Treat every dive like a tech dive

[Edward3c]

This is very hard for me to believe.

IF an OOA diver is perfectly calm and goes through all the prescribed signaling procedures.. then they are not panicked and they are controlled - they might just be very low on air and not really without ANY air. Never the less, if this perfectly calm and well behaved "victim" is signaling and preparing to receive the secondary regulator, what possible harm is there in handing him the regulator from your mouth?

Do we really think he is going to reject it if it is a different one than he was trained to expect? The logical answer will have to be.. he will take what is given to him.

If on the other hand, IF this same victim is disregarding all his training and is so desperate that he is NOT signaling his need/desire for air...dontcha think he is going to go for the regulator that is most obvious and most easily located?

The most easily located regulator is quite obviously the one in the other diver's mouth. Of course the secondary fact that this is a clean, functioning regulator that is delivering the correct gas mix at the current depth is important, it is probably NOT going through the victim's mind at that moment - if they are panicked.

I don't really care what some agency or training organization says, after 40 years of diving, witnessing many accidents and too many fatalities, I am going to try to follow procedures that make sense to me. Donate the primary and secondary regulator around the neck makes the most sense for me.

I'm not saying a panicked individual will NEVER go for the clipped off secondary regulator - because in a true emergency is is hard to predict with certainty what people will actually do, but I just think it is pretty damn unlikely for that to occur.

In short, he is going to either go through a signaling protocol OR a panicked snatch of a second stage and in both cases, if the victim ends up with the primary from the donor's mouth, the situation should be workable.

For the first 20-25 years, I kept the secondary regulator clipped off (with a break away) in a manner similar to what PADI et.al. recommended. It was MUCH more convenient, and it made removal of the scuba unit much quicker and easier than having the damn neck lanyard. The neck lanyard is a pain to remember when removing the tank, but I finally decided that safety was more important than convenience in this case.

Also, wearing the secondary around your neck has the significant added benefit of allowing you to immediately detect a significant freeflow from that second stage. If it is clipped off in the golden triangle and you are wearing a thick suit, a thick hood and are descending (head first) down an anchor line in heavy current, it is quite easy to fail to detect a free flow because it is being shielded by a BC and a suit and the anchor rope may be brushing your body as well on the descent, PLUS if you are upside down swimming hard, you are breathing hard, so your normal exhaust stream is going to be flowing over your body anyway (even if you are not going down an anchor line). The anchor line descent just makes the freeflow scenario more likely because the added effect of the current can induce a frreeflow.

So a freeflow is very EASY to miss - if you use the "golden triangle" secondary placement.

I went through the last 10 years of incident reports and couldn't find one instance of primary reg snatch.
Anyway, I must be wrong because ...

 

[uncfnp]

The UK Health & Safety Executive (HSE) oversee commercial diving in the UK. Teaching diving for reward is a commercial activity and therefore falls under HSE jurisdiction.

The HSE did research and concluded a diver will revert to their initial training in an OOG situation, included those whom had been diving for 20 years.

If a diver has been trained to take the secondary then that’s what they will do. It’s only the primary donate people who claim every diver will steal the reg in your mouth. The incident reports don’t support that argument. If anything most OOG divers are quite rational when there is a problem.

I went through the last 10 years of incident reports and couldn't find one instance of primary reg snatch.
Anyway, I must be wrong because ...

I'm pretty sure that's not his alternate that she is grapping.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=H6yMHXCCAUE

Without the cited study to review its hard to respond to your post. Was it an actual study conducted on divers or is it based on research regarding human behavior under stress? Yes, under stress an individual will likely respond with the behaivior that is most familar or overlearned. But I doubt that too many recreational divers have any significant learning when it comes to air share beyond course practice and highly doubt it is "second nature" or ingrained for a panicked diver to reach for the octo second. In fact, taught behavior is to signal and accept the offered regulator. So in theory, that would be the behavior a stressed diver would do if that behavior was truly learned. I don't know any instructor teaching to just grap the regulator in the "Golden Triangle." At most I recall being told to look for the yellow octo. That is why I chose to use a yellow purge cover and hose on my primary for primary donation.

Does it need to be a 7 foot hose in OW recreational diving? Absolutely not. Could you just imagine all those basic OW divers sporting a long hose? Even many divers on SB that use a long hose on certain dives choose not to with recreational OW dives. The infinitesimal benefit that might be gained is more then eclisped by the negative.

 

[Basking Ridge Diver]

I'm pretty sure that's not his alternate that she is grapping.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=H6yMHXCCAUE

Without the cited study to review its hard to respond to your post. Was it an actual study conducted on divers or is it based on research regarding human behavior under stress? Yes, under stress an individual will likely respond with the behaivior that is most familar or overlearned. But I doubt that too many recreational divers have any significant learning when it comes to air share beyond course practice and highly doubt it is "second nature" for a panicked diver to reach for the octo second. In fact, taught behavior is to signal and accept the offered regulator. I don't know any instructor teaching to just grap the regulator in the "Golden Triangle." At most I recall being told to look for the yellow octo. That is why I chose to use a yellow purge cover and hose on my primary for primary donation.

I think it was this - BSAC Annual Diving Incident Report - Annual Diving Incident Report - British Sub-Aqua Club
what I noticed was for OOA examples - folks were donating the secondary...

 

[uncfnp]

I think it was this - BSAC Annual Diving Incident Report - Annual Diving Incident Report - British Sub-Aqua Club
what I noticed was for OOA examples - folks were donating the secondary...

Thanks BRD. I will try to find time to look through those. Could be interesting. So Edward is stating that because there are incident reports of divers that use octos using those octos for donation is the better configuration? Or am I misinterpreting his position? Is he simply refuting the primary grab claim? Looks like I need to go back and reread the relevant posts.

 

[KenGordon]

Thanks BRD. I will try to find time to look through those. Could be interesting. So Edward is stating that because there are incident reports of divers that use octos using those octos for donation is the better configuration? Or am I misinterpreting his position? Is he simply refuting the primary grab claim? Looks like I need to go back and reread the relevant posts.

He is refuting the primary grab claim. He is saying that he cannot find an example of primary take in the incident reports.

He is stating that divers first taught to take a secondary will take a secondary, supported by work done for the HSE.

BTW, just because you were not taught/do not remember being taught to take an octopus does not mean it does not happen. In the BSAC system that is what is taught, not waiting for a donated regulator. It is also taught with the donating diver flat and away from the victim as might be typical during an actual dive when they are not directly looking at their buddy.

These threads often link to video of some poor instructor teaching OOA badly. That is not fixed by teaching a different system, that is fixed by teaching properly.

 

[NAM001]

I cant speak concerning what I first learned because it was buddy breathing (sharing one reg). however when I started to dive again it was,,,,,, the needy will go for what they know works and they can find. the reg being breathed on meets that criteria. Low vis you can find a face before a dangling octo.

 

[Neilwood]

I'm pretty sure that's not his alternate that she is grapping.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=H6yMHXCCAUE

Without the cited study to review its hard to respond to your post. Was it an actual study conducted on divers or is it based on research regarding human behavior under stress? Yes, under stress an individual will likely respond with the behaivior that is most familar or overlearned. But I doubt that too many recreational divers have any significant learning when it comes to air share beyond course practice and highly doubt it is "second nature" or ingrained for a panicked diver to reach for the octo second. In fact, taught behavior is to signal and accept the offered regulator. So in theory, that would be the behavior a stressed diver would do if that behavior was truly learned. I don't know any instructor teaching to just grap the regulator in the "Golden Triangle." At most I recall being told to look for the yellow octo. That is why I chose to use a yellow purge cover and hose on my primary for primary donation.

Does it need to be a 7 foot hose in OW recreational diving? Absolutely not. Could you just imagine all those basic OW divers sporting a long hose? Even many divers on SB that use a long hose on certain dives choose not to with recreational OW dives. The infinitesimal benefit that might be gained is more then eclisped by the negative.

Surprised no one commented on the even more obvious - she doesn't even look at her own octo when her primary fails. Now that is even more basic than going for someone elses imho.

 

[boulderjohn]

I, too, heard of a study that said that OOA divers will tend to go for the regulator they were trained to take. That was quite a few years ago. It is also what happened in the only actual OOA case I was ever near. In that case, a woman in a group I was with apparently put her gear on a nearly empty tank and did not check the pressure before the dive, because she went OOA about 10 minutes into the dive. She did not signal, but instead just calmly took her husband's alternate. I was teaching for a shop with about a dozen other instructors shortly after that, and I asked what had happened in any of the cases they knew about first hand. In every single case, the OOA diver had reached for the alternate.

But in every one of those cases, we are talking about a traditional octo-in-the-golden triangle setup. We are not talking about the alternate under the chin on a bungeed necklace. In that case it is hard to see the alternate, let alone take it. For most divers, there is nothing in their experience like it, so I doubt that study will have any relevance to that situation.

I first learned the alternate around the neck method in tech training, but I did not bother to change my traditional recreational setup. Then I read a story of a woman who went OOA and drowned in Europe because her buddy's octo had come loose from its holder. She went to get it, and she could not find it because it was not in place. Of course, he could not find it either. The octo-in-the-golden triangle is designed to come off its holder easily in case of emergency, so it comes off its holder easily even when there is no emergency. The alternate around the neck is held securely in place because that's how it is designed. I ordered new hoses for my recreational gear the day after I heard about that drowning.

I also question the idea that it takes longer to donate and switch to the alternate in the bungeed setup. I can donate the primary regulator in less than a second after seeing the need, and it only takes a second or so to get the alternate in my mouth. (Some people are actually able to look down and pick up the alternate with their mouths while donating the primary--I can't.)

BTW, people from BSAC are explaining their methods here, but the rest of you should know that their position on how to use alternate air systems that include the long hose and bungeed alternates is very, very much a minority position and has been severely criticized in past ScubaBoard threads. You are free to accept their advice if you wish, but do understand that it is not what the majority of long hose divers do by any means.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

Ultimately an OOA diver will "take" the first breathing source they can get to ... regardless of which it happens to be. Whether that's the primary or secondary, I will never understand why any agency teaches that you allow the OOA person to make that choice, rather than the person who's donating. Regardless of which second you want them to have, if you hold it out where it will be the first one they see and reach, they will "take" it ... because it represents the air they want.

As in all things ... being proactive is better than being reactive. I don't personally recommend allowing anyone who's not breathing to get close enough to your body to decide which of your gear they will go for ... because you can't predict how they're going to react. OOA tends to stress a person ... and stress doesn't always lead to rational or predictable behavior. Better ... always ... to remain in control of the decision yourself, and donate the second stage you want them to have ... in which case, it doesn't really matter whether it's the primary or secondary.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[Storker]

I'm pretty sure that's not his alternate that she is grapping.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=H6yMHXCCAUE

You are? In that case, he's using a yellow primary. At 0:23, she's got a yellow reg in her mouth.