Time to hang up my wetsuit after near death on NYE

[Eric Sedletzky]

Way too complicated for me.

I prefer solo.

Well yeah, me too.
But in this case it was a lead group dive and sounds like the DM was in the position to be everyone’s buddy. According to his story his assigned buddy was no where around. In this case he actually was intermittently solo whether he knows it or not.
I’m betting that the OP has so far only done these DM lead tour dives, not any individual independent dives planned with another buddy and executed as a buddy team following a plan like what a local shore dive would be.

 

[Bob DBF]

@ewdon1, I can’t say I would make a different decision amid the chaos you have seen in 20 dives. I’d certainly take a break.

If and when you decide to get back into scuba diving, ScubaBoard is a good place to learn how to avoid a repeat experience. You may also be able to find a buddy, as well as a good instructor to cover what may have been missed in previous training.


Good Luck

Bob

 

[hroark2112]

Near death is a stretch.

If you are prone to panic diving is not for you.

 

[Schwob]

@Edwon1
You may well have arrived at the for you correct decision. You certainly have at this very moment in time.
If you remain at peace with your decision, it is the right one. Saves you a lot of money too.

If you however, in time, despite how you feel now, end up being „troubled“ by visions of weightless soaring amidst the earth‘s most amazing environment to the extent of even just remotely considering to maybe think about continuing to scuba dive, then re-read some of the comments here that, no matter how they come across, try to skew you towards thinking amd breathing „self reliant diver“. Imho, even more so when diving with a buddy you are responsible for on top of you being responsible for you, the simple truth that the training agencies forgo in order to attract more customers is: You either are self reliant or you are constantly at the edge of having to depend on, becoming a burden to somebody and none of that will even be remotely be as safe to your own health as becoming and being self reliant.
Things are worse yet - imho - with touristy follow the DM dives under the pretense that would be safe for some reason. There is very little a rushing (why do so many always rush @&%$§! DM can do to increase the safety of the diver struggling to keep up, 30... 40 meters behind the DM. Even the seasoned (or smart young) DM that makes the weakest diver in the group his/her buddy, will be troubled assisting another diver in trouble that is too far off. The DM that manages to keep a group so well together that no diver is too far off is rare. The random group of dive tourists that wants to dive that way is rarer yet. Everybody wants to explore their own nook and granny, take their own pictures, be away from the guy that kicks up silt... Maybe DMs always rush to minimize opportunities for „wandering off“.

Anyway. Long story short: A DM lead dive is only as safe a dive as you yourself make it.

There is no shame to practice with a buddy on a shore or lake, Heck, even pool dive..
Read up on self reliance. Practice. Try to find a similar minded buddy. If you cannot, find ways to practice at least one thing on each led dive. And don‘t ever dive in the open ocean not carrying a DSMB ever again and certainly don‘t use that as an excuse. Sounds harsh, I know. I mean well. I mean to tell you that you need to adjust your attitude in order to become safe. That is something you need to do. I know it is a very hard thing to do. The majority of divers do not think that way. For good diligent & attentive divers with good diligent & attentive buddies, that is not so bad. How many buddy pairs do you know that fit that description? even if you know some, what percentage of buddy pairs you observed fits that description. I seem to think that the vast majority are same ocean buddies and not really actual functional buddy pairs.

Diving like that in a group with a DM rarely adds safety. It can make things worse as it leads people to dive in conditions they are not ready for yet. Case in point: Is someone diving in the open ocean without carrying a DSMB and practised in it‘s use ready for diving in the open ocean? (Even if not underweighted?)

Once you manage to see a dive as your dive and your responsibility, even if DM led, you‘ll do well. See the DM as your navigator and thingy pointer outer and no more, and accept responsibility for all else yourself and you‘ll do well. Should the DM vanish, become incapacitated or, ... prepared to safely finish the dive and safely getting back to the boat or at the very least giving the boat a very good chance to come to you. You dove enough to witness some „what if“ scenarios. Being a age diver imho means to remain safe under ideally all, but certainly most what if scenarios. It also means knowing when to call the dive and then safely end it. Those two might be the most important skills. Ironically they are often more of a mental than an actual physical skill.

Anyway, for what it‘s worth, I invite you, like many others did. to embark yourself on the way of becoming a self reliant diver... even if you never plan to dive solo. Prior to subscribing, living and breathing that self reliant mindset, no matter what you may conclude from training agency materials, in my mind a diver is not truly safe. Once you are of that mind set and you for example choose to not dive with a pony and to rely on your buddies air supply for redundancy and do what it takes for that to be a good idea (like stick with your buddy... ad make sure his stuff works and is set up right etc..) it is a different dive experience for you than hopping of a boat hoping for the best. Once you choose to be in charge of your dive (even guided), you are. And you then are on the right way and trusting a random DM responsible not to you but a whole random group will appear as risk taking to you as it is (imho). Dive in that group, but take charge of your safety!

 

[Esprise Me]

@Edwon1 Thanks for coming back to tell more of your story. Sorry some people are being jerks. It sounds like you've been through the wringer and I don't blame you for deciding the risk is too great. I did mostly guided dives when I was starting out too, and luckily the guides I had were mostly good to great. I probably wouldn't have stuck with it if they hadn't been.

IMO, a DM should act as a kind of mentor or continuing education instructor, reinforcing standards and looking out for the safety and comfort of those following them. If they're not going to accept some responsibility as dive professionals, there's no reason to have them at all. Yes, every diver is ultimately responsible for their own safety. But no one really knows their limits until they bump up against them, no one grows without pushing their limits, and hiring a professional should be a safe and smart way to do that.

Here, conditions were worse than what the briefing covered. There's an awful lot of condemnation on the OP for being reluctant to surface alone in a bad current, and surprisingly little on the DM who clearly understood his "low on air" communication and chose to keep going. That kind of response from the dive community is not likely to lead to many new participants. Just sayin'.

 

[M-Cameron]

@Edwon1 Thanks for coming back to tell more of your story. Sorry some people are being jerks. It sounds like you've been through the wringer and I don't blame you for deciding the risk is too great. I did mostly guided dives when I was starting out too, and luckily the guides I had were mostly good to great. I probably wouldn't have stuck with it if they hadn't been.

IMO, a DM should act as a kind of mentor or continuing education instructor, reinforcing standards and looking out for the safety and comfort of those following them. If they're not going to accept some responsibility as dive professionals, there's no reason to have them at all. Yes, every diver is ultimately responsible for their own safety. But no one really knows their limits until they bump up against them, no one grows without pushing their limits, and hiring a professional should be a safe and smart way to do that.

Here, conditions were worse than what the briefing covered. There's an awful lot of condemnation on the OP for being reluctant to surface alone in a bad current, and surprisingly little on the DM who clearly understood his "low on air" communication and chose to keep going. That kind of response from the dive community is not likely to lead to many new participants. Just sayin'.

So where and when do you draw the line on where your responsibility ends and the DMs begins?

If you have an OWC.... you should be able to safely and comfortably handle yourself underwater.. and shouldn’t be reliant on anyone else to “take care of you”

Not having the proper equipment to safely dive was mistake #1

Not having the mindset to handle a situation without panic was mistake #2

Trusting someone else to take care of you was mistake #3


Yes.... some of us may be “being jerks”...... because the alternative is pretty much saying “you did nothing wrong and the DM should have taken care of you”....which is down right dangerous.

And without hearing the DMs side of things...we can’t really judge their actions..... because for all we know OP could have been signaling improperly, or for other reasons the signals weren’t received..... there’s no evidence they “clearly understood” anything


So all we can do is judge OP on the several mistakes they made...... because complacency and shifting blame isn’t going to prevent them from becoming another DAN statistic

 

[KenGordon]

Hi everyone,
Firstly thank you for your comments. I've addressed some common questions.

1. Am I giving up diving just because of this?
No. This incident just serves as a last straw. From witnessing the death of someone in my country due to AGE, having an instructor tell to try a new breathing technique underwater that caused me a terrible headache due to poor pulmonary ventilation and witnessing a friend blow an artery in his nose during a DSD and finally this. Its all a bit too much to process.

2. Why didn't I go up on my own?
I wasn't carrying a DSMB with me and at that moment my biggest worry was being lost in the middle of the sea if I surfaced on my own.

3. Dive details and location.
It was a boat dive and I was underweighted. There was a dive briefing beforehand but nobody anticipated the strong currents. We were in a group of almost 20 divers and everyone finished the dive in 30-40 mins so I wasn't the only one fighting underwater currents.

4. I was just low on air and not OOA.
The part where I was asked to swim agaisnt the current when I was in my reserve was the most traumatic part of the entire dive. Every high current section sucked 20-30 bar out of my tank and I wasn't sure why the DM would ask me to swim in high current when I was low on air.

5. Dive buddy
My buddy was assigned on the spot like every other dive I've been to. Since I go travelling to these places and have no friends who enjoy scuba (after the DSD incident) I can't rely on finding a buddy for life.

And people wonder why scuba diving is in decline?

Here is a great example of a rational person realising that it is not what they expected and just too dangerous/uncontrolled in practice.

Taught to dive as a buddy pair but then put in the water as part of a group with no real buddy and the expectation that some DM will be of use, when really they cannot as they have a whole bunch of people to ‘look after’ who will be annoyed, or at least the DM thinks will be annoyed, if the dive is cut short.

OP, you have discovered that the scuba industry is a terrible thing that systematically teaches one thing and practices something else. The advice above comes down to dealing with the reality of that.

BSAC has two branches listed in Singapore, although I can’t reach either web site but you may be able to make contact through the BSAC main website using the online contact form

Find a club or centre

One of the ideas of a club is to support new divers through the difficult initial dives so that they do not get scared off and to the stage where they are confident and competent. In a club environment you would be either still diving with a much more experienced buddy, one on one, or just starting to dive with a peer, again one on one.

Clubs exist to enable diving, they have a long history that proceeds the current commercial model by decades. They may contain ‘personalities’, and they may have been wiped out locally by cheap and apparently easy commercial alternatives. I suggest taking a look.

 

[lowwall]

The OP is from Singapore. It's hard for North America or European divers to really grasp the average state of diving in SE Asia unless you've been there. They take marginal swimmers, put them through the absolute minimum training and hand out the certificates. To keep these folks reasonably safe, dive ops load people into their gear, have them closely follow a DM, keep the dives short and then more or less drag them out of the water. Most divers expect or even demand to be treated like this, because they don't actually know how to navigate or plan a dive or handle themselves in or out of the water.

Edwon1 - It doesn't have to be like this. Better instruction and better dive trips are available in your area. But you aren't going to find them on TripAdvisor.

As an aside, I was just diving in Cozumel with my friend who lives in Singapore. All of his previous diving had been in Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia. He could not get over how much more competent and self-reliant the divers were in Coz and the cenotes and how the DMs actually treated divers like adults.

 

[KenGordon]

So where and when do you draw the line on where your responsibility ends and the DMs begins?

He got into the water with a person claiming to be a MASTER. He should have zero expectations? How does he know that?

If you have an OWC.... you should be able to safely and comfortably handle yourself underwater.. and shouldn’t be reliant on anyone else to “take care of you”

After four dives? Really? Or nine? Even after 20 he is still a baby diver.

Not having the proper equipment to safely dive was mistake #1

So, has he been taught to use a DSMB, is he aware of surface conditions such as boat traffic? Is it reasonable to except a baby diver to execute a lone ascent?

Not having the mindset to handle a situation without panic was mistake #2

He claims not to have panicked. But developing such a mindset takes time and experience. Is it reasonable to expect? With all the wild tales of panicking OOG divers on SB stealing regs it seems to be common, although I have never seen it myself...

Trusting someone else to take care of you was mistake #3

Ah, now we are onto something.

Yes.... some of us may be “being jerks”...... because the alternative is pretty much saying “you did nothing wrong and the DM should have taken care of you”.

I would say, never dive with a Dive Master. Absolutely never have anything to do with anyone calling themselves a Master unless you are a Tory MP in a basement in Soho.

Diving with a guide can be ok.

This is not the OPs fault, whatever the actions of the DM. It is a systemic issue with how people are trained (insufficiency) vs how they dive (haphazardly) in a holiday/commercial setting.

The OP might be criticised for a poor choice of dive op, or maybe going to sites beyond his capabilities, but I suspect those are not skills taught on his course.

 

[Celt]

Stop doing what your doing. Go back and learn how to dive safely with a club or group of friends. Luck is keeping you from a serious accident. This may sound cruel but I bought some nice cheap diving gear from people that started diving like you have. Some creep told you that you can dive to take money of you.