The Down Current Killer

[gkwalt]

In every OW course the student must learn 2 skills relevant to this thread. Always dive with a buddy and air sharing in case of an OOA situation. As an instructor, I make sure my students learn these "valuable lessons". We teach buddy diving so a diver can have someone there to help them if everything goes south. Perhaps the emphasis on situational awareness, redundancy, dive planning and self sufficiency would minimize the reliance on a buddy. When it hits the fan for your buddy, how many divers are willing to help their buddy at the cost of never seeing their kids again. Besides, that buddy probably got in trouble in the first place through a preventable problem.
In regards to OOA emergencies: shouldn't the emphasis in training be on gas management and dive planning instead of what do you do when you run out of air? Is there any rational reason that a diver should face an OOA situation? I agree, the situation in the thread may be an exceptional time that a diver could be OOA. But knowledge of the dive site and skills to handle a down current may have prevented this.
I am a dinosaur. I was brought up on Navy dive tables and horsecollar BC's. But humans weren't meant to be underwater. I love diving and I want everybody whose interested to get the same rush I get from being underwater. The times they are a changing.

 

[Hatul]

In every OW course the student must learn 2 skills relevant to this thread. Always dive with a buddy and air sharing in case of an OOA situation. As an instructor, I make sure my students learn these "valuable lessons". We teach buddy diving so a diver can have someone there to help them if everything goes south. Perhaps the emphasis on situational awareness, redundancy, dive planning and self sufficiency would minimize the reliance on a buddy. When it hits the fan for your buddy, how many divers are willing to help their buddy at the cost of never seeing their kids again. Besides, that buddy probably got in trouble in the first place through a preventable problem.
In regards to OOA emergencies: shouldn't the emphasis in training be on gas management and dive planning instead of what do you do when you run out of air? Is there any rational reason that a diver should face an OOA situation? I agree, the situation in the thread may be an exceptional time that a diver could be OOA. But knowledge of the dive site and skills to handle a down current may have prevented this.
I am a dinosaur. I was brought up on Navy dive tables and horsecollar BC's. But humans weren't meant to be underwater. I love diving and I want everybody whose interested to get the same rush I get from being underwater. The times they are a changing.

I'm not sure how a buddy can help you in a downdraft. You'd both be in trouble and have the same problem, and having your buddy to worry about as well can make things worse. What do you do if you get yourself out of the downdraft and your buddy does not? A buddy can be useful if one has a problem and the other does not.

 

[Mike]

I guess statistics really are hard to understand -- or just easy for you to misrepresent. When you find a way to compare properly trained and equipped solo divers' fatality rates with those for all buddy divers (you get the ones who weren't following the buddy rules as well as you think they should have been, sorry, they don't belong with the solo divers as poor buddy skills/ease of buddy separation is a weakness inherent in the buddy system), please let us all know.

A properly trained solo diver with redundant air, is much different than a recreational diver lacking the additional training of a solo diver and lacking the redundant air supply. The statistics are in regard to the latter. If you're a properly trained solo diver you've taken additional steps to protect your life and you've also had the mental conversations with yourself as to the additional risks you are accepting and are not part of this conversation. None of that is typical of the typical recreational diver who is blissfully unaware of how easily their life can be snuffed out due to their back up gas is nowhere to be found on a dive when their typical buddy dive protocol is 'we are diving in the same ocean' see you down there a couple of times and then back on the boat.

---------- Post added October 18th, 2013 at 08:12 AM ----------

I'm not sure how a buddy can help you in a downdraft. You'd both be in trouble and have the same problem, and having your buddy to worry about as well can make things worse. What do you do if you get yourself out of the downdraft and your buddy does not? A buddy can be useful if one has a problem and the other does not.

Very true, The issue is that since so many times one of these divers disappear. They disappear because because their buddy was not in contact with them and their is no witness to what happened, their death is now almost 100% speculation and the down current looks like a more plausible cause than the reality that they probably just went OOA, and never had the chance of the OOA situation not killing them by a simple passing of a spare reg by their buddy. The discussion turns to how deadly a down current can be, since this diver disappeared in one, instead of the reality that statistically they probably died from a simple error that could have been solved by a dive partner carrying their spare air supply, cutting them lose from an entanglement or getting help. Instead it's a disapperance and speculation with grasphing for a cause that is more dramatic yet statistically virtually non-existant.

 

[Dr. Lecter]

A properly trained solo diver with redundant air, is much different than a recreational diver lacking the additional training of a solo diver and lacking the redundant air supply. The statistics are in regard to the latter. If you're a properly trained solo diver you've taken additional steps to protect your life and you've also had the mental conversations with yourself as to the additional risks you are accepting and are not part of this conversation. None of that is typical of the typical recreational diver who is blissfully unaware of how easily their life can be snuffed out due to their back up gas is nowhere to be found on a dive when their typical buddy dive protocol is 'we are diving in the same ocean' see you down there a couple of times and then back on the boat.

On this, we can agree. If people want to go same ocean buddy/solo while travel diving, they should at least bring (among other things) rigging and a reg for slinging a rental tank. Going solo diving without a truly redundant gas supply is just stupid.