Are We Taking It Seriously Enough?

[stevechesh]

I read Si's post and it brought back memories of when i run out of air years ago at 40 metres, but fortunately only 10 minutes deco, but that was scary enough. I was on a single 15 and pony. Only had 2 breaths of the pony on the surface before it was empty as well. A bit too close for comfort.

There's an old saying that goes along the lines of "better to learn from someone else's mistakes than your own"....

At the time of posting this, Si's original post had 1561 views. This post had 24. Even if only a handful of people go away and think "I'm not going to let that happen to me", then Si's thread has served it's purpose and top marks to him and Jay for posting in the first place. Fingers crossed that it's been an early wake up call for a lot of people (myself included) and we all go on to have enjoyable and "less dramatic" dives in the future......

Now who's up for a trip to bag some easy spidge....Looks like the hard work has already been done

[copperband]

Well I read the thread and thought 'F*ck!'. I also noted how he praised his training and thankfully his alert buddy was there with available gas. Si also listed the errors of the dive through the power of hindsight, I've only read it once and that was this lunchtime, but it's been on my mind for the rest of today, mentally going through dives I've been on thinking where my buddy was, well, gawd knows and nor I where they are. So as a tool (the What I learned from diving forum), it's really brought home that buddies are very much a requirement in diving, well the diving that I do at least. I did read the remaining comments, but none interested me other than that of others who were present on said dive.
I'm not saying your wrong Howard but I do believe that I certainly have learned something from Si's post and will be acting on it before my next dive.

Cheers,

Paul

[Ant P]

Originally Posted by Howard Payne

We simply aren't taking this stuff seriously enough. We need to be diving the safest possible gasses, appropriate deco gasses, executing careful dive and gas planning and routinely training inland so that when we need stuff from the toolbox in a panicked moment - it's just muscle memory.

I took from Si's report that he *did* manage to successfully negotiate a life threatening emergency by using his training and executing a OOA call with his buddy. He even managed to complete his deco fully. I would have thought that was evidence that he did the right thing in a panicked moment. People make mistakes and sh*t happens - he came through it and did the right thing.

Cheers, ant

[Clare Gledhill]

I read Bi Si's post and the responses to with the same reaction Howard but felt it was all too likely to turn into a slanging match if I posted at the time. Kudos to you Howard for having the balls to post but then subtlety is not one of your traits - whilst honesty is.

We can all fcuk up. If we are truly to learn from others mistakes then we should not readily dismiss them. In an effort to avoid blame or accusation on the fcuk up threads there can be a tendency to post in an almost opposite manner - finding reasons to praise.

Odin posts of training with any agency being able to kick in when problems occur. He is absolutely right and whilst GUE divers may be slightly more notorious for their training programs we hold no monopoly on divers who practice skills for coping with problems or failures underwater. However, this was no problem, navigation error or equipment failure.

This was a tale of total failure to check gas on the bottom phase of a dive like we were all taught at open water. I suspect a healthy dose of narcosis was involved - especially as Big Si repeatedly suggests that he didn't see much of the wreck. This was followed by buddy seperation, buoyancy issues and entanglements and further potential OOAs on ascent due to different deco gases and plans. This was no navigation error or equipment failure. No bad luck involved. In short, they and their buddy who was unintentionally left alone are LUCKY to have got back to tell the tale.

To some extent we make our own luck. ScubaJay is a relatively experienced diver and obviously was able to assist and Mark also noticed not all was well and stopped to assist. Quite why others were permitted to go past when two divers were sharing a long hose and were facing running out of gaw I cannot imagine but I don't, like the original poster, use this as an indication that all was under control. It's neither big nor clever to wave gas supplies past when low on shared gas. Chasey clearly realised this and hung about to help. Others passing earlier could have been asked to stay even if they did not spot the problem. Never be too proud to ask for help.

Every diver fatality is a waste. Rarely do we find, when we get to the bottom of what happened, that it was a major failing - a critical equipment failure so to speak. Sadly, all too often it is poor basic skills. Simple mistakes which we would all read shaking our heads and wonder how the family le t behind will cope.

Thank god (whichever flavour ODIN) that in this case they all came back. But on another day luck may not have been on their side. Make your own luck - train, practice, dive within your capabilities, dive the right gas with the right equipment. I don't think that has to be an Agency argument - but nor do I think Howard was trying to start one. He just spoke for all of us who don't want to lose any more friends to a sport we love.

[Garf]

Originally Posted by TerryH

We have as a club just done our first UK sea dive. Dispite being off a really
good hardboat with all those lovely wrecks off Weymouth, the weekend
was capped at 20m max.

Before that we'd done several days out at Horsea and Vobster, doing drills
and training. Dispite diving every weekend, I seriously doubt I'll get to
35m/40m before June.

Cautious? Maybe, but then I've got 11 others on every boat who i'd like to
be there when I return from the dive and this gradual build up is IMO one
of the best ways to remain safe.

Whether you do GUE training, workup dives with a PADI crew or are in a
BSAC club, all that matters is that you carefully consider each dive as a
seperate entity and dont get sucked up in the excitement surrounding it.

You always need to consider if you are ready. Always.

very nicely put.

It's not agency related. TDI do not preach jumping in at nearly 40 metres after months off. They DO advise a gradual build up, and always assessing if you are suitably prepared and ready for any dive, especially those requiring mandatory decompression. Mark Powell specifically advises people that the adv ean or decoi procedures course is not a license to jump in and do a decompression dive, and that it is a toolset that can be used and built upon before working up to deeper dives.

However, all is well that ends well, and in this case I suspect Simon has learnt a pretty strong lesson. a 9.5 on the "oh-shit-o-meter will tend to do that I'm just glad he had a switched on teammate nearby on the result could have been different.

[GLOC]

I think what Howard is saying is that it is much better to prevent an accident/incident than deal with the outcome. If you can conduct the dive as you were trained (I am sure Si would agree that this wasn't one of his best dives) then you are a long way to making sure that the incident doesn't occur in the first place (as both TerryH and BigSi both pointed out, working up the dives).

That was part of the reason that I asked Jay to host that sub-forum, so that people could learn from other's mistakes. A far safer way to learn them (for you, maybe not them, unfortunately).

This weekend I was with Howard in Germany doing some stuff in a quarry (yawn, I know), but it was the first time I have been in the water with an SLR and a scooter for some time and I was pretty well maxed out. Fortunately it was a shallow dive (30m!) with no deco overhead. I am doing some big dives (for me) in 3 weeks time and I need to make sure I am comfortable being task loaded.

There will be plenty of lessons learned from Si's post, he will have learned lots of them, but other people need to make sure that the lessons stay in their head and don't just pass them by. It is everyone's responsibility (like it or not) to make sure that whoever you dive with is upto it. If someone has a major incident whilst they are diving on your boat and you could have done something to stop it and you didn't, how do you think you are going to feel. If you feel nothing, then you are a selfish git and I would never want to be anywhere near you. If you say something and they ignore you, that is a different matter. To a certain extent, your responsibility has ended. Say nothing....

God, this has turned out longer than planned! Diving is dangerous because we don't have gills. We make it safer by following rules, guidelines and what our instructors have taught us. Please dive safe.

[Mark Powell]

I agree with Howard's sentiment although maybe not with his conclusions.

Do lots of people undertake decompression dives without the full care required? Absolutely and it's something I try to drill into people all the time. Complacency kills and this incident was primarily down to complacency.

But to say that nothing was learned from it is completely the wrong conclusion. I'm not going to point out to Si the specific bits of his training that he overlooked in order to get into the situation - he is more than aware of these - and is unlikely to be so complacent in the future. In addition lots of people reading his post will agree with Howard and myself that we need to take these dives much more seriously and at the risk of repeating myself - complacency kills.

In other words I think Si, Jay and lots of other people have learnt a lot from the incident and from Si's post.

Finally, and I'm going to have to phrase this very carefully, there are lots of ways in which you can be complacent. Assuming the diving style you use will always prevent you making silly mistakes is also a form of complacency. Any diver, no matter which agency they are with, can make a mistake that gets them into an incident.

[Lou]

First off, I thought, "rats, I'm agreeing with Howard and Clare and that hurts", but then GLOC gave me something to whinge about so I felt a bit better..

Originally Posted by GLOC

This weekend I was with Howard in Germany doing some stuff in a quarry (yawn, I know), but it was the first time I have been in the water with an SLR and a scooter for some time and I was pretty well maxed out. Fortunately it was a shallow dive (30m!) with no deco overhead. I am doing some big dives (for me) in 3 weeks time and I need to make sure I am comfortable being task loaded.
.

Is 30m *really* a shallow dive to brush up rusty skills????

[GLOC]

Originally Posted by Lou

First off, I thought, "rats, I'm agreeing with Howard and Clare and that hurts", but then GLOC gave me something to whinge about so I felt a bit better..



Is 30m *really* a shallow dive to brush up rusty skills????

That is the max depth I got to, most of it was around 10m as that is where most of the ambient light was.

However, I know what you are saying Lou which is why I put the "!" in and importantly there was no overhead.

[Lou]

Originally Posted by GLOC

n and importantly there was no overhead.

There's 29m of water overhead and that's enbough to cause some bother

Oh, and I should point out that I hadn't spotted howard's little bit about GUE - obviously I wasn't including that bit in my head-nodding agreement