Two fatalities in Monterey

[Jax]

. . . the problem in out of gas emergencies usually begin in the planning stages of the dive. They do not begin when the divers run out of gas. And it isn't usually because people (teenagers or otherwise) are stupid.

I don't follow this. I think you are speaking metaphorically, but non sequitur. The greatest dive plan in the world isn't going to do anything for someone that doesn't dive it.


I look at it this way. We train our soldiers for all the right things to do in as many eventualities as we can think of -- incoming rounds, hit the foxhole. Poison gas, mask on. But when the guy is little slow, we don't talk about "you should've done x,y, & z", we teach them the emergency procedures that could save their life. I do NOT believe that teaching them an emergency ascent teaches that OOG is okay. I think it teaches what to do when the excrement hits the fan.

I believe the young men were trained to dive responsibly, and were trained to watch their gas and probably that they should hit the boat with 500psi. Fact: something stopped them from doing that. Inattention? Irresponsibility? External factors?

When you are on the bottom and the "impossible" happens and you are OOG, then people need to be trained and practiced on doing the right thing. When panic / fright sets in, it is the training that takes over. If it is not practiced and ingrained, panic takes over.

And people make fun of me for my pool drills.

 

[TSandM]

I can only think about my one, rather silly out of air experience . . . and I'll confess it. I was starting a dive with a stage bottle. I had double tanks on my back, and a single tank on my side, and we were descending in a big open water pond. I pulled the stage reg out and put it in my mouth, and began to descend, when suddenly there was no air in the regulator. My instant, and embarrassing response was to bolt for the surface -- that lasted a fraction of a second, until my rational mind kicked in and said, "You've got the stage turned OFF, you idiot," and I opened the valve.

Yes, I did not know how my reptile brain was going to respond to a completely unexpected problem. And no, I didn't immediately, calmly switch to one of the two other sources of gas I was carrying. BUT I did open my valve before I surfaced (and since I was only about ten feet down, I inhibited the bolt response pretty darned fast).

In my case, I had hundreds and hundreds of dives under my belt, not to mention a plethora of training dives involving signaling out of gas, and some where the instructor unexpectedly turned OFF my gas, and my first response was STILL to surface. I don't know that a pony bottle would preclude panic in a novice diver (and neither does anyone else) any more than sharing gas with a buddy would -- but it WOULD put novice divers in the water with more gas, and that probably isn't a bad thing.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

None of the "facts" of this incident are yet available so we can only speculate. But to me, incidents where a diver runs out of gas - the problem begins either when the divers exceeded minimum gas or maybe even earlier - when the divers are planning the dive. The accident did not begin when the first diver ran out of gas, when there was a botched gas share (if there was one) and it certainly did not begin when both divers neglected to ditch their weights.

There are probably a dozen or so replies in this thread scrutinizing whether or not to remove weights in an out of gas situation. There are even a couple of posts talking about removing weights but not letting them go. I mean, these are all acts of desperation. Stuff might happen but running out of gas is not "stuff" happening. In open water, short of a burst disc or a low pressure hose blowing up, it is just plain not planning gas properly or not checking your gauge.

It might just me but I have always been under the impression that it is better to get ahead of a problem than to let the situation deteriorate to the point where one has to resort to acts of desperation.

There is no indication that these young fellows even knew what "minimum gas" means. The majority of folks in the dive instruction business seem to believe that gas management isn't important at the recreational level. Maxims like "watch your gauge" and "back on the boat with 500 psi" is sufficient ... most of the time ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

It's a nice thought but it's a dive in fantasyland. It seems you're essentially saying that as long as we plan for nothing bad to happen, nothing bad WILL happen (short of equipment failure). As long as you plan your dive, you WILL dive your plan. But I don't think that reflects the reality of the way most divers do their diving. (But again, it's as nice thought and a noble goal. And it's the way it should be.)

But to bring this back to the incident that started this thread, these two young men DID run into some unplanned trouble and it cost them their lives. The issues here, I think, aren't about planning an incident-free dive, but are how to react and what you should do when the plan goes astray, for whatever reason.

- Ken

I don't think that's what adobo is suggesting at all. One doesn't need to run into trouble to have something like this occur ... I know of multiple deaths that occurred because the diver jumped in the water planning to do a dive they simply didn't have enough gas for. Perhaps narcosis happened ... more likely they just got distracted and didn't pay attention until they went to take a breath and there wasn't one there to be had. Whatever the reason, there was no indication that "trouble" caused their OOA ... lack of proper planning and inattention during the dive did. I think this is far more common than divers running into "trouble".

Ken, what adobo is suggesting is what I've been doing for the past seven years ... teaching people to compare their available gas to their dive plan and see if there's a disconnect ... so they know ahead of time, before the dive ever begins. I teach this at the AOW level ... and you'd be amazed at the difference it makes when a student sits down and does a bit of simple arithmetic, looks up and says "I can't do that dive on my tank" ... a significant lightbulb goes off, and that diver is unlikely to EVER find themselves in the situation of having to decide what to do in an OOA situation ... because they're far less likely to ever find themselves in one.

This is NOT to discount practicing skills to share air, or do emergency ascents ... those things can still happen and it's important to be prepared. But I believe BY FAR the majority of OOA accidents don't happen due to equipment malfunctions or unanticipated problems ... they happen because of operator error, usually people jumping in the water intent on doing a dive that, had they applied gas management techniques as part of their plan they would have realized they didn't have adequate gas to do.

No one would think of driving across a wilderness without first considering the size of their tank, their miles per gallon, and the distance they had to go ... because running out of gas in a wilderness can be a very bad thing. Well ... diving's no different. The moment you submerge, the only gas you have available is what you took with you ... the next gas station's on the surface. It never hurts to figure out first whether or not you took enough to get you back there.

THAT is what adobo was getting at.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[rjack321]

I am hoping that Peter_guy, TS&M, or one of the other divers on the boat can relay the extent of these young men's "gas management" training. And if their weighting was known to be reasonable/checked for the tanks (Al80s?) and exposure protection (7mm wetsuits?)

Agree that it sounds like an air share gone bad. One OOA, with an embolism for the rescuer.

 

[mdb]

In theory all this "gas management" sounds fine. Facts are that in the real world things happen that have nothing to do with all the "planning" in the world.

Things go wrong even in the auto analogy-a dead battery, a broken belt, a bad radiator, nothing about gas management there, you can have a full tank of gas and still be sh-t out of luck.

I do agree that "gas management" is nice. It was not the answer for the two young men lost in Monterey.

 

[lamont]

I don't follow this. I think you are speaking metaphorically, but non sequitur. The greatest dive plan in the world isn't going to do anything for someone that doesn't dive it.

I look at it this way. We train our soldiers for all the right things to do in as many eventualities as we can think of -- incoming rounds, hit the foxhole. Poison gas, mask on. But when the guy is little slow, we don't talk about "you should've done x,y, & z", we teach them the emergency procedures that could save their life. I do NOT believe that teaching them an emergency ascent teaches that OOG is okay. I think it teaches what to do when the excrement hits the fan.

I believe the young men were trained to dive responsibly, and were trained to watch their gas and probably that they should hit the boat with 500psi. Fact: something stopped them from doing that. Inattention? Irresponsibility? External factors?

When you are on the bottom and the "impossible" happens and you are OOG, then people need to be trained and practiced on doing the right thing. When panic / fright sets in, it is the training that takes over. If it is not practiced and ingrained, panic takes over.

And people make fun of me for my pool drills.

Jax, look at my profile pic and suggest to me what I should do there if I suddenly find that I've run completely out of gas and assume that my buddy has become separated.

The answer is really that I can't let that happen.

So I train and practice not to let that happen. I don't train and practice what to do when that happens because I'll make it about 2 minutes back to the exit, max, and die, no matter what.

You can practice the wrong things. Emergency procedures that have little chance of occurring or emergency procedures with little chance of success. If you do so at the cost of practicing emergency procedures that are more common than you are actually putting yourself at more risk by your practice.

That is why I've forgotten how many hundreds of times I've practiced donating gas to an out of gas diver.

That is why I practice knowing where to be in the water if anyone on the team has an issue.

And I'd like to see an answer to a very simple question in this thread from anyone, which is how you get into a situation where a CESA (option #3 in this thread) does not work, while dropping weights (option #4 in this thread) does.

About all I can think of is a combination of a massive overweighting issue and an OOG or gas access issue at the same time. Obviously, I'm going to recommend that divers forgo going out and practicing ditching their weights in favor of simply making sure that they're properly weighted. If you want to do something useful, try to simulate a reasonable worse case of swimming your gear up. I've done this before with double-130s full of EAN32, dumped my wing completely and kept only enough gas in my suit to not make it unbearably uncomfortable and been able to kick to get off the bottom just fine -- and as you get closer to the surface exposure protection expansion takes over and it all gets easier. If you can't kick to get off the problem, then by all means you have an issue you need to fix, but ditchable weight is not the solution, you've just got too much weight on to begin with, or else you need a proper drysuit.

If you solve that problem, you will not need to ditch weight.

Practicing ditching weight is silly at best, dangerous at worst, and may instill a false sense of confidence. Focusing on practicing not getting into that situation will make you much safer.

 

[lamont]

In theory all this "gas management" sounds fine. Facts are that in the real world things happen that have nothing to do with all the "planning" in the world.

Things go wrong even in the auto analogy-a dead battery, a broken belt, a bad radiator, nothing about gas management there, you can have a full tank of gas and still be sh-t out of luck.

I do agree that "gas management" is nice. It was not the answer for the two young men lost in Monterey.

Yeah, divers found with drained tanks. Clearly gas management cannot be considered as a plausible solution, and we need to focus on idiotic last-ditch improbable and dangerous self-rescue scenarios. That'll make diving so much safer.

 

[Anti-Hero]

In theory all this "gas management" sounds fine. Facts are that in the real world things happen that have nothing to do with all the "planning" in the world.

Such as?


And lets be painfully clear... "Gas management" has nothing to do with theory. It's a repeatable function of time, pressure, and volume.

 

[lowviz]

....... The majority of folks in the dive instruction business seem to believe that gas management isn't important at the recreational level..............

The only reason that I'm adding my words to this wisdom is that I can't post unless I submit a minimum number of characters of my own.



Edit:
These deaths should not have happened.