Why don't we emphasize cesa more??

[mdb]

Why is my buddy not there? And how long has my buddy been missing?

Who knows, some equipment failure, a surge, a shark, a heart attack, a brain fart, low vis, etc, etc. Of course it will never happen to you and your "buddy"

 

[MikeFerrara]

How do you know that's not what I intended?

I teach CESA ... of course I do, it's a required part of the NAUI OW curriculum (despite what Nemrod and others in this thread have stated). But ask yourself HOW it's taught. The students know it's coming, they wait till they're nice and relaxed, take a deep breath, and "aaaaaahhhhhhh" all the way to the surface.

Enter reality ... you won't know it's coming. Chances are better than even that when you go to take that next breath you won't get any. Now you've got only a little bit of air in your lungs to "aaaahhhhh" with, and you're stressing. Even if you've practiced the drill, it ain't gonna happen the way you practiced it. Stress will not be your friend, and panic is the real danger. No matter how practiced you might be, once you start kicking toward the surface, you're gonna have to REMEMBER not to let instinct control you ... because if it does, you WILL hold your breath.

Now let's look at the other side of the coin ... most agencies don't teach any kind of gas management skills. They claim it's not necessary. But those are the very skills that would've ... in most cases ... prevented this situation from happening in the first place. Yeah, I know .. o-rings can blow, first stages can fail, etc. etc. ... but look at reality. The vast majority of OOA's are the simple result of diver error ... people not paying attention to their gauge, or overestimating how deep they can safely go on their air supply. If you only teach them CESA, they'll go down assuming that if anything bad happens they can always just blow and go ... unfortunately, they may overestimate their ability to use that skill from the depths where problems occur.

The lady that Lamont tried to rescue ran out of gas at 100 feet ... a depth she never should've even gone to with the gas supply she was carrying. She was attempting a dive profile that would've kept her at that depth for several minutes. She wasn't even close to making it. I've helped other divers on that same dive who suddenly found themselves deep and into the red zone. It's not uncommon.

What are these divers missing? Not the CESA ... every one of them had that skill in their OW class. Not a single one of them got enough gas management knowledge to know better than to go deep on a small tank ... and most of them hadn't a clue what their actual consumption rate was.

BTW - I'm not just talking about new divers here. I had to rescue a DMC down on that same line once when he almost ran out of air. And the lady that died had a reasonable amount of experience ... somewhere in the area of 80-100 dives.

Because we teach CESA, and not gas management, to these people in their OW class, we leave them with the impression that this is their FIRST bailout option ... not their last. Sure, we also teach them how to accept and donate air to a buddy ... but somewhere along the line we've failed to teach them adequate buddy skills to make it a practical alternative.

And when I say "we" ... I'm talking about ALL of the major training agencies ... not just the big "P". Individual instructors can ... and often do ... step up to the plate. But it's the agencies who have to mandate that this stuff gets taught.

I think most of us who are instructors teach ... in Rescue class ... that the best accident is the one that never happens, because we recognized the potential problem and took the necessary precautions to avoid it. We need to start this train of thought rolling in OW ... and provide the necessary tools to focus on prevention, rather than on reaction.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

You can say that again!

 

[Adobo]

Who knows, some equipment failure, a surge, a shark, a heart attack, a brain fart, low vis, etc, etc. Of course it will never happen to you and your "buddy"

I generally don't make it a habit to continue my dive when my buddy has been attacked by a shark, had a heart attack or whatever. It might be an interesting thought process though... "Oh crap, Ben just croaked. Oh well, might as well continue my dive solo. I am proficient at CESA anyway."

 

[Gilldiver]

The out of fuel liner I was talking about is this one:

"Gimli Glider is a nickname given to an aircraft involved in an infamous incident in aviation history. On 23 July 1983, a Boeing 767-200 jet, Air Canada Flight 143, ran out of fuel at 41,000 feet (12 km) altitude about halfway through its flight from Montreal to Edmonton. The crew was able to glide the aircraft safely to a forced landing at Gimli Industrial Park Airport, a former airbase at Gimli, Manitoba. "

But back to the real world. You are all right, in well managed teams, and OAA should never occur. But, are we talking about well managed teams?

I know that when I travel for work I do bring gear with me, I'v done it to Florida, Newfoundland, Southern Calf a number of times, a few times in the PNW (trips to Boeing) etc. These are the "true insta-budy" situation - I know no others on the boat and they do not know me. There are no "teams" and never will be. True "team" diving is the few and far between and always will be. That is why everyone is considered a danger by all resorts DM's and nannied till they prove otherwise.

Get out of the secure DIR/Tech world you have put yourself's in and look around. 99.9999% of all dives are done by non-team, non-DIR, non-Tech divers in non-overhead environments with no DECO obligations.

So, yes teach them the last resort so they stay alive long enough to move on to other "safe sports" like Sky diving or work their way into the teams where you think everyone already is, at least in your world.

 

[mdb]

I generally don't make it a habit to continue my dive when my buddy has been attacked by a shark, had a heart attack or whatever. It might be an interesting thought process though... "Oh crap, Ben just croaked. Oh well, might as well continue my dive solo. I am proficient at CESA anyway."

Good on you mate. best of luck on your next dives. With all your experience I'm sure you are "proficient" at all your skills.

 

[ZzzKing]

CESAs are a last ditch resort resulting from a deficiency in skill and if divers were trained better to use team work, planning, disciplined monitoring of gas, and gas redundancy, would become unnecessary.

Actually, according to PADI, buddy breathing is the last ditch resort. CESA is preferrable to that.

 

[Adobo]

Good on you mate. best of luck on your next dives. With all your experience I'm sure you are "proficient" at all your skills.

I'm happy as long as I dive jetfins.

 

[caseybird]

What are the scenarios where alternate or redundant gas is not available? Solo diving without a pony bottle? Insta-buddy on a cattle boat? Same ocean buddies?

These things are self inflicted and are completely avoidable, no?

Gotta agree, completely avoidable. Except when it happens. Then it's CESA time.
Look, I'm not here to defend CESA, but divers use bad judgement, give in to peer pressure or forget to monitor their air. Probably on the insta-buddy, same ocean buddy, cattle boat op you referred to. My question is: Does any agency teach gas management for open water cert?

 

[Thalassamania]

ESA is at a the end of a long list of somewhat improbable failures for a well trained and well integrated team. How many hour of training and drilling go into getting to that point? ESA is a quick and dirty to solution to a very real problem, half trained divers released to dive with each other to fairly moderate depths. I wouldn't expect the well honed teams represented here to ever be faced with an ESA and I can't expect the weekend wonders (which is most of the entry level divers today. or so I've been told) to respond like a well honed team. Different folks need different strokes, and perhaps the strokes should change as they gain expertise.

 

[pir8]

So, how do you practice a CESA inside a cave or a wreck?

Why do you assume that everyones is always gong to be in a cave? Aren't there other places to dive and besides that when you do the cave training one of the first things you are cautioned about is your lack of access to the surface. ie you can't do a CESA.