Unknowing divers endangering kids

[scubafool]

I will start out by saying that I am by no means a "dive nazi", lecturing others about their unsafe habits or attitudes. I am generally a live and let live kinda guy, if you ask me for advice I will give it, but otherwise I try to lead by example. But today at one of the dive sites local to me, I observed something that I felt was so dangerous that I just had to say something to the diver.

This is a relatively shallow spot, ~25' max. Hanging out at 20', just generally enjoying being in the water, trying to avoid all of the divers & snorkelers, when I turn to see a diver at about the same depth. With a young boy in a wetsuit, no weightbelt or fins on the boy, the man holding the boy in his arm, the boy breathing off the diver's octo. was I to say the least. After a brief second of racing thought, I decided not to intervene at that point, as I thought that that might precipitate the uncontrolled ascent that so worried me. Instead, I got rather close to them, hoping that if the kid happened to slip out of the man's arm, I would be able to grab him before he lost the reg and paniced. After a very short time they surfaced, and I followed them to shore. I approached the guy, and said "It might not be any of my business, but if you had lost your grip on the boy & he headed to the top, do you really feel certain that he would remember to breath out?" His response was that he felt he would have been fine, that this was really shallow. I explained to him that one can embolize and die in less than five feet of water. He said that he wasn't going to take him back out again that day.

Question. Don't ALL OW classes stress to NEVER hold your breath? Isn't that like Rule Number One for SCUBA? I don't think that I had the best OW class out there, but our instructor really stressed this issue. So why do we have people who don't realize the extremely grave danger that they are putting others in who don't know & in fact are too young to truely understand by doing things like this?

Another question. How far should I take an issue like this? The water was full of divers, I am sure that I am not the only one who observed this, but I believe that I was the only one who did anything whatsoever about it. Now, I could have gone to the park mangement & reported it. The practice of allowing an uncertified person to breath off of your octo underwater is specifically prohibited there. After I explained the possible outcome of this incident to the management, they probably would have had this guy for lunch. But I hope that this diver thinks about what he did & the possible bad ending that could have resulted from this innocent little episode.

Comments?

 

[baitedstorm]

It's so easy to WANT to include our children in our passion for diving, but we must understand their safety should always come first. It's clear to me that safety wasn't the priority for this diver. It was all very innocent, unless the child would have been hurt. Had the diver loss his grip, things could have gone terrible wrong or things might have been just fine.

Kudos to you Scubafool for standing up for what you believe in. All to often we stand alone. If nothing else, I bet that diver will think about doing that again. I'm sure it seemed harmless to him at the time, but with some alone time, I betcha he might rethink it..


Before anyone says this wasn't a big deal, make sure you put your child in the same situation (with the same diver) and see if you think it's really all that safe. I wouldn't let someone take my kid.

 

[wetrat]

Sometimes I think it's a shame you don't have to get licensed to have a kid!

I was in Austria last summer and found it quite interesting that in that culture, the community takes a greater responsibility for raising children. In fact, it is quite common for a stranger to discipline someone elses child in public, and give parents the "what for" for not disciplining their kids properly. This was great fun to watch, but I also began to realize how well-behaved kids were in Austria. Here, we are afraid to say anything because we try to let parents raise kids the way they feel best, for better or worse!

Great job talking to that guy... Not sure I could've taken it to another level though!

wetrat

 

[String]

Are you sure the said boy wasnt qualified in one way? He may have just gone down to use the octopus to have a look and could have been a qualified diver.

Ive donated air to a snorkeller before now (knowing them well and are far more qualified a diver than myself).

 

[Rick Inman]

Hanging out at 20', just generally enjoying being in the water, trying to avoid all of the divers & snorkelers...

What did your buddy think?

 

[scubafool]

What did your buddy think?

Note that I didn't post this in the DIR forum.

I have made the INFORMED decision to dive this site without a buddy many times previously, and will continue to do so.

My lack of a buddy has no bearing on the situation I have described.

 

[scubafool]

Are you sure the said boy wasnt qualified in one way? He may have just gone down to use the octopus to have a look and could have been a qualified diver.

Ive donated air to a snorkeller before now (knowing them well and are far more qualified a diver than myself).

But hopefully a QUALIFIED diver would not dive a wetsuit without any weghts to counter the positive bouyancy of the said wetsuit. Note that this child had NO tank of his own, NO regulator of his own. To me, no dive is worth doing with this much risk. I am all for letting the individual take informed risks, but such a situation makes me question just how informed the child was.

 

[String]

Cant see the issue of a thin wetsuit and no weight, if you can stay down and its shallow and know not to breath hold this isnt going to be an issue. Chances are they wont be down deep or long and just stopping there for a minute or 2 to have a look.

 

[Rick Inman]

Note that I didn't post this in the DIR forum.

I have made the INFORMED decision to dive this site without a buddy many times previously, and will continue to do so.

My lack of a buddy has no bearing on the situation I have described.

DIR? Actually, PADI, SSI, NAUI and YMCA teach to dive with a buddy. But I'm not critizing solo diving - done some myself. Just thinking that it would be funny if these guys saw you diving near them and thought, "Good thing this guy is hanging close in case he needs help, since he's all alone."

 

[scubafool]

Cant see the issue of a thin wetsuit and no weight, if you can stay down and its shallow and know not to breath hold this isnt going to be an issue. Chances are they wont be down deep or long and just stopping there for a minute or 2 to have a look.

Did you miss the part about being able to embolixe in 5 feet of water?

Or the part concerning how the only source of air that this kid had was this diver's octo? Once he became seperated from that, a natural reflex would be to hold his breath and swim for the surface.

Quite simply, any wetsuit has some amount of positive bouyancy, and to offset this, we wear negatively bouyant items, such as tanks, regulators, and weightbelts. This young "diver" had no such items on his person, and was dependant on th diver who DID have such things to hold him down.

Hopefully, a person who is certified to dive knows enough to breath out in such a situation, but then again, shouldn't and wouldn't they also know enough to not do such a thing in the first place?

And explain to me just what the heck difference how LONG they stayed down would affect the outcome of a bouyant ascent while he held his breath on this kid's life expectancy.

Sorry if I come across a little harsh, but hey, life is like that sometimes. Like if the worst had happened here. That would be harsh, but with a capital H.