What's with the deaths?

[DORSETBOY]

Sorry, I know all deaths are ALWAYS unfortunate whatever the sport or activity. Diving has inherent risks associated with it whether you are an instructor or a new diver. If you want to dive you need to accept that, but at the same time we all have responsibilities for ourselves and eachother and have to look at the way we plan and execute our dives... emphasis perhaps on the planning more.

(This is in no way intended to be a criticism of anyone involved in any of the accidents).

 

[Phoenix]

I dont know the location of all the deaths, but could it perhaps be alot of unexperianced divers who learnt this summer are out diving as winter approaches and not taking the required precautions? ie, inappropriate thermal protection, warm water equipment, etc
also as bad weather picks up so do the conditions out there

just a thought as winter gets closer

 

[Diver0001]

Phoenix once bubbled...
I dont know the location of all the deaths, but could it perhaps be alot of unexperianced divers who learnt this summer are out diving as winter approaches and not taking the required precautions? ie, inappropriate thermal protection, warm water equipment, etc
also as bad weather picks up so do the conditions out there

just a thought as winter gets closer

I don't think it's much different than it usually is. I think the difference is that you hear about it, partly because of the ever increasing popularity of the internet. A few years ago I wouldn't have had any idea how many divers in Florida died in a year.

R..

 

[Rick Murchison]

turnerjd once bubbled...
Nowhere in the PADI (or any other mainstream commercial agency) is anything like environmental assessment considered until the DM level.

That is total BS.
SSI (for example) devotes an entire chapter in the OW text to environmental factors, their assessment and how to handle them, with the chief emphasis on avoiding dangerous environmental situations.
It may not be worded exactly how you'd like it, but to level a broadside at all mainstream agencies that "nowhere ... is ... environmental assessment considered" is preposterous and downright false.
Rick

 

[turnerjd]

Rick Murchison once bubbled...

That is total BS.
SSI (for example) devotes an entire chapter in the OW text to environmental factors, their assessment and how to handle them, with the chief emphasis on avoiding dangerous environmental situations.
It may not be worded exactly how you'd like it, but to level a broadside at all mainstream agencies that "nowhere ... is ... environmental assessment considered" is preposterous and downright false.
Rick

Rick,

Whilst I have no experience of SSI, certainly within the PADI OW there is very little mentioned about environmental assessement. Certainly within PADI there is no performance criteria based on environmental assessement untill the DM course.

Whilst in the US SSI might be a mainstreem commercial agency, their market share in europe is very small compared to PADI, so my knowledge of SSI is somewhat limmited

OK I made a generalisation, and I stand corrected for SSI.

Jon T

 

[Wendy]

I think a lot of times diving incidents are because the diver has become complacent.

You know the ol' I've done this dive a hundred times' line.

That doesn't mean that you still shouldn't plan you dive, dive your plan, have a backup plan,

go over your gear, make sure it is working,

don't dive beyond your training or your limits/comfort level.

Don't blindly follow someone cuz they say 'its ok, trust me'.

Practice gas management.

Know the affects of medication that you are taking and how diving cold alter those affects. If you are sick, dive another day, the water will still be there. Isn't your life more important that spending 45 mins underwater?

If you are diving in an overhead you should know the guidelines to follow. Most overhead incidents would not have happened if the 'rules' weren't violated, or overlooked.

These things should all be common sense but common sense isn't always all that common.

Please everyone be safe out there!

 

[TCDiver1]

First, any death or injury, in most any circumstance, is unfortunate and/or sad to someone. It's certainly human to feel for the friends, family and loved ones of anyone who gets injured or killed. No one likes to see death or injury caused by an activity like scuba but is it any worse than death or injury caused by an auto accident or other non-recreational activity? Not in my opinion.

I don't think we can really determine if diving is getting more or less dangerous by looking only at our little slice of the pie. Chances are most of us would have never heard of the deaths in question if not for this board. This board makes our slice of the pie only marginally bigger.

Statistically speaking, how many succesful dives do you think are reported to this board? I bet not many, when compared to the percentage of problem dives that do get press in here or in other major media outlets. The point being, greater access to media news, be it internet, TV, radio, etc, exposes us to more of bad stuff than ever these days. Greater exposure, does not automatically equate to thorough and complete knowledge of a topic. Its sad, but bad news sells, good news does not.

The one thing you can say for sure is if more people get involved in an activity like scuba, there will be more people who will get killed or injured doing that activity. I believe there is a relatively fixed percentage of people who will find a way to kill themselves, no matter how well they have been trained.

 

[erubic]

So is SSI better than PADI?? As someone who is getting started I would like to know which road to go down. I already have my OW with padi and I'm now reading the book for my AOW with padi.

 

[turnerjd]

erubic once bubbled...
So is SSI better than PADI?? As someone who is getting started I would like to know which road to go down. I already have my OW with padi and I'm now reading the book for my AOW with padi.

This has been discussed many times before.

The general reply has been that it depends upon the instructor. A good instructor is good irrespective of affiliation. A bad is just plain bad.

If your Instructor for OW was good there is no real reason to change. Equally, it can be good to change just to see how other people do things.

Jon T

 

[adder70]

erubic once bubbled...
So is SSI better than PADI?? As someone who is getting started I would like to know which road to go down. I already have my OW with padi and I'm now reading the book for my AOW with padi.

Everyone talks particularly in technical courses about how important it is to choose your instructor, not the agency.

This is also true in OW. I think most instruction is based on a loose adherence some minimal standards and a lot of latitude for the instrcutors beyond those basics. I took the NAUI courses (OW, AOW, Master Diver) from one dive shop, and every course spent a while on assessing your environment during and BEFORE the dive. This was repeatedly hammered home in my cavern and Intro to Cave courses, so I can't say for sure which course, but I KNOW I heard it from every instructor (repeatedly), including the one who taught me only in the OW and AOW classes. I can't say for sure if this was the dive shop or the curriculum (or being smack in the middle of cave country), and this is why a good instructor representing a less respected agency can give great instruction, and a well respected agency may have instructors that simply don't give adequate instcution to keep the divers safe.

It all comes down to covering your own assets. This means not just following the minimum requirements according to your instructor, but listening to advice from all who are willing to share and intelligently creating your practices from this information.

Darwin was mentioned earlier, and this applies here. Many (but definitely NOT all) of these people died because they took unnecessary chances or were simply not prepared for the situations they encountered.

Have fun, but Be Careful out there! It's your life you're risking!