Yet another senseless death

[thalassamania]

Here we go again.

I guess this is as good a place to bring up another very important philosophy! First let me say I am a WSI instructor, and have read many of hbh2oguards posts and as a working Guard he is right on the money!

First let me say that I too am a WSI and also a Course Director and also as hbh2oguards described it, "head of diving operations at a large university."

So here it goes! Your air is your air, you bought it, you carry it, you breath it, and you control it! It is NOT your buddies air in any sense of the word, it is yours to use to the last drop! Safety starts with you!

My air is your air ... any time you want it ... no problem, no fuss, no muss. I have no concern whatever that I will not survive sharing my air with you, no matter whom you may be. I am far more concerned that I will not survive if you do not have enough confidence in your own skills and training to be comfortable to share air with me. In point of fact, if you will not share air with me (something that I insist on doing at the start of every non-operational dive, and even on operational dives if the situation permits) I will not dive with you.

Just like the Guard rules, your safety comes first! Then bystanders (Fellow Divers) and finally the victim! If you understand this rules going in and assume the risk all is fine!

All those "rules" are nice, but sorry, the diving accident statistics do not bear out PB's concerns.

Panic does kill, even on fire, and in the water! Now you have a buddy for whatever reason panics and rushes toward you spitting out their reg and clawing at you! What do you do? Give them YOUR air? Reach out for them? You have to take control and have the attitude that you will control everything including YOUR air and the assent! If you have to move to the back of the diver and get control. Whatever it takes! Never ever give up your air and if you have to buddy breath off one reg you hold it and control it! I like to give them my long hose or my Due-Air and hold my reg safe in my mouth. You have to asses your situation as soon as you can! If you are in 20ft 30ft of water it maybe easer to just take them under control to the surface after releasing their belt? It depends on each circumstance and weather you feel safe helping! That is why it is important to practice these skills!

Oh ... how dreadful, how frightening, but what is the truth? In over a decade of work with the National Underwater Accident Center (where I was paid by NOAA, OSHA, NIOSH, the U.S. Coast Guard and later on DEMA) to investigate diving accidents) I never came accross an incident that reads anything like PB's description. Sorry, but it's made up out of his personal boogyman and does not partake of reality.

It is better to have one dead diver than two! You have a responsibility to your family to come home!

More of PB's personal boogyman, it just ain't ever happened. There were a few double fatalities back in the 1960s and 1970s that appeared to be the result of failed buddy-breathing, but never failed auxiliary use.

I am not suggesting that you won't share your air to save a life I am suggesting that you learn to save yourself first and the other guys next! In open water panic kills not running out of air! As you rise you get more volume in your tank! Do you make a safety stop? If you can, but a slow assent is fine in this situation! Safety stops are just that and not required stops! Most people can Go and blow from 60ft or more, they just might not know it! Reverse volume will get you to the surface!

Basically good advice, unfortunately recreational divers today do not get the chance that we diving dinosaurs had to learn to do a real blow and go, the agencies do not permit it. So rather than have you try and get a 100 foot free ascent right on your first attempt, here ... please take the regulator that is in my mouth, I'll use my auxiliary, we'll settle down and calmly go to to the surface. There, wan't that easy?

When you dive you dive to the weakest buddy! The fastest air user! The deepest penetration! You plan your dive and dive your plan! It should be a hard and fast rule that anyone can call the dive for any reason at anytime without incrimination, including refusing to get in the water to start with! The most dangerous thing in the ocean is your buddy!

I'm glad to see that we have some more common ground ... I could not agree more.

These rules have served me for 36 years and 4123 dives to date!

These rules have served me for 52 years of diving and well in excess of 10,000 dives.

[Papa Bear]

So you have been on SCUBA since you were five? Not bad! But because you never heard of it doesn't mean it doesn't happen or hasn't happened and I have investigated and been on site for the exact scenarios I have described, so it may not be your experience, but you are not everywhere! I get the feeling that if YOU don't see it it doesn't exists and nothing could be further from the truth!

You know I promote diving as a very safe activity and it is, but not if you don't realize what is keeping you alive! I am sure we will never agree on some things and this is one of them! I don't pound my chest with all that I am, but I will leave it to those who read it, think about it, and decide for them selves what policy they will adopt!

I can and have handled everything that has ever been thrown at me, but I know that many OWDs are not ready to take on all! Read Marty Snyderman in Dive training Magazine! But then again he isn't you! I think you asked the wrong people about your study!

[thalassamania]

So you have been on SCUBA since you were five? Not bad! But because you never heard of it doesn't mean it doesn't happen or hasn't happened and I have investigated and been on site for the exact scenarios I have described, so it may not be your experience, but you are not everywhere! I get the feeling that if YOU don't see it it doesn't exists and nothing could be further from the truth!

Six actually, but then you'd have been able to figure that easily you' actually read the introductions and greetings, rather than just spread the shine-o-la:

Welcome to the Board! Or welcome aboard whatever fills you jib with wind! I think you will find this board a whole lot nicer and fewer Macho Divers!

Actually when it comes to diving accidents, for many years I actually was virtually "everywhere" due to an extensive word wide network (set up by Dr. Hilbert Schenk and John Mcaniff.) that I sat at the hub of. Absent from my view at the time was, first of all, any incident similar to the one you describe, and secondly, anyone by your name that was turning in reports to us. Reports that we receive from most of the County Sheriffs, Search and Rescue units and Coroners in California. Perhaps you were not familiar with our work? Most divers were, due to the support through rather prominent publicity supplied by all the diving publications.

Our files are still open, I'd be glad to receive any updates that you can supply, please send them to Dick Vann at Duke.

You know I promote diving as a very safe activity and it is, but not if you don't realize what is keeping you alive! I am sure we will never agree on some things and this is one of them! I don't pound my chest with all that I am, but I will leave it to those who read it, think about it, and decide for them selves what policy they will adopt!

I hate it when someone forces me into a pissing contest like this, it's such a waste of time. Your post sure read like chest pounding from where I sat. I was moved to correct what you were proposing since, to the best of my knowledge it is claptrap (something that I've told you in the past, yet you persist) and it is very wrong for new, and possibly impressionable, divers like Conrad to be lead into sharing your private terrors.

As far as chest pounding is concerned, I guess you weren't pounding your chest about your WSI and how long you've been diving and how many dives you made (I'll see your WSI and raise you 20 years, 6,000 dives and a Diving Safety Officer position). I only bother to make the same clumsy appeal to authority because I don't know of any other way to effectively counter your misinformation. Misinformation who's sole creditablity rests on your self appointed stance as a "grand old sage," The only way to deal with that is to be, unfortunately, equally gauche and to ask the community to decide who has the bigger "set." I apologize to the community for that, but though I'm a reasonably good writer I lack the sophist's skill to handle this problem in a more dexterous or elegant fashion.

I can and have handled everything that has ever been thrown at me, but I know that many OWDs are not ready to take on all! Read Marty Snyderman in Dive training Magazine! But then again he isn't you!

Sorry folks, there he goes again, so bear with me one more time, please.

Marty is not me, I am not Marty, but he and I have been good friends over the years and he's great photographer and a pioneer in the use of rebreathers for photography, and a very knowledgeable chap.

I guess I'll have to ask the former students of mine who are now editors and contributors to Dive Training to expedite my change of address. Of maybe I'll just give Marty a call and ask him what he wrote.

I think you asked the wrong people about your study!

It wasn't my study ... it was first Dr. Hilbert Schenk's (noted Ocean Engineer and Science Fiction autor) and later John Mcaniff's. I was hired because of my expertise to assist Hilbert and John in meeting the NUADC's mandate (NUADC Reports on Rubicon, thanks Gene) to advise NOAA, OSHA, NIOSH, the U.S. Coast Guard and DEMA (our funders) on the cause and possible prevention of diving accidents. We talked to everyone that we could, everyone who came forward, everyone that we could find. We expended significant resources doing so and tried to leave no stone unturned. Somehow, we missed you and none of our thousands of contacts ever suggested to us that perhaps you might be a good, reliable, source of data.