The straw that broke the divers back.

[idocsteve]

in the vast majority of them better fitness would have helped.

Absolutely true.

The better fit you are, the less difficulty you'll have handling any emergency and during a normal uneventful dive you'll be working well within your physical abilities rather than close to your limits.

Always nice to have a safety margin.

 

[OldNSalty]

Why do you assume that the diver was out of shape? All we know really is that he is dead. He may have been a marathon runner and he is still dead. I agree that you should take care of yourself but in the end, you still die...at least that is what historical evidence has suggested.

 

[HowardE]

Absolutely true.

The better fit you are, the less difficulty you'll have handling any emergency and during a normal uneventful dive you'll be working well within your physical abilities rather than close to your limits.

Always nice to have a safety margin.

What do you base this statement on? In the "VAST MAJORITY" of dive related deaths we can attribute people not being in good shape?

This IS news.

Do you have any statistical data to back this up?

 

[tregrrr]

What do you base this statement on? In the "VAST MAJORITY" of dive related deaths we can attribute people not being in good shape?

This IS news.

Do you have any statistical data to back this up?

oooh stats... did you know that 78.9% of all stats are accurately made up on the spot five out of ten times to a confidence 20%

there are lies, damn lies and statistics

Concrete examples, anecdotal references and firsthand experience, on the other hand can lend much more credence to any argument...(I.M. not so H.O.)

 

[paddler3d]

A 550 under 10 minutes just ain't gonna happen for many folks, regardless of fitness. Especially for those of us that learned to swim at age 52. I'm happy with a 450 under 10. Multiple 25 yards underwater on 1 minute intervals? Ain't gonna happen for most people.

Get real on your recommendations!

Ken

I think 116fire is really on to something.

There have been many studies by the military proving physical fitness and being fit, has a very positive correlation to injury/trauma recovery.

I called my instructor on this one, but the standards for PADI DM are to swim 800M in less that 13 minutes. Not to mention the 1200M snorkel in 15 minutes or the 10 minute water tread.

So 550M in 10 minutes is a breeze.

Swimming underwater would be real easy with fins for 25M, even with less than 1 minute surface intervals.

I think that his recommendations are not something unattainable by most. They should be something that all divers should aspire to.

If you can't do the simple swim, how do you expect to do it with 100+ #'s of crap on?

If not, one can call it 'natural selection'.

 

[paddler3d]

DAN puts out their annual accident report, but it looks at accidents at the macro level.

The American Alpine Club releases an annual report that looks at climbing related accidents and deaths and looks that them on the micro level. It is always a morbid but very inciteful read.

Here is their website:

Accidents In North American Mountaineering - The American Alpine Club

I wish DAN, or someone, would look at diving accidents and deaths at this level.

 

[HowardE]

I wish DAN, or someone, would look at diving accidents and deaths at this level.

The link was broken, but in all honesty - most diving related accidents are ruled drownings. The problem with diving is that people are in the water... Ultimately - they drown. The water does a good job of hiding the evidence.

Let's take an unnamed example here:

Guy dies on the bottom. Guy is brought to the surface. Air in the guys lungs expand, and you have an embolism. What can the coroner conclude then? Embolism? Heart Attack? Drowning?

In diving, there is inherently a lack of possible information that can be gleaned from the accident itself. Thus, comprehensive explanations are difficult to come by.

DAN's report certainly highlights cases where information can be yielded from it.

From the 75 Scuba Fatalities examined by DAN in 2006 The primary disabling injuries identified were drowning (48%), arterial gas embolism (33%)

 

[Web Monkey]

NO. You are wrong on all points except the last.

I mostly chat on RBW, and the audience here is a little different. So.
He was diving the O with a rebreather. I don't know any more facts that that. So speaking in general, not about that specific incident. Rebreathers are somewhat complicated devices, and unlike OC, just because you have gas, doesn't mean it will support life. One mode of failure is hypercapnia, too much CO2. This is scary. Think about a plastic bag over your head--plenty of gas, too much CO2. Your heart rate goes up, your respirations are very rapid. And its terrifying. If you have a weak cardio you die sooner.

I'm sure this will make all the rebreather folks livid, but rebreathers that don't monitor and alarm on actual, measured, out-of-bounds O2 and CO2 are just accidents waiting to happen. You need to know exactly what you're actually breathing, not just what you think you're breathing.

Someone said fitness doesn't matter in diving until it does.

Slip off the anchor line in a stiff current. Then have a reg malfunction. Fitness.
Have to drag your buddy out of a cave--fitness.

Eventually every body starts that long slide into "doesn't work so well". Even for people who exercise regularly, extreme stress and exertion in older people is a risky plan for handling an emergency. While fitness is nice, training and brains are nicer, since both continue to work long after bodies simply aren't safely capable of extreme endurance.

Get blown off a line? Shoot a bag, blow an air horn and wait for the boat. That's why they have motors.

Have a reg malfunction? So what? You have at least two and so does your buddy.

Have to drag your buddy out of a cave? If he's dead and you're not up to the task, leave him. No sense in both of you checking out on the same dive, and he wouldn't want you to. If he's alive and you're not up to it, you shouldn't have been cave diving.

Panic doesn't happen on the couch. It happens when things are bad, body is stressed, mind is stressed. The better you handle the physical stress, the better you will handle the mental. Take a deep breath, swim a lap underwater, try to do a complicated task, say turn a tank on and reg in mouth purge...The more relaxed you are the better you will do. And of course if you have drown before you got there...

Panic happens because the diver didn't recognize the stressors leading up to it, and/or didn't have a workable plan for handling the emergency.

While being physically capable in SCUBA is a great thing, not panicing is even better.

Again, if you do relatively low key diving its one thing. But even then, fitter is more relaxed, lower air consumption. You are diving with your kid, they swim off to look at fish, then panic. So you have to kick like crazy to grab them, then try to fix the problem...

Stay within grabbing distance and watch for signs of stress in your buddy and you won't have to "kick like crazy." You won't catch a runaway kid in any event. They're small, have lower surface area in the water, are in phenomenal shape and don't use much air.

Most diver mishaps are a chain of mistakes and equipment failures. And in my opinion, in the vast majority of them better fitness would have helped.

I don't mean to dump on you, but it's far prefereable to not have an emergency than to "power yourself out of it" and as the diving population ages, it becomes less and less possible.

If someone wants to be better prepared for SCUBA, I'd suggest better training, a better dive plan, better equipment checks, a great buddy and good judgement.

Terry

 

[HowardE]

I'm sure this will make all the rebreather folks livid, but rebreathers that don't monitor and alarm on actual, measured, out-of-bounds O2 and CO2 are just accidents waiting to happen. You need to know exactly what you're actually breathing, not just what you think you're breathing.

And how many rebreathers do that?

 

[Web Monkey]

And how many rebreathers do that?

Beats me.

If there aren't any, then diving with any rebreather is a crap shoot.

Terry