Your biggest "lessons learned"

[FinnMom]

Remember that heavy or clumsy dive gear might hold our face underwater and create a drowing risk in amazingly shallow water. With our gear on we non-sidemount people all have a fair amount of weight on our backs. It's light enough underwater but in the shallows or on a dock you need to be careful that you don't fall, trip or roll and end up with your face underwater and no reg available. You might be in only 15" of water but among slippery rocks or with fins on it can take amazingly long to get up. I had a scary situation once almost getting knocked off a dock wearing doubles with no regs attached. I would have ended up on my back in 2m of murky water with a desperate need to get those tanks off fast.

Make sure you have a reg avalable and always be mindful of how very much you do not want to fall, get hurt, break equipment, maybe miss some dives. Take it easy, take it slow, think about what you are doing and get there intact.

 

[JBFG]

always verify that your drysuit zipper is ziped all the way. Always.

 

[Neilwood]

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..

What I wonder is what happened to the DM? Did someone have a quiet word with him?:chairfight:

 

[Diver0001]

What I wonder is what happened to the DM? Did someone have a quiet word with him?:chairfight:

In the criminal case he was acquitted. His defense in court was to claim (whether true or not) that he felt his life was in imminent danger and in Dutch law you are never legally required to help anyone, even if you are charged with their safety, if you believe your life is in imminent danger by doing so.

In the civil case he was found liable and sued to the ground.

I guess it's changed my thinking about diving somewhat. I was pretty risk averse as an instructor before this case but since then my "trouble radar" has doubled in size. I'm fortunate because I work in a team with a lot of experienced DM's and instructors who I've known for a long time. However, when assembling a dive team, I'm really looking for what I call the type-3 people.

To me there are three types of people. Ones who when a building is on fire, tend to panic (that was the case with the DM in question), ones who stand around waiting for someone else to do something and ones who pick up an extinguisher and start fighting the fire. The third type are actually pretty rare in my experience. If you have ever been at the scene of a major car accident you'll notice that out of the 100 people standing and watching the show, 2 or 3 are up to their elbows in helping. If you're not one of those then I've become pretty picky about not selecting you to work with.

R..

 

[Neilwood]

In the criminal case he was acquitted. His defense in court was to claim (whether true or not) that he felt his life was in imminent danger and in Dutch law you are never legally required to help anyone, even if you are charged with their safety, if you believe your life is in imminent danger by doing so.

In the civil case he was found liable and sued to the ground.

I guess it's changed my thinking about diving somewhat. I was pretty risk averse as an instructor before this case but since then my "trouble radar" has doubled in size. I'm fortunate because I work in a team with a lot of experienced DM's and instructors who I've known for a long time. However, when assembling a dive team, I'm really looking for what I call the type-3 people.

To me there are three types of people. Ones who when a building is on fire, tend to panic (that was the case with the DM in question), ones who stand around waiting for someone else to do something and ones who pick up an extinguisher and start fighting the fire. The third type are actually pretty rare in my experience. If you have ever been at the scene of a major car accident you'll notice that out of the 100 people standing and watching the show, 2 or 3 are up to their elbows in helping. If you're not one of those then I've become pretty picky about not selecting you to work with.

R..

Having done a lot of first aid in my past, I know exactly what you mean (I tend to be one of those getting my hands dirty so long as I am not getting in the road of professionals).

Hard to comment without having been there in that situation (I'm not even certified yet) but I would hope that my dive buddies would be there for me and in particular the "professionals" that I am paying to look after my life!

I realise, from reading a number of posts on here, that it is best to treat every dive like a solo (with regards to being the person in charge of your own well being) but to abandon someone in an OOA situation sends chills down my spine.

 

[divin'dog]

Remember that heavy or clumsy dive gear might hold our face underwater and create a drowing risk in amazingly shallow water. With our gear on we non-sidemount people all have a fair amount of weight on our backs. It's light enough underwater but in the shallows or on a dock you need to be careful that you don't fall, trip or roll and end up with your face underwater and no reg available. You might be in only 15" of water but among slippery rocks or with fins on it can take amazingly long to get up. I had a scary situation once almost getting knocked off a dock wearing doubles with no regs attached. I would have ended up on my back in 2m of murky water with a desperate need to get those tanks off fast.

Make sure you have a reg available and always be mindful of how very much you do not want to fall...

+1^
I am continually surprised by the number of divers I see getting into the water (shore dive) with an active surf who have their regs hanging off their backside and no thought about the danger of slipping, tripping on the rocks on the way out. One slip in 3' of water with a nice surf coming in, a non-inflated BC and no way to get a hold of your reg is a bad recipe. I see it all the time here in NE.

 

[Iralub]

In the civil case he was found liable and sued to the ground.

R..

Good. That a DM can't execute an air share and would just leave an ooa student in deep water is horrifying. A student is, by definition, relying on the professional looking after him/her.

 

[phlegm]

I realised I'd been way too nonchalant about how close to stay to my buddy. He inexplicably ran out of air ten minutes into the dive, and had to swim about 10-15 metres to me. He then forgot to signal out of air, but the panicked expression said it all. I dive a long hose primary so it was easy to just hand him my reg, then locate my short hose backup. I think that system saved us, as my buddy was not thinking straight and would have grabbed the reg out of my mouth no matter what my house configuration was.

 

[KevinNM]

+1^
I am continually surprised by the number of divers I see getting into the water (shore dive) with an active surf who have their regs hanging off their backside and no thought about the danger of slipping, tripping on the rocks on the way out. One slip in 3' of water with a nice surf coming in, a non-inflated BC and no way to get a hold of your reg is a bad recipe. I see it all the time here in NE.

I got yelled at that by an instructor in a recent course about that. We were just strolling out on the dock. Yeah, bad idea.

 

[Phantom Menace]

To toss a slightly different comment out there (different in this forum at least ).

The biggest lesson I have learnt in the last couple of years is that you don't need any underwater breathing apparatus to see/do most things a recreational SCUBA diver sees/does.

Check out freediving - it is not just for the young, super fit types (and the lack of heavy gear is just awesome).