Every day for the past twenty something years, the public start to my professional day has begun with a dive briefing. As I look out over the eager faces of 10 or 12 divers, I recite the days dive plan. A part of that briefing includes the phrase Let me or one of the staff members know when you have reached 1500 psi, or 100 bar. It is NOT the end of the dive, but will allow us to plan on getting you to the ascent point with the proper amount of air to do a safe ascent.
Almost no divers have a problem with this, and most days all goes very smoothly.
However a certain percentage of divers, calculated by one member of this board to be .02 percent, will flit about the dive like an energetic, oversized firefly, giving the okay sign any time a staff member asks about air and suddenly get very wide eyed as they take the last breath from their tank.
For most divers, .02 percent seems like an insignificantly low number, as in never happen, right? Well in my life, .02 percent means that I have air shared with over 200 out of air divers, with varying levels of competency and comfort.
In the beginning of my professional career, I tried to respond to these situations exactly as the training agencies I represented taught, and I was not pleased by how things went.
As my business expanded, I got together with my staff and we tried to work out a better system.
For those who are wondering, we tried;
Donate the primary
Donate the secondary
Long primary hose
Short primary hose
Long secondary hose
Short secondary hose (and lengths in between)
Spare Air
Integrated inflator/second stage
Pony bottles
By try, I mean we practiced with each other, and then dived that configuration until we had a real air share or two.
Most any configuration will work some of the time. But panicked people are a strange species, and they often think of doing things that you would not expect.
The set up I described earlier works for the type of diving I do, and for the type of people who dive with me. As I said, not politely enough before, cave and technical divers have a different set of priorities and SHOULD use a different configuration. However, the original poster asked a valid question and I do not think he should be bullied into investing in a configuration that probably will not suit his needs for some time to come, if ever.
But back to the discussion of configuration;
Open water divers cooperatively deal with initial problems face to face. Thats how they are trained, thats what works. Once air sharing is initiated in open water, the optimum situation is usually side by side. The two divers can maintain contact by holding hands and immediately move to their optimum ascent point and ascend as needed. This is the reasoning behind the NASDS recommendation of having a secondary on either side. The one on the left can be breathed by the OOA buddy in a side by side position.
For those of you who smugly refer to your necklaced octo, which you can get to without using your hands, I wish you all the best of luck and may you always have calm and competent buddies. I have had a couple of very bad experiences that would preclude me ever relying on this system as a dive guide.
The first experience, long ago, I tried to pass my primary to an OOA diver who was moving from very stressed to panic mode. The OOA diver took my primary, on a longer than standard hose, and proceeded to climb up my body on the way to the surface. My mask got dragged down my face to my chin, in the process my nose was broken. I was repeatedly getting hit in the face as this person tried to drag me to the surface by my hose. There was NO chance of me getting any air source in my mouth on my own. One of my staff members sorted me out, the OOA diver eventually realized he was breathing and calmed down, we made a proper ascent. (but let me tell you how much fun it was trying to equalize with a broken nose for the next week or so. Okay, Ill skip that part) The OOA diver NEVER knew what he did, that moment was just edited out of his memory.
This crawling up the donor thing has happened to me a couple of times. I also had someone grab the back of my head, while I was trying to donate my primary and crush my head to her sternum. While I had my alternate ready in my hand, her body was on three sides of my head (if you can picture it, laugh, I did later) and I couldnt get the thing to my mouth.
I have had many discussions with the heads of various training agencies. One of their tenets is with proper training this is a valid air share technique My argument to them is If they were properly trained air sharing would never happen, if air sharing IS happening, you can not count on any level of training.
If you are still reading, there is one other thing I must add to this donate the primary or secondary discussion;
Whatever method you use, you must practice it if you expect it to work smoothly. This has been mentioned before by many. What is not mentioned is that if you practice air sharing with the primary, you ARE sharing spit with every exchange. For those of you who practice with close friends or family members, good for you. But for those of you who are dive professionals, or wish to become such, know this, sharing spit with everyone you dive with, or teach can be fatal to your dive career!
While the training agencies have put out position statements that the risk of disease transmission is very low with air sharing, what they dont say is the ONLY two diseases they looked at were HIV and Hepatitis! Those are not typically saliva transmitted in any case. They did not tell you about all the saliva transmitted diseases, like the cold, flu, sore throat, strep, tuberculosis, pneumonia, and so many others.
I practice my craft in a resort location. I have clients from all the continents that people commonly inhabit. Sitting at the crossroads like I do, I have no urge to share bodily fluids with everyone (or anyone) I dive with. Not to say anything bad about anyone in particular, but a common cold is three days out of work for a dive guide, the flu can be two weeks. I was given pneumonia once, thats a minimum of three months of no income, if it causes lung damage, your dive career is over! That doesnt even address the issue of Tuberculosis, which is making a comeback in places you might not expect, like New York. Before I met my wife, she learned to dive in a resort location. When she presented to her doctor, sick, he told her exactly where she had vacationed and that she must have tried scuba, based solely on her throat culture. (okay, the tan probably gave him a clue)
For those of you who think you have a better way, great, keep diving, keep practicing. For those who might want to learn from someone elses experience and thereby have more good times with scuba, thanks for reading.
I'm just saying that its probably not the best thing to throw at a self-proclaimed newbie who only wants to know why he should give up his primary in an OOA situation.
