What causes one to drown while doing SCUBA?

[NCSCUBADOOBA]

I sure hope I'm not being insensitive or naive... but...This may be a ridiculous question, but I'm new to SCUBA and have read hundreds of posts here and I just don't understand what currents have to do with drowning deaths.

If at the surface and you have your reg in, you should be ok? right?

Do you get pushed down too deep or carried up too fast?

Do you get your mask swept off your face and panic?

Angela

 

[Scottri]

If you are the surface AND bouyant you should not drown, I have seen 2 people panic at the surface and not drop their weights and or inflate their BC. They would eventually run out of air doing that.

If a diver was to have a medical condition such as a seizure or heart attach that caused them to lose the reg they could drown. Oxygen toxicity is another possibility.

Any in water activity has a potential for drowning.

 

[radinator]

Sometimes people panic when being swept away by a current against their will. If you are on a dive site and get swept away, and the boat doesn't notice, that can also produce a bit of axiety.

 

[Kim]

There's no single answer but often scuba deaths are attributed to 'drowning' because real information as to what happened is missing. There have been some deaths due to down currents carrying people deep but I should imagine there have been many more due to stress of fighting a current and causing panic, or even heart attacks. At the surface whether you can breath off your reg will depend on if you have air left in the tank. Whatever the cause though, in the end it's probably just easier for many coroners to say 'drowning'.

 

[NCSCUBADOOBA]

Yeah, I wish they would list "drowing due to______________________" you know?
I feel like knowledge is power, and the more reading/research I do about diving and things that can be avoidable and how to handle a crisis the more questions that I have.
Okay, let me ask you this...
If the buddy runs out of air and you can't inflate his/her BC to ascend and your system alone won't get you both up quickly enough... can you manually inflate the buddy's BC underwater? If so, do you use a half breath then pull of your reg, use another half breath to continue to try to inflate their BC?
Angela

 

[Wildcard]

One BC is plenty and you have the buddy assist exactly right except Id have them do the inflating if they can. If you look at the number of dives vs the number of dive deaths then figure half of those were medical problems that would have killed em anyway, it's a petty safe sport.
Dive safe and don't stop learning.

 

[Kim]

Okay, let me ask you this...
If the buddy runs out of air and you can't inflate his/her BC to ascend and your system alone won't get you both up quickly enough... can you manually inflate the buddy's BC underwater? If so, do you use a half breath then pull of your reg, use another half breath to continue to try to inflate their BC?
Angela

You probably could but it would rather depend. If your buddy wasn't panicking and if not actually able to help, at least not struggling or fighting it might be an option. Another would be to drop their weightbelt so that your own BCD was more effective. This seems to be a rather improbable scenario though as the only reason I can think of that you might need to surface really fast is because you also have virtually no air left and are expecting it to run out at any moment. That could really only be the result of a rather careless and risky dive - not the sort of thing you want to practice for! Normally, you should have ample air to surface slowly while sharing air.

 

[Humuhumunukunukuapua'a]

You don't use your BC to ascend. If your buddy runs out of air, you share air and then swim up together VENTING your BC as you go. You never use your BC to ascend. Think of how heavy your rig would have to be to be unable to swim it up. It just doesn't work that way.

Remember your training, Luke...

 

[Kim]

You don't use your BC to ascend.

I think the presumption was that the person who ran out of air ended up negative because of no air in their BCD - unlikely, but possible. You might need to use yours to get you both moving in the right direction. Of course, you're completely correct that then you have to be careful due to the expanding air in your own BCD.

 

[NCSCUBADOOBA]

ooooh, i was taught to inflate my BC to ascend... tell me more...