Scuba diver dies after being found floating at Kurnell, NSW, Australia

[S_Brown]

So what was your response? Are you assuming that all people would respond as you did?

I have never accidentally run out of air on scuba. But I have managed to get entangled a couple times while free diving. I assessed the situation and worked my way free.

It's not the response I'm speaking of so much as what it actually feels like. A lot of people make the wrong assumptions about it. Think about it, what is the last thing you do before you try to inhale and can't? You definitely don't have a lungful of air to work with like you would on a breath-hold dive and you can't compare it to a breath-hold dive. Your lungs are empty, because you just exhaled. You do NOT have a lot of time to fool around. for the record, I never assume anything..... .

Running out of air is sort of like choking on a piece of food.....you absolutely cannot draw a breath. You don't get a chance to fill your lungs and then hold your breath while you assess and fix. You have NO air.... not in your tank and not in your lungs. You better have an instant fix, because you only have 20 or 30 seconds AT BEST.....at least that was my experience......twice.

 

[Diver0001]

So what was your response? Are you assuming that all people would respond as you did?

I have never accidentally run out of air on scuba. But I have managed to get entangled a couple times while free diving. I assessed the situation and worked my way free.

I know from teaching that people have vastly different responses to stress. Some people can delay panic to an amazing degree and some people will panic from very little. It's trainable and with experience the lines move but I'm absolutely convinced that with very few exceptions everyone has a breaking point.

S_Brown and awap seem to have different limits, which sounds normal to me although I don't know how much we can assume about Quero by considering our own limits.

R..

 

[Slamfire]

You definitely don't have a lungful of air to work with like you would on a breath-hold dive and you can't compare it to a breath-hold dive. Your lungs are empty, because you just exhaled.

Your ability to solve problems while breath holding is not contingent on whether you have your lungs full or not. You just exhaled and your blood is still fully oxygenated. It might feel worse, but you can still operate for quite a while.

You do NOT have a lot of time to fool around. for the record, I never assume anything.....

Exactly. And knee jerk, panicked reactions are some of the best ways to waste time. When you want endurance, you don't go out full throttle. Reduce your heartbeat, establish a rhythm and a cadence of purposeful and efficient movements/actions.

Running out of air is sort of like choking on a piece of food.....you absolutely cannot draw a breath. You don't get a chance to fill your lungs and then hold your breath while you assess and fix. You have NO air.... not in your tank and not in your lungs. You better have an instant fix, because you only have 20 or 30 seconds AT BEST.....at least that was my experience......twice.

20 or 30 secs to what? Did you go 31 secs and on that 31st second something horrible happened? Some of the MDs here can correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it considered that normal humans can go about 5 mins without breathing before brain damage starts to happen? Try it in a pool or in the bathtub. Measure yourself. Breathing normally and without previous hyperventilation put your face in the water just after exhalation. See if you can go past 30 secs. Ahhh, you say, but this is not an emergency, there is no fear and no panic. EXACTLY my point, if you get yourself into the right headspace you will be a much more efficient operator under dire circumstances.

 

[S_Brown]

I know from teaching that people have vastly different responses to stress. Some people can delay panic to an amazing degree and some people will panic from very little. It's trainable and with experience the lines move but I'm absolutely convinced that with very few exceptions everyone has a breaking point.

S_Brown and awap seem to have different limits, which sounds normal to me although I don't know how much we can assume about Quero by considering our own limits.

R..

I am not talking about stress or how stress affects panic limits.

What I am talking about is the amount of air you have in your lungs when you realize you just ran out of air and the correlation between the amount of air actually in your lungs as it relates to how much time you have to solve your problem.

My statement relates directly to slamfire's description of what he would like to believe Quero's last moments were like. I was merely clarifying that you do not have a big lungful of air to work with.
In neither of my situations did I panic, in fact I resolved complicated problems and came back alive. Both time were at night in blackwater in river current during recovery operations.

I myself am able to swim 90-100 feet underwater on a single breath, with both lungs full of fresh air. I couldn't do the same with both lungs empty.

 

[nimoh]

I have never run out of gas on a dive accidentally, so I can't accurately assess how I would manage that situation, however, I have run out on purpose and I was able to get quite a few hard breaths from my reg before it actually went dead.

Again, it wasn't stressful, since I was expecting it and had my stage reg ready to go. Also, it was in 5 feet of water, so I would expect less breaths at depth but my point is that out of air isn't instantaneous, there are indications other than checking your SPG.

I have a hard time believing that Quero when out of air in 10 feet of water and couldn't get to the surface. I'm sure there were other factors. It is even possible that out of air happened after the incident and she just breathed down the remaining gas while unconscious on the bottom.

 

[Diver0001]

I am not talking about stress or how stress affects panic limits.

What I am talking about is the amount of air you have in your lungs when you realize you just ran out of air and the correlation between the amount of air actually in your lungs as it relates to how much time you have to solve your problem.

My statement relates directly to slamfire's description of what he would like to believe Quero's last moments were like. I was merely clarifying that you do not have a big lungful of air to work with.
In neither of my situations did I panic, in fact I resolved complicated problems and came back alive. Both time were at night in blackwater in river current during recovery operations.

I myself am able to swim 90-100 feet underwater on a single breath, with both lungs full of fresh air. I couldn't do the same with both lungs empty.

I see.

I've never run out of air unexpectedly during a dive but I have breathed a tank to empty on purpose to see what it would be like. I could see it coming but notwithstanding that it seemed to me that you'd have at least 3 good breaths and maybe a minute or more to deal with it before it became critical to the point of being life threatening.

I don't have the benefit of your experience but it would seem odd to me to be OOA because of an empty tank and have empty lungs. When the regulator stiffens up I would probably (I'm pretty sure) have the presence of mind to take a full breath before it was too late...

R..

 

[S_Brown]

Your ability to solve problems while breath holding is not contingent on whether you have your lungs full or not. You just exhaled and your blood is still fully oxygenated. It might feel worse, but you can still operate for quite a while. Exactly. And knee jerk, panicked reactions are some of the best ways to waste time. When you want endurance, you don't go out full throttle. Reduce your heartbeat, establish a rhythm and a cadence of purposeful and efficient movements/actions.

20 or 30 secs to what? Did you go 31 secs and on that 31st second something horrible happened? Some of the MDs here can correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it considered that normal humans can go about 5 mins without breathing before brain damage starts to happen? Try it in a pool or in the bathtub. Measure yourself. Breathing normally and without previous hyperventilation put your face in the water just after exhalation. See if you can go past 30 secs. Ahhh, you say, but this is not an emergency, there is no fear and no panic. EXACTLY my point, if you get yourself into the right headspace you will be a much more efficient operator under dire circumstances.

Good luck with that....as a person who already admitted to being able to hold breath until you pass out, I guess that makes you the authority on uncontrollable physical reactions to air deprivation......sorry for stepping on your expert toes.

I have never run out of gas on a dive accidentally, so I can't accurately assess how I would manage that situation, however, I have run out on purpose and I was able to get quite a few hard breaths from my reg before it actually went dead.

Again, it wasn't stressful, since I was expecting it and had my stage reg ready to go. Also, it was in 5 feet of water, so I would expect less breaths at depth but my point is that out of air isn't instantaneous, there are indications other than checking your SPG.

I have a hard time believing that Quero when out of air in 10 feet of water and couldn't get to the surface. I'm sure there were other factors. It is even possible that out of air happened after the incident and she just breathed down the remaining gas while unconscious on the bottom.

I agree that she should've been able to make it to the surface, and maybe she did, but couldn't stay on the surface due to overweighting as previously mentioned.

The hard breathing regulator is an indication....if you recognize it as such....as you do when you are expecting to run out of air. The deeper you are the less breaths you get as warning.

Once again, all I am saying is that until you have actually and truly run out of air unexpectedly, at depth.....you don't know how you will really react. It's easy to armchair quarterback and theorize...... What was that phrase? "You don't know what you don't know"

 

[Slamfire]

I am not talking about stress or how stress affects panic limits.

What I am talking about is the amount of air you have in your lungs when you realize you just ran out of air and the correlation between the amount of air actually in your lungs as it relates to how much time you have to solve your problem.

My statement relates directly to slamfire's description of what he would like to believe Quero's last moments were like. I was merely clarifying that you do not have a big lungful of air to work with.
In neither of my situations did I panic, in fact I resolved complicated problems and came back alive. Both time were at night in blackwater in river current during recovery operations.

I myself am able to swim 90-100 feet underwater on a single breath, with both lungs full of fresh air. I couldn't do the same with both lungs empty.

Your head space plays a much greater roll in your breath hold endurance than having empty or full lungs at the beginning. Take this video where I am filming my 4 year old son as he swims in the pool. All of a sudden he starts heading towards me. I want him to be self reliant in the water, but I do not want to swim away and turn it into a chasing game. So I submerge. The best way to submerge and still keep him in camera is to simply exhale, since I am also on a snorkel with no fins and no wetsuit. I exhale in time stamp 0:32 and come up to breath at 0:55 or 0:56. That's 22 or 23 secs; very close to the max limits you stated for breatholding upon exhalation. I'm certain I could have easily lasted twice as much if I wanted to. When I came up you don't hear me desperately gasping for air, I took some cautious deep breaths initially to fill my lungs enough to blast remainders of water in the snorkel out. But that is it.

[youtubehq]4QCpXeCixOc[/youtubehq]

 

[nimoh]

I agree that she should've been able to make it to the surface, and maybe she did, but couldn't stay on the surface due to overweighting as previously mentioned.

The hard breathing regulator is an indication....if you recognize it as such....as you do when you are expecting to run out of air. The deeper you are the less breaths you get as warning.

Once again, all I am saying is that until you have actually and truly run out of air unexpectedly, at depth.....you don't know how you will really react. It's easy to armchair quarterback and theorize...... What was that phrase? "You don't know what you don't know"

Fair enough, I'll have to take your word for it since I think it is pretty unlikely that I will ever run out of air on a dive.

 

[victorzamora]

S_Brown, I'm not saying everybody would react the way prescribed.....but a veteran diver SHOULD have the presence of mind to keep calm and work through solutions. I HAVE run out of air under water (buddy screwing with me, but I was low so I thought I ran out) and what was discussed was exactly what happened. I exhaled, got VERY little on the inhale until the tank went dry. I checked my octo to see if it was my second stage. I checked my LPI. Nothing on either. I looked down, fumbled with my weights to get them unhooked (new weight belt, first few dives with a crotch strap), and finned it to the surface (~30ft). I started finning to the surface about 15 seconds after sucking my reg dry (according to my buddy's recounting of his actions during my struggle) but felt like an eternity. I was calm, cool, and collected....even though I had empty lungs. Whether your lungs are empty or full, you have some time to play with before your body starts taking over control regardless of what your mind decides. Full lungs will buy you MORE time, sure....but you have time either way. The actions described in the post you disagree with are VERY doable with empty lungs.