Water entry with regulator in mouth can cause embolism?

[MauiScubaSteve]

EVERYONE I've ever dove with enters the water with the reg in their mouth. If you don't... well then you can not breath UW which defeats the point of all that equipment on your back!

I think if you knew any dive guide/instructors who started white water canoeing at age 5, competitive swimming and free diving at age 6, scuba and cliff diving at age 7, lifeguarding at age 15, have a significant number of 1-2.5 mile rough water ocean swim competitions under their belt and numerous kayak or surfing spills in double overhead surf (or any other combination of serious water experience) you would come to the conclusion that many divers successfully enter the water without reg or snorkel in their mouth.

When guiding scooter dives with overhead surf at the beach entry/exit, if I can't shout instructions/warnings at any moment I may very well not get any tip after the dive; can't have that! On dive boats I only always most of the time enter with a reg if the captain/owner forces me to. Unless I am paralized upon impact with the water I can always just swim back up to the surface, even 8 #'s over-weighted with no air in my BC. Most of the time I would prefer to enter with my mask around my neck as well, to rinse the antifog.

Finally, if the Cardinal Rule of scuba diving is Never Hold Your Breath, how do divers equalize their ears on descent?

 

[The Chairman]

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[Thalassamania]

Post removed in deference to Pete.

 

[Thalassamania]

Fair enough. ...

I hear you. It's certainly food for thought. Am I going to change the way I do things because I read this report? Unlikely; but it is interesting, albeit somewhat sad, to read about what happened.

For all the reasons you cite I choose to not bring the NOAA incident up, in as much as I felt that it was inappropriate to recreational diving, especially when you consider that the Habitat Engineer was not a recreational but was a commercial diver employed by the habitat's owner. I'd like to remind you that I did mention a few such recreational cases from my days at the NAUDC.

I think if you knew any dive guide/instructors who started white water canoeing at age 5, competitive swimming and free diving at age 6, scuba and cliff diving at age 7, lifeguarding at age 15, have a significant number of 1-2.5 mile rough water ocean swim competitions under their belt and numerous kayak or surfing spills in double overhead surf (or any other combination of serious water experience) you would come to the conclusion that many divers successfully enter the water without reg or snorkel in their mouth.

When guiding scooter dives with overhead surf at the beach entry/exit, if I can't shout instructions/warnings at any moment I may very well not get any tip after the dive; can't have that! On dive boats I only always most of the time enter with a reg if the captain/owner forces me to. Unless I am paralized upon impact with the water I can always just swim back up to the surface, even 8 #'s over-weighted with no air in my BC. Most of the time I would prefer to enter with my mask around my neck as well, to rinse the antifog.

Finally, if the Cardinal Rule of scuba diving is Never Hold Your Breath, how do divers equalize their ears on descent?

Entering the water with a regulator in your mouth (except in some special circumstgances such as negative drops) is, like it or not, an equipment solution to a skills problem. It may well be that those who lack the skill to enter the water safely without a regulator to suck on, are at much less risk, or it may be that what the skill that they lack is emblematic of the level of the rest of their performance. But it is rather strange to try to try and rewrite history and pretend that the chnage from entries iwth a snorkel to entries with a regbulator represented anything except the depaupuerization of the diving cirriculum.

 

[dave4868]

Entering the water with a regulator in your mouth (except in some special circumstgances such as negative drops) is, like it or not, an equipment solution to a skills problem. It may well be that those who lack the skill to enter the water safely without a regulator to suck on, are at much less risk, or it may be that what the skill that they lack is emblematic of the level of the rest of their performance.

Wouldn't everyone be at less risk holding a regulator in the mouth on a positive buoyancy, drop-type entry, not just the ones not skilled enough to go without it? I'm sincerely curious.

I'm also curious about your historical perspective on this issue.

Did the training agencies recommend using a snorkel during a positive buoyancy, drop-type entry and recommend specifically not using a regulator?

Was it thought that there was significant risk of injury when using the regulator on such an entry?

Were there other reasons for not deploying the regulator on the entry, perhaps related to conserving air or avoiding free-flows, etc?

Was there industry agreement?

When did the recommendation go out of favor?

Was the switch to recommending holding the regulator in the mouth during such an entry just a lowering of standards for business considerations in your opinion?

Do you think the widespread training and practice of holding the regulator in place during such an entry is seriously flawed? Why?

Thanks in advance.

By the way, can you point me to any specific years or search criteria for those recreational diving shallow water incidents you recalled. That would aid my search of the Rubicon Archives. I haven't had much luck finding the reports yet.

Dave C

 

[Thalassamania]

Wouldn't everyone be at less risk holding a regulator in the mouth on a positive buoyancy, drop-type entry, not just the ones not skilled enough to go without it? I'm sincerely curious.

No, doing a positively buoyant entry with a snorkel in your mouth is, for anyone with a decent level of watermanship, almost risk free. I'll grant you that at that skill level an entry with a regulator in their mouth poses only a very slight increase in risk, possibly one that a diver might be willing to absorb for the convenience, though using a snorkel does supply one more way to keep from losing your mask.

I'm also curious about your historical perspective on this issue.

Did the training agencies recommend using a snorkel during a positive buoyancy, drop-type entry and recommend specifically not using a regulator?

Yes.

Was it thought that there was significant risk of injury when using the regulator on such an entry?

No

Were there other reasons for not deploying the regulator on the entry, perhaps related to conserving air or avoiding free-flows, etc?

That was most of it.

Was there industry agreement?

Yes

When did the recommendation go out of favor?

When DEMA promulgated the 20 hour course, anything that required additional instruction time was mercilessly hacked out of the sylubus. Learning to properly use a snorkel was denegrated as, "not scuba diving" leving students (and later instructors) lacking in critical skills required for comfortable use of a snorkel. Heck ... most of them didn't (don't) even know how to properly wear one so that it works right and does not get in the way.

Was the switch to recommending holding the regulator in the mouth during such an entry just a lowering of standards for business considerations in your opinion?

Yes.

Do you think the widespread training and practice of holding the regulator in place during such an entry is seriously flawed? Why?

Thanks in advance.

Seriously flawed ... no. Flawed ... yes. I think that the removal of the developement of the good snorkeling skills that used to be requried to be seriously flawed.

By the way, can you point me to any specific years or search criteria for those recreational diving shallow water incidents you recalled. That would aid my search of the Rubicon Archives. I haven't had much luck finding the reports yet.

Dave C

I do not recall the exact year(s), I wish I did ... I know that makes pulling a few small lines out of all the accident descriptions an almost Syphilitic task. I do remember writing the letters to gather the facts on those cases for the reports, it is conceivable that McAniff did not key them out in detail. Face it, it is hard to remember every word of more than a decade of reports that you worked on thirty and more years ago.

 

[Gene_Hobbs]

By the way, can you point me to any specific years or search criteria for those recreational diving shallow water incidents you recalled. That would aid my search of the Rubicon Archives. I haven't had much luck finding the reports yet.

Dave,

The reports Thal referenced were the National Underwater Accident Data Center, University of Rhode Island (URI) annual diving reports found in the collection here.

There are currently eight of those reports held in the collection. I know there were more but these are the only ones we have available so far. I wish I could even tell you how many there were in total or what their names are because that would make them easier to locate.

If it is really important to you, I can look a little harder to find what we are missing but I have been trying to concentrate my time lately to filling our holes in the NEDU collection and finding clearances for expanding the NSMRL collection since Mary Rose scanned them all. (and the Navy has provided some support to the project)

Hope this helps! -G



Rubicon is participating in the Great Human Race 5k Run/ Walk in Durham, NC, USA on March 21st. Please consider sponsoring our team. More info available here.

 

[dave4868]

Dave,

The reports Thal referenced were the National Underwater Accident Data Center, University of Rhode Island (URI) annual diving reports found in the collection here.

There are currently eight of those reports held in the collection. I know there were more but these are the only ones we have available so far. I wish I could even tell you how many there were in total or what their names are because that would make them easier to locate.

If it is really important to you, I can look a little harder to find what we are missing but I have been trying to concentrate my time lately to filling our holes in the NEDU collection and finding clearances for expanding the NSMRL collection since Mary Rose scanned them all. (and the Navy has provided some support to the project)

Hope this helps! -G

Rubicon is participating in the Great Human Race 5k Run/ Walk in Durham, NC, USA on March 21st. Please consider sponsoring our team. More info available here.

Thanks, Gene! I'll enjoy the browsing, so there's no need for you to do more. I appreciate the link!

Thanks again for creating this great collection of diving-related reports and studies!

Dave C