Why would you want to dump weight?

[cdiver2]

Darlene the point I was attempting to make was it is easier to check that a belt is on correctly at the surface than a valve, valves do stick during a dive, floating stuff can get stuck in them. If a belt is put on correctly at the surface then it should stay there. The only exception to this is if you have a thick suit it is going to get thiner at depth and should be taken into account as you descend.
Velcro, I would not use it for a weight system.

 

[MikeFerrara]

What did it matter weights dumped bc inflated your not going to go up any quicker than that, then at the surface straight on to mouth to mouth and he still drowned. Where would leaving the weight belt on have helped ?

Leaving the victims weight belt on helps me...It allows me to control the ascent. If you're able to ascend with the weights in place why drop them? The only result is a loss of copntrol. No sense getting two divers hurt.

That's why neutral buoyant ascents are taught and practiced in rescue classes.

 

[cdiver2]

Leaving the victims weight belt on helps me...It allows me to control the ascent. If you're able to ascend with the weights in place why drop them? The only result is a loss of copntrol. No sense getting two divers hurt.

That's why neutral buoyant ascents are taught and practiced in rescue classes.

Controlled ascent never came into this, it was an emergency ascent,the victim was unconscious and drowning, priority in this case was surface as soon as possible and start mouth to mouth and get medical assistance. The rescue diver new he could make an emergency ascent and also new he was going to get bent in the rescue.
I do a controlled ascent every time I dive even when recovering long dead body's or rescue a diver in distress that you can bring under control. But if it is a life and death situation and there is a chance to save the victim then its an emergency ascent.
Mike I don't know if you understand what I am attempting to say but in a nut shell I think we could say there are at least four types of ascent, 1/ controlled as in everyday ascending after a dive 2/ assisted ascent, a OOA situation where you share air or have a student that just needs to be taken under control to stop them going into a panic 3/ emergency ascent the diver is going to die get the up asp 4/ uncontrolled not enough weight and they are going up no matter what they do.

 

[MikeFerrara]

Controlled ascent never came into this, it was an emergency ascent,the victim was unconscious and drowning, priority in this case was surface as soon as possible and start mouth to mouth and get medical assistance. The rescue diver new he could make an emergency ascent and also new he was going to get bent in the rescue.
I do a controlled ascent every time I dive even when recovering long dead body's or rescue a diver in distress that you can bring under control. But if it is a life and death situation and there is a chance to save the victim then its an emergency ascent.
Mike I don't know if you understand what I am attempting to say but in a nut shell I think we could say there are at least four types of ascent, 1/ controlled as in everyday ascending after a dive 2/ assisted ascent, a OOA situation where you share air or have a student that just needs to be taken under control to stop them going into a panic 3/ emergency ascent the diver is going to die get the up asp 4/ uncontrolled not enough weight and they are going up no matter what they do.

Not trying to be harsh but have you taken a rescue class?

It is acceptable to take a measured risk to save some one scaled to the likelyhood of success and the risk to the rescuer.

However, dropping a victems weights at depth makes it hard to control both their ascent and your own. You risk injury from a rapid ascent and you place the victem at further risk because you may just become seperated from them. We hear of this frequently and sometimes it takes days to find the victem if ever.

Of course it's one thing in warm water with a victem wearing light exposure protection and another in cold water with heavy exposure protection where the victim will be extremely buoyant without weights which will result in a rocket ride that won't help any one and may just finish the poor diver off but making him spit out his lungs not to mention your own.

Even the PADI rescue text (and for the most part I don't think much of PADI texts) recommends dropping the victems weights at depth only if you can't get them up any other way.

Leaving the victims weights in place allows you to ascend at whatever rate you deem justified. Fast or slow...it's up to you. Once you drop their weights you no longer have a choice in the matter. You are rocket man.

Before the invention of the BC dropping weights might have been the only option. Now though...use all the tools that you have including weights. You have your bc...and theirs...and you should have no trouble getting to the surface at whatever speed you choose.

 

[cdiver2]

Not trying to be harsh but have you taken a rescue class?

It is acceptable to take a measured risk to save some one scaled to the likelyhood of success and the risk to the rescuer.

However, dropping a victems weights at depth makes it hard to control both their ascent and your own. You risk injury from a rapid ascent and you place the victem at further risk because you may just become seperated from them. We hear of this frequently and sometimes it takes days to find the victem if ever.

Of course it's one thing in warm water with a victem wearing light exposure protection and another in cold water with heavy exposure protection where the victim will be extremely buoyant without weights which will result in a rocket ride that won't help any one and may just finish the poor diver off but making him spit out his lungs not to mention your own.

Even the PADI rescue text (and for the most part I don't think much of PADI texts) recommends dropping the victems weights at depth only if you can't get them up any other way.

Leaving the victims weights in place allows you to ascend at whatever rate you deem justified. Fast or slow...it's up to you. Once you drop their weights you no longer have a choice in the matter. You are rocket man.

Before the invention of the BC dropping weights might have been the only option. Now though...use all the tools that you have including weights. You have your bc...and theirs...and you should have no trouble getting to the surface at whatever speed you choose.

Sorry its taken so long to reply, Hol weekend.
First not taken as harsh, the answer to your question in short is yes. I assume you have taken a look at my background and would know that BSAC advanced requires deep rescue.

Now let me ask you a question, have you ever rescued a unconscious diver from depth ?. If yes then I would relay like to know how you did it and the results.
If no then how would you do it ? if not by the way it was done in the instance I gave.

 

[MikeFerrara]

Sorry its taken so long to reply, Hol weekend.
First not taken as harsh, the answer to your question in short is yes. I assume you have taken a look at my background and would know that BSAC advanced requires deep rescue.

Now let me ask you a question, have you ever rescued a unconscious diver from depth ?. If yes then I would relay like to know how you did it and the results.

I haven't ever had a diver go unconcious for real. I have, however taught and assisted in the teaching od many rescue classes and conducted rescue excersizes with divers wearing everything from recreational gear, sidemount configurations and doubles and decompression bottles in conditions ranging from thoses that allow a direct ascent to those that require some distance to be traversed prior to an ascent.

I haven't yet had to drop a divers weights to get them to the surface.

The first rule of ditching a victims gear is "Don't ditch anything that you will need later" Weights are needed during an ascent if there's much exposure protection on the diver.

If no then how would you do it ? if not by the way it was done in the instance I gave.

When I bring up a diver I position myself above them with my right arm under theirs and holding the reg in their mouth (if their is one). My left hand controls buoyancy primarily with the victims wing/bc. We're ascending so that mostly means dumping gas on the way up so there certainly isn't any need to dump weights. The ascent is a controlled buoyant ascent so I'm not swimming them up.

Using their bc ensures that if I do lose contact with the victim they'll be going up rather than down.

There just isn't any advantage to dumping weights before getting to the surface and the disadvantage is that once you do it's a rocket ride that you just aren't going to have any control over if the diver is wearing any significant buoyancy control.

Another thing that I'll throw in here is that if an O2 hit (or a convulsion for any reason) is the reason that the diver is unresponsive you will kill them for certain by dumping their weights and sending them up. You'll need to hold depth untill the muscles relax and the airway can open again. Once that does happen it isn't uncommon for the diver to begine convulsing again. If that happens you need to stop again and wait for it to pass. You can't do that if their weights are gone.

 

[cdiver2]

Controled ascent, how long from say 80 feet to the surface ?

 

[MikeFerrara]

Controled ascent, how long from say 80 feet to the surface ?

As fast or as slow as you choose.

 

[Jeff Toorish]

The truth is that you're a lot safer when they are sufficiently hard to ditch that accidental loss is almost impossible. If you have your gear set up correctly, you can reach your valves.

Darlene

Thanks the truth! I was on a dive using a rented belt, it seemed fine but the buckle wound up breaking when I was down. I did manage to hang onto the belt and get it jerry rigged on. The next day, I bought an integrated BCD.

Keep those weights on! :05:

JT

 

[ChrisA]

I was just reading a thread in the DIR section and people were mentioning that in anykind of overhead environment (either hard or soft) that dumping weight (to the point you can't help being positively bouyant) isn't something you'd want to do. I was wondering why dumping weights in a rec situation would be anymore sensible?

Weights are almost always dumpped at the surface. I saw it happen once first hand. The
diver was "semi-responsive" at the surface. If you are going to tow a diver or haul him up onto a boat's swimm platform or through the surf to the beach it is much less work if you dump the weights. This guy had 30 pounds of weight on when he broke surface after an uncontroll rocket acent from 80 feet.

I can think of one reason to dump weigts underwater. Maybe a diver has heavy set of steel doubles on and has had a BC failure at depth while in a thick wetsuit. It might make him to negative to swimm up. I'm guessing here but I know the ditch weights while on the surface senario is common and can do little harm (other then losing the weights)