What should I know about your gear?

[Herk_Man]

Once again,I am not asking about gear that my buddy is wearing.As I stated in my OP,this should be discussed before the dive.
With that in mind....I have already ran into other divers or groups of divers in the middle of a dive.Should one of these UNFAMILIAR divers need rescue,what issues should I be aware of concerning "another type of gear" not familiar to me?

It took me reading your OP and then reading all of your "read my post again" posts to figure out what you were talking about. Might want to use that Edit button.

 

[Bubbletrubble]

That decision should already be made! My decision: I will not create a second victim unless the first victim is family. I have no idea what the options are for recovering from a blown deco stop. I do know that in-water recompression is not a recognized technique and I have been diving in many areas where the nearest recompression chamber was several hours away.

@rstofer: If you're curious about finding out what your options might be for a missed deco stop, you may want to consult the US Navy Diving Manual. There are some nice tables which set forth a simple algorithm for "best practice" courses of action. We can all probably agree that continuing to search for a missing diver while incurring a deco obligation is a practice which will severely limit your options when/if you encounter the missing diver.

It's going to be pretty hard to make the distinction between rescue and recovery while the victim is underwater. If you saw the incident, it's probably a rescue. If you didn't see the incident and their buddy is nowhere to be found, it is more likely to be a recovery. In either event, unless it is family, it's a bad idea to create a second victim.

I agree that there will be a large gray area between rescue and recovery. Within reasonable limits, I would hope that the rescuer would assume that the victim has a fighting chance to survive. If I've been searching for a missing diver who was reported lost 1 hr ago, I'm still going to give that person a chance of surviving when I stumble upon him at a depth of 40 fsw. Until otherwise proven, I'm going to assume that he completely exhausted his available gas and then stopped breathing. We should all know that in cold water, non-breathing victims have been able to be resuscitated after being submerged for as long as an hour. The reason for this is that cold water may be protective to certain organs as oxygen demands are significantly reduced. My point is that cold water near-drowning is more survivable than previously thought...and I think that a lot of people may be tempted to pass judgment that the mission has transitioned into recovery mode when the victim can still survive.

I would encourage you to make decisions that would give the best outcome for the missing/hurt diver. During the search, it would be very helpful for you to be thinking about how quickly you are willing to ascend, whether you have incurred a deco obligation, and what kind of scenario will unfold at the surface should you reach the surface with the victim. That should help you act more decisively once the diver is found.

Rescue class instruction has drummed into us that the rescuer should not become a "second" victim. That should certainly be given serious consideration, but what does it really mean in practice? Does this mean that the rescuer (with victim in tow) should ascend at a rate less than 30 ft/min, do a 3 minute safety stop and then finally ascend to the surface? Perhaps a better course of action would be to do a 60 ft/min ascent directly to the surface. What should the rescuer do if his Suunto computer displays a 5 minute deco obligation? Would his decision change if his computer were a Cochran Commander? What about a 10 min deco obligation?

During a rescue scenario, the rescuer needs to be constantly assessing risk to the victim and himself. The gray area between rescue and recovery is wider/larger than most people imagine. All I'm saying is give the rescue a solid shot before pronouncing the victim dead underwater.

Dive safely...

 

[101recon]

It took me reading your OP and then reading all of your "read my post again" posts to figure out what you were talking about. Might want to use that Edit button.

Funny,the 1st responder seemed to understand very well.
I also find it helpful to read the OP before replying to a thread.
Besides,I suspect you are just trying to aggravate me because of our last encounter.

 

[DaleC]

Consensus of our group would be to hook a dive reel to them and if their BC inflated, shoot them to the surface. For all practical purposes they are dead anyway.

Did an instructor really teach you this or agree with your synopsis?

As for what do you need to know about my gear for simple recreational dive profiles?

Speaking specifically, if you are familiar with the basic BP/W, longhose bungiied back up system the only thing you need to know is that for the first half of the dive my longhose is clipped off on the right chest D ring. If you do need air I will donate it either by unclipping or it can just be pulled off as the boltsnap is attached to the reg hose with breakable bicycle tubing.
And how my ballast is dumped.

The only thing I need to know about your gear is how the ballast is dumped. Everything else I can figure out.

 

[vladimir]

Funny,the 1st responder seemed to understand very well.

The second responder thought it was crystal clear too--didn't have much to contribute, but I thought your original question was quite clear and was a little amused at how many answers you got to a question that you explicitly hadn't asked.

It happens all the time here:

I am trying to decide between a Scubapro Classic and a Zeagle Stiletto. For those of you who have tried both, which do you prefer? I have tried a backplate/wing and did not like it.

Get yourself a BP/W setup from DSS.

BP/W, definitely--take a look at the MarkV.

What didn't you like about the BP/W? You probably didn't have it set up properly--get a mentor.

Etc., etc. Or you'll get some clown quoting Stripes. Most people are just trying to help--and I know that I frequently have half of my attention diverted elsewhere when I type here.

 

[TSandM]

We should all know that in cold water, non-breathing victims have been able to be resuscitated after being submerged for as long as an hour.

The last time we went over this in trauma resuscitation, the point was made that this is true for people who spend enough time in the water BEFORE they drown to drop their core temperature. It is NOT true for people who go underwater while they are still warm. Since divers wear exposure protection, the chances are that their core temperature is going to be normal or near normal at the time they run out of gas, even in cold water. It's brain temperature that determines time to irreversible neurologic damage.

To the OP -- your concern is admirable. But there are so many different gear configurations out there, there's no way you can be completely conversant with all of them. One of the reasons I have resisted diving in mixed teams with rebreather folks is that I don't feel very competent to assist or rescue them. If I run into one that needs rescuing, and nobody else is around, I'll do the best I can. One of my surgical professors told me once, "I may not be the best surgeon this patient could have for this condition, but I'm the best one he has right now." And you proceed on that basis.

If you dive in an area where you run into a lot of dry suit, or long hose, or doubles, or rebreather divers, you might want to strike up a conversation with one of them and ask about configuration-specific assistance or rescue procedures.

 

[Sas]

The second responder thought it was crystal clear too--didn't have much to contribute, but I thought your original question was quite clear and was a little amused at how many answers you got to a question that you explicitly hadn't asked.

Yea sorry OP, I must have been having a bad day. I answered a different question to the one you were actually asking. Paid too much attention to the responses In between a lot of the irrelevant stuff I posted, there is stuff about gear removal though!

 

[DaleC]

I reread the OP and came up with some ascent specific points regarding drysuits FWIW:

If someone has a neoprene neckseal and you do not vent soon enough on ascent you can potentially blow out the neoprene in such a way that it will not reseal properly and cause flooding. This will also impact the DS's ability to retain air on the surface.

I may have a pee valve attached to a taped and glued condom catheter. Please be kind and disconnect it before ripping my unconscious body from my drysuit. It won't kill me true, but there is such a thing as "quality of life" to think about.

Also my drysuit shoulder vent doesn't really drain that fast and is one reason I avoid using my DS for primary bouyancy control. That isn't really something you need to know though so forget I posted that. Mainly concern yourself with the Pee valve.

 

[Bubbletrubble]

The last time we went over this in trauma resuscitation, the point was made that this is true for people who spend enough time in the water BEFORE they drown to drop their core temperature. It is NOT true for people who go underwater while they are still warm. Since divers wear exposure protection, the chances are that their core temperature is going to be normal or near normal at the time they run out of gas, even in cold water. It's brain temperature that determines time to irreversible neurologic damage.

@TSandM: Good point. Knowing this, how would it affect your actions underwater in a rescue/recovery situation? More specifically, how long does a non-breathing unconscious diver have before he cannot be resuscitated and at what point (elapsed time since diver was reported missing) would you consider it a recovery mission?

Consider the following scenario: Diver (with AL80 and wearing an ill-fitting wetsuit) is reported missing. You are enlisted in the rescue effort. One hour later you find the missing diver not breathing and unconscious at a depth of 40 fsw. The temperature at depth is 48°F. Do you shoot the victim to the surface like a SMB..or do you conduct a controlled ascent at a rate of 60 ft/min with the victim, keeping his neck in a neutral position?

Under what circumstances would you even consider shooting the victim to the surface like a SMB? (This is very, very low on my list...probably an act of last resort.) I ask this because one of the thread participants was advocating for this course of action (apparently his Rescue class came to consensus on it). The scenario given was a fairly straightforward one: a rescuer finds a non-breathing unconscious diver underwater. His reasoning was that he should get the victim to the surface as quickly as possible and into the hands of others who could begin resuscitation efforts. That's a nice thought, but in that situation I would favor accompanying the victim to the surface using a swift but controlled ascent.

Apologies to the OP for getting a little off-topic.

 

[TSandM]

I would consider sending the diver to the surface buoyant if I knew how long they'd been missing and it was excessive, or if I had a significant decompression obligation. On a recreational dive, I'd do a rescue ascent as I was trained.