Your biggest "lessons learned"

[Diver0001]

I've been diving for over 30 years and I want to start a thread in the basic forum to give newer divers some ideas of things that really happen in the real world. We train for a number of scenarios but what have "experienced" divers really learned from things that have gone wrong?

(this post could get long).

I'm hoping that other long-time divers will post on this thread and share their insights.

I think I'll do a top 5 list to keep it short(ish)

1) my first "incident" under water. It had to do with a rented regulator that had obviously been left in the sand and not cleaned well. During the descent a large amount of sand came loose from the inside of the 2nd stage housing and made it impossible to breathe. I was near the bottom so I settled on the bottom, took my own octopus and swished out my mouth. The octopus was working so I started cleaning the primary and purging it, which caused large amounts of sand in a sort of cloud to be expelled. After a minute or two the sand was cleared and we continued with the dive. Lesson learned. We have backups for a reason. Don't be afraid to use your OWN octopus. I still teach this in OW.

2) Playing the "victim" for the rescue course. The rescuer knocked my reg out of my mouth and had me in such a bear hug that I couldn't get an arm free to find my reg. To top it all off, he took it very slow during the lift. I nearly downed but eventually solved it by going limp so his grip on me would loosen and then suddenly "exploding" free and grabbing the reg out of his mouth. Lesson learned. The reg in your mouth is yours AND your buddy's. Be prepared for that. I still teach this in OW

3) On a 40m dive a diver from another group got hopelessly tangled up in a huge ball of discarded monofilament. We were diving on a wall with a maximum depth of about 150 metres and thankfully the viz was good. He started falling (rolling descending) down the wall as he got more and more ensnared. I saw this together with my buddy and we went to get him. By the time we had him pinned to the wall (depth unknown because my analogue depth meter was pinned). We were so narced that it was hard to know what to do. Lesson learned, there are 3 types of people in this world. When a building is on fire (1) some will run and/or panic (2) the vast majority will stand around like stunned cows watching and waiting to be told what to do and (3) in 100 people, 1 or 2 will run into the building and do something. Something I never forget when teaching/assisting Rescue. I'm happy as hell that myself and my main buddy are the 1 or 2.

4) As a DM we "lost" at student during a deep dive. I was the DM and another group of maybe 10 divers descended on our position and started "impacting" the muddy bottom in a chaos of flailing limbs and flippers like "silt bombs". We tried to exit forth with, with all of our students. In the zero viz, I reached forward and grabbed two divers who I believed were the students I had with me...... once out of the "blast zone" I realized that one of them was our student and one of them was one of the divers who descended from above...... I ascended with them and said, "you are now each other's buddies". I handed them off to the instructor who had also ascended and said to the instructor, "get to shore and get surface support. I'll send them all to you". and then I descended again. It was logical to the instructor since, even though I was a DM, I was a much more experienced diver than he was...... I eventually found all of the divers who (like stunned cows) waited on the bottom to be found..... Lesson learned..... Never do the deep dive with more divers than you have hands. I got a lot of grey hairs from that dive. These days I don't do the deep dive with more than 1:1 ratios.

5) As an instructor a major accident happened in an unrelated group of divers. A student ran out of air during an AOW deep dive and when he tried to share air with the DM, the DM pushed him away and panic inflated his BCD and left the student behind for dead. My dive team were standing on shore.... completely coincidentally..... ready to dive (and as I alluded to above, my guys are the ones who run into burning buildings.....). When the scene started to develop on the surface I sent them into the water. One of them had a short conversation with one of the divers on the surface and turned to me and said, "CALL THE EMS". They then disappeared under the surface. I called 112 (European 911) and soon realized that living in Holland is amazing. By the time I hung up the phone I could hear sirens and within a space of 10 minutes from the start of it all I had paramedics ... in a boat ... on the dive site.... Fire services divers with 2nd boat on the pier waiting to deploy, police on scene, 2 groups searching, a snorkeler on the surface "in control" of everyone going in and out of the water and trauma a helicopter complete with trauma doctor waiting on shore for the victim. 10 minutes. Lessons learned are multiple but in terms of scuba I choose not to give Rescue courses because of this.... I choose to assist so that I can impart my experience in *all* of our rescue courses instead of just to my own students.....

Ok guys.... I want to hear from other experienced divers about their lessons learned..... let's get this out there.

R..

 

[dreamdive]

Not believe what I hear but rather:

1. Listen AND THEN VERIFY

There are lots of opinions and even more myths being circulated in diving.

 

[The Chairman]

I've been diving since 1969 and have fortunately very few incidents. My biggest lessons though are subtle. They make my diving less stressful and far more enjoyable. I attribute my dearth of incidents to them:

• Go slow. No, I mean really slow. It's a big ocean and you're not going to see it in one dive anyway. Slow is smooth and smooth is fast.
• Keep breathing. You would be surprised at how many inadvertently hold their breath with any problem and the increase in CO2 only makes things worse. While you're at it, go ahead and check that SPG to make sure you'll keep breathing!
• Establish your buoyancy first! Everything is easier if you're neutral at depth and buoyant on the surface. BTW, if you're sculling with your hands, you haven't established neutral buoyancy.
• If you're not having fun, you're doing it wrong. Stop, even if for only a bit, and figure out why you're not having fun and rectify. Remember. you can call a dive at any time for any reason, with no questions and no repercussions. If you don't feel like it: don't do it. If it's not fun, stop doing it. It's always your choice.
• Take your time. Divers looking for a string of certs or accomplishments often miss the best part of diving. Check your ambitions at the dock and learn to relax and enjoy your diving with your current skill set.
• Learn to shoot a sausage from depth. No diver who has done this has ever been abandoned by their boat. Rly.
• Finally, take a light on every dive. Use it often and regularly. Be the explorer and find out what's in those holes or under that ledge. Divers without lights often miss out on half the dive without even knowing it.

 

[Yoyoguy]

I am by no means an experienced diver but I wanted to share an experience that reinforced my need to practice certain skills. At the start of this summer I decided to switch to a backplate and wing with a longhose regulator set-up to further my pursuit toward tech diving. I had told my dive buddies about it so they knew how it all worked. Anyways, one of my buddies (a more advanced diver than I) decided to pretend he was out of air on a dive about 7 weeks ago, just to see how I would react. Well needless to say it did not go great. we were about 60ft deep. He gave me the out of air signal (again he was only pretending but I did not know). I handed him my primary long hose regulator and started using my bungeed necklace. I then reached to extend the primary hose regulator hose and inadvertently pulled the regulator out of his mouth. I immediately handed it back to him. However, had he truly been an out of air diver who was panicking, who knows what would have really happened. This was a big lesson for me. Now when I go diving with my buddies, we typically will make 3 dives a day. 2 will be FUN dives and one will be some sort of training dive. Whether it is practicing buoyancy control, using SMB or lift bags, practicing OOA situations...etc. The theory being we want everything to be second nature for when/if a real emergency calls for it.


My lesson is, even though I thought id be prepared to help an out of air diver, I was not. So yes, have fun, but still practice your skills! Second lesson, make sure whomever your buddy is knows your equipment well.

 

[high/baric]

My story may not be all spectacular and dramatic, but it was an eye-opening experience for me.

We were doing some wreck diving in Egypt. It was a liveaboard trip with constant diving and even though we used nitrox on all the shallower dives we were pretty much balancing on the edge of no deco limit on the deeper ones. The dive plan was to descend to the deepest part first and then gradually swim up along the deck of the wreck, turning around at the bow and trailing the other side back to the anchor line, staying just within no deco limits. When we went down, one in the group had problems with his gear and had to abort, so our guide was slightly behind us after sorting it out. There was an opening to the cargo hold in the deck and I just had to get a couple of pictures from that angle. I mean, it was just a couple of meters, like 35 in stead of the planned 32, and I only spent a maximum of two minutes taking the pictures. But once our guide caught up with us and we started the dive, I realised I would go into deco range before the mid point of the dive if I stayed at that depth. At that time I was still quite inexperienced and the idea of a decompression stop terrified me. So I decided to solve the problem by ascending a couple of meters and follow the others from there. It worked well for a while, until we turned back and I realised there's a current against me. I decided to stick to my plan and swam against the current, exerting myself way too much. As a result I noticed I was quickly running low on air, which of course made me anxious and the matter worse. In the end, when I reached the anchor line I had gone into deco, was dangerously low on air and had a splitting headache from the overexertion and trying to conserve air. I finally got out with about 10-20 bars left, but had good time to think what I did wrong while doing my first ever deep stop.

So, that was the time when I realised what they mean by escalating problems when diving. As many probably know, it is usually not that one thing that goes wrong that directly results in the injury or even death of a diver. That one small, at first insignificant looking problem leads to another problem, and that to another, usually ever more serious, until there is no way out of it. This is especially true when it comes to advanced forms of diving, like technical diving, where you can't just bail out by rushing to the surface. In my case descending only a couple of meters below planned max depth for only a minute or two started the chain of events. I must say there was probably some degree of nitrogen narcosis at work there, but I have never even fleetingly considered going below the planned max depth on a deep (>20m) dive after that.

 

[RandomGuy1]

Anyways, one of my buddies (a more advanced diver than I) decided to pretend he was out of air on a dive about 7 weeks ago, just to see how I would react. Well needless to say it did not go great. we were about 60ft deep. He gave me the out of air signal (again he was only pretending but I did not know). I handed him my primary long hose regulator and started using my bungeed necklace. I then reached to extend the primary hose regulator hose and inadvertently pulled the regulator out of his mouth. I immediately handed it back to him. However, had he truly been an out of air diver who was panicking, who knows what would have really happened. This was a big lesson for me. Now when I go diving with my buddies, we typically will make 3 dives a day. 2 will be FUN dives and one will be some sort of training dive. Whether it is practicing buoyancy control, using SMB or lift bags, practicing OOA situations...etc. The theory being we want everything to be second nature for when/if a real emergency calls for it.
.

60ft, to me, seems a bit deep to be practicing an OOA drill. Also, when you donate the long hose, make sure that the recipient has positive control of the regulator by placing a hand on the hose so you can't pull it out of their mouth.... Just a bit of advice that I picked up from my fundies class this past weekend.

 

[ajduplessis]

Stick to all the rules!

 

[The Chairman]

In the end, when I reached the anchor line I had gone into deco, was dangerously low on air and had a splitting headache from the overexertion and trying to conserve air.

Keep breathing! Your headache wasn't from overexertion: it was a CO2 buildup! In addition to causing headaches, Carbon Dioxide induces confusion, a higher respiration, vertigo, high heart rate and more. You breathe as much to get rid of the CO2 as you do to get O2.

 

[Hawkwood]

Simple - Never be in a rush.

Stuff gets forgotten, things get done "slip-shod".

That's true for planning, organizing, packing, setting up, gearing up, the dive itself, etc.

 

[PCoetzee]

My biggest lessons learnt:

1) Always run a guideline to the surface when cave diving at night. I discovered that it is very easy to get lost outside the cave in the dark and accidently swim back in without a line.

2) If restrictions in caves looks tight they probably are. being stuck in a cave is never fun. And if your balls are too big then you typically will get stuck.

3) Always do S-Drills. Jumping into the water with doubles that are still shut off is very scary

4) Avoid those stupid deep air bounce dives. They will eventually kill you. There is no "coolness" in doing stupid things.

I can probably think of many more...