Seeking Input on Low Air - No Air Situation

[boulderjohn]

Never the less I still can remember how I felt staring at that guage and knowing I should leave the instructor and the other student and head back. I knew this and yet I stayed where I was, and if something happened I think it would have been my fault, I wasn't tied to my instructor after all.

I guess there are no right answers here, no concrete path to avoid these types of incidents. And I suspect this sort of thing is common, and yet people survive, so how much of an issue is it? Enough not to ignore I think, but maybe I am over reacting some...

This is a wonderful example of the dilemma of the inexperienced diver. I remember the feeling when I gave my DM the mental finger on only my 32nd dive and started an ascent without him. It took a lot of courage for me, supposedly an adult, educated, independent thinker, to override the decision of the DM, who in reality was probably an intern who had been poorly trained and who almost certainly knew less than I did about diving, even though I was a relative newcomer to the sport.

 

[flots am]

In this case, the divers could not do a direct ascent to the surface, because they would have been drifting in current as they ascended. Not only was the boat fixed to the wreck and unable to follow them, they did not have a DSMB, an essential tool for a drifting ascent.

People are frequently unable to make it back to the up-line due to physical or medical problems or simply getting blown off the wreck. There needs to be a workable "oh s***!" plan before anybody gets in the water.

If the entry point must be the exit point, then it's a virtual overhead environment that OW divers are not qualified, equipped or certified to dive safely.

flots.

 

[boulderjohn]

People are frequently unable to make it back to the up-line due to physical or medical problems or simply getting blown off the wreck. There needs to be a workable "oh s***!" plan before anybody gets in the water.

If the entry point must be the exit point, then it's a virtual overhead environment that OW divers are not qualified, equipped or certified to dive safely.

flots.

I agree, and people need the opportunity to train for this eventuality.

 

[xyrandomyx]

I keep going around and around on this, and I just don't feel comfortable with any one answer. As I was formulating a post I remembered one of my first post OW dives, the deep dive from AOW.
Long story short we couldn't find the anchor line and my sac rate finally forced us to make a free ascent. For years I looked back on that dive with fondness, remembering how empowered I felt with that experience.

The real lesson I didn't get until much much later, that even though I was getting low on air and had signaled my instructor as such, we turned late, searched for the line for too long and really it could have ended badly for me. I should not have trusted the instructor, I knew from my OW training (same guy) that I was supposed to be at my 15 foot stop at this pressure but here I was 80 feet down swimming nonchalantly back to where the upline is.

So I admit, what is common sense and a no brainer decision for me now was more conflicting then. Never the less I still can remember how I felt staring at that guage and knowing I should leave the instructor and the other student and head back. I knew this and yet I stayed where I was, and if something happened I think it would have been my fault, I wasn't tied to my instructor after all.

I guess there are no right answers here, no concrete path to avoid these types of incidents. And I suspect this sort of thing is common, and yet people survive, so how much of an issue is it? Enough not to ignore I think, but maybe I am over reacting some...

If something had happened, I wouldn't be so quick to lay all the blame on you. I don't like to absolve someone of responsibility when they're in a position of authority or responsibility.

But, in that situation, the question of where to lay the blame is essentially academic. It really wouldn't matter whose fault I (or anyone else thought it was) -- you would've been the one who paid for the mistake.

Anyway. I don't know what the answer is. The goal, I'd think, would be for new divers to be very clear about what their limits are and very confident of their own knowledge within those limits. How to go about doing that, I don't know. And, being a new diver myself, it's probably not the right time for me to be worrying about educating anyone else.