being anxious and working harder. I still kept my buddy informed of my gas situation and when it went empty I shared air with him and ascended the line up to the boat. It was an emergency situation that we dealt with rationally and calmly that was ended successfully. The best laid plans of mice and men

Having experienced this I can say with some authority it is something to avoid. It stressed the importance of diving with a buddy and while the line up is nice, going up when you have the air up for it only left is the better choice.

Running out of air is stupid and careless, but it does not indicate stupidity of the individual. While best to be avoided it was for me a great learning moment. And I really enjoyed that 2nd dive that day too.

To any one that has run out of air underwater reading this like me you made mistakes that led to that situation, but because you are here now reading this you managed to turn the corner soon after. While some would suggest you are stupid to have run out of air, you clearly stopped being stupid shortly after in that event. I hope that it was a learning event for you.

 

[Garrobo]

I solved the OOA problem on my first dive. I immedately decided to treat each dive as a solo dive and then decided that I would head for the surface/safety stop on any dive that had depleted my air supply down to 1000psi, period. Problem solved. And yes, as stated before, I think that anyone who runs out of air should be called 'stupid' if not 'dead'.

 

[Tortuga68]

If I had to turn the dive at the deepest portion of the dive because my buddy/buddies had a gas failure, do I have enough gas to get my buddy/buddies and I back to the boat/shore safely while doing all our required stops? They do not teach that in OW training.

If you're an OW diver, you shouldn't have any required stops. You don't need to get back to the boat/shore, just to the surface. Tank volume aside, 50 bar should be more than enough to get you & your buddy from 18m to the surface in an OW dive if you follow the procedures you were taught. So while I agree that gas planning is important for more advanced diving, I don't think it's a major issue in preventing OW OOA deaths (and yes I know the article isn't just talking about OW)

Specifically, if out-of-air is a relatively rare occurrence, the fact that it produces a significant percentage of the fatalities likely means that running out of air is far more dangerous behavior than we think it is

No **** - you can't breath water


Having said that, I do agree that there's an aura of 'acceptability' - perhaps even inevitability - about going OOA in some of the basic training that coud be better addressed. Leaving aside the relatively rare occurences of equipment failure or entanglement - both of which should be resolved by the buddy system and/or redundant gear - OOA should never happen

 

[drbill]

I have had several OOA situations in my 50 years of diving. The first was due to the absence of SPGs on our tanks back in the 60s and a failure of the fill crew to follow procedures properly. The second was due to a clogged dip tube in my tank and my failure to carry my pony bottle as a solo diver. The others (three?) were intentional OOA situations where I was determined to get as much footage of a subject in shallow water (~20 ft) as I could before surfacing.

Having dived as long as I have, with the same gear configuration the past 10 years, I have a pretty good understanding of how much air I need to do a specific profile (mine are often ones I've done many times over). I can often time the length of my dive based on those profiles.

OW diver training should include methods to recover from an OOA situation. They always have and there will always be divers who run OOA because they haven't incorporated regular checks into their dives. I see such situations with some frequency at our local dive park.

Gas management is probably beyond the current OW training level. When I was finally certified in the 60s, "OW" training was a three week course plus two weekends. The training was much more complete then... essentially covering OW, AOW and rescue. Such a course today would probably run over $1,000 and greatly limit the number of people getting certified.

I remember my early days of diving Catalina. I was very conscious of the need to check my SPG (once we finally started using them). Back in the early part of that period it was all J-valves and my dives were generally much shallower than they were once I started using an SPG.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

Oh! That wasn't my intention at all. I was trying to say that I think the major cause of death is poor buddy skills. Thanks for clarifying.

Osric

Now we're drilling down into that "rest of the story" I mentioned earlier.

Everybody's OW class teaches its students that it's important to dive with a buddy ... but only a handful teach the skills to do it properly, or emphasize the importance of keeping the buddy team together. Classes are taught in a way that people primarily pay attention to the instructor or DM, and therefore don't develop the habit of paying attention to their dive buddy ... if they even have one. Then they go on vacation and dive as a group ... once again paying attention to the dive guide more than their buddy ... if they pay attention to anyone at all.

These habits are inherent in the way we train divers, and in the way most dive operations around the world run their business ... we don't emphasize the importance of buddy skills, we just tell divers they should have a buddy. And so the techniques of diving together never really get developed.

The results are inevitable, and we see them commonly ... divers who don't stick together descending a downline, or who wander around taking pictures without ever looking to see where their buddy is. Divers who "lead/follow" ... often with the dominant diver hovering protectively behind and above their dive buddy (right where the person in front has to struggle the hardest to keep track of them). We see it in the decision-making that goes into a choice for two divers to separate when one runs low on air, so as not to "ruin the good time" of the diver who still has plenty. We see it in the diver whose first reaction to any problem isn't to go to his dive buddy, but to head for the surface. These are the responses that lead to the "diver died alone" statistic ... far more so than running out of air ... because these divers don't have the tools to make good decisions, even when the solution to their problem is completely within their physical capability.

I'm convinced that what leads to most accidents isn't a lack of skill ... it's a lack of good decision-making. Divers develop habits based on what works for them, and often those habits assume that nothing will go wrong ... so when it does, they're abruptly faced with a circumstance they're not mentally prepared to deal with. That path leads to panic ... because panic is the mind's response to being faced with a situation for which you see no solution.

And this leads us back to training. If we're going to promote a buddy system, we need to support it with a curriculum that trains the diver how to be a good dive buddy, how to think about the dive as "our" dive, rather than "my" dive. The prevalence of the latter mentality leads to all manner of issues that, more often than not, will result in divers suddenly finding themselves alone even though they had planned and begun their dive with a buddy. It's these symptoms that caused me to write this article ... in an attempt to get divers thinking about how to dive with a buddy, and how to BE a buddy. These skills are not hard to learn, they're not hard to teach, and they're not hard to integrate into your diving routine ... you just have to decide that they matter ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)