This is why I joined this site
If you read my introduction, I am a very new diver. This is why I joined this site. Iformation is critical when starting new adventures. Even more important when that adventure places you in a different enviroment. I only have 8 shallow dives and need a lot more practice before I consider myself qualified. But this artical to me sounds like a person that placed themselves in a situation they were ill prepared for. Just my opinion!
Dive WELL within your ability and with expiereced divers and you should learn a ton in no time. Well I was reading my previous post and I've realized that a class once in a while can't hurt especially when it's with four other girls. Oh the joys of school, also the instructor is very knowledgable but I guess that's expected if your the head of diving operations at a large university.
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!
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! 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!
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!
It is better to have one dead diver than two! You have a responsibility to your family to come home! 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!
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!
These rules have served me for 36 years and 4123 dives to date!
Last edited by Papa Bear; 02-13-2008 at 05:54 AM.
May all your dreams be wet ones!Visit us at Twotankedproductions.com
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Well thank you papa, I couldn't agree more, great post. You have WAY WAY WAY more dives than I do. Buy anyway one victim is ALWAYS better than two. If you aren't trained and know how to deal with a situation you might have to watch someone die right if front of you. Just remember what papa said, it's your ass then anyone elses. Here's a very good example that happend recently. Two guys went out swimming in the middle of the night, one wasn't that strong of a swimmer in the ocean and shouldn't have been out there and the other was a pool lifeguard. He thought he could save his buddy, well he couldn't and they both ended up dead. By no means am I telling you not to try to help just DO NOT help if you don't know EXACTLY what to do because you might very well pay the ultimate price. Respect the ocean, lake, river, or what every body of water you are in and know your limits. If you're not comfortable or atleast in control of the situation something is wrong, and do something to fix that, like exiting.
Here we go again.
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."Originally Posted by Papa Bear
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.All those "rules" are nice, but sorry, the diving accident statistics do not bear out PB's concerns.
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.
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.
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?
I'm glad to see that we have some more common ground ... I could not agree more.
These rules have served me for 52 years of diving and well in excess of 10,000 dives.
Last edited by thalassamania; 02-14-2008 at 05:44 AM.
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!
May all your dreams be wet ones!
Reed's Rod dive Tool Please help save the worlds Coral reefs! http://safemooringfoundation.org/
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
Last edited by thalassamania; 02-14-2008 at 07:42 AM.
I would agree with acelockco when he says:
The dive training agencies are lacking and again are concerned about getting training classes and of course profits from them. They want as many certified divers as they can get out there so they can sell more classes and more gear.
If they would focus on really lengthy and in-depth training, forget trying to make everyone pass. I always see people in SCUBA class that I honestly feel should not be diving because they just don't feel comfortable and can't ever perform things right without help. Those people will usually panic in an emergency. BUT we have to teach them and get them certified, because the agencies tell us so. They will always get certified even if they have to take the entire class again, unless they quit. So even if they don't belong in the water, eventually they will be certified if they really want it.
They say PADI stands for Push Another Diver In! Although it isn't just them who try to certify everyone regardless of ability. A couple of years ago I did an SSI course - Nitrox whilst on holiday in the Maldives. We were given 1 day to learn the information - I expressed concern to the instructor that I didn't really understand all the complicated formulas etc. I was told 'don't worry you will be fine'. I took the test and he then said 'you need 1 more mark to pass - try some of the questions again.' I told him I couldn't because I didn't understand it. To which he replied 'well just guess you never know you may be right (it was the normal multi-choice). I told hime I wouldn't and I would rather fail as I didn't want to pass when I didn't understand it - I would hardly be a safe diver through guessing!He then sat and explained the formula to me properly using another example, leaving me to complete the test one. This I was able to do. I can only assume he hadn't the time or inclination to spend time with me in the first place. I haven't used Nitrox to this day because in all honesty I don't feel qualifed/confident and I think this is down to rushed training and not enough support!!!!!
Yes it does look like chest pounding and we know who is pounding! No one will ever kill themselves under my way, your way? Hummmm? You haven't been notified of many incidents that that never get reported because they don'y happen under the oversight of a county sheriff or coast guard! The Grand Bahama story I have told was not reported to anyone! No statements were taken and no record was kept except by Blackbeards and those of us involved!
Panic kills in open water and the vast majority of drowning happen on the surface! Many others happen by panicked divers and their buddies who do not take control! If it were not such a potential problem that many of us have seen, then why would your "Buddy" talk about how he "would share his air with an OOA diver on one of his dive trips"? He must be concerned? Whata think?
I will continue to share my point of view and philosophy because the life you save maybe your own! I have to say I really think you like to demonstrate how important, but yet unknown, you are! I am not trying to diminish your accomplishments, like you seem to be doing to me, but I too am a legend in my own mind!
Technically I have been snorkeling since before I was born!
All my caution is about one thing getting trained and being comfortable in the water! It is also about knowing your limitations as well! Anyone can dive as long as it is within their own limits! Even safe for five year olds if done within their limits, but then you might expect one to control an out of control diver at 60ft? Or I know you have done that too? By your own standard your father was a negligent parent putting you at risk? I think it was fine, because he know your limitations!
The sad thing is you might have been the Hero that the industry has needed? Too bad all your friends didn't see that trait in you and put you before the camera! You might have been the new Cousteau that we need so much!
Dude, peace out, chill, smile, get a sense of humor, and stop taking the time to break down every post of mine and simple say "You disagree" and state your position! Then people can read and judge for themselves or do you think you have to do that for them too?
May all your dreams be wet ones!
Reed's Rod dive Tool Please help save the worlds Coral reefs! http://safemooringfoundation.org/
Bubbles, as a friend of mine, who retired from the MWD with over 15000 dives, said to my daughter in the same situation "Remember the number one rule"! Breath! If you don't feel comfortable with the concept it is your responsibility to approach him or another instructor to find out why your not getting it! All instructors can't be all things to all people! My daughter never meshed with hers, but when Frank (see Above) Mac Genus showed her she got it! So sometimes, just like here, we all don't mesh for whatever reason!I would agree with acelockco when he says:
The dive training agencies are lacking and again are concerned about getting training classes and of course profits from them. They want as many certified divers as they can get out there so they can sell more classes and more gear.
If they would focus on really lengthy and in-depth training, forget trying to make everyone pass. I always see people in SCUBA class that I honestly feel should not be diving because they just don't feel comfortable and can't ever perform things right without help. Those people will usually panic in an emergency. BUT we have to teach them and get them certified, because the agencies tell us so. They will always get certified even if they have to take the entire class again, unless they quit. So even if they don't belong in the water, eventually they will be certified if they really want it.
They say PADI stands for Push Another Diver In! Although it isn't just them who try to certify everyone regardless of ability. A couple of years ago I did an SSI course - Nitrox whilst on holiday in the Maldives. We were given 1 day to learn the information - I expressed concern to the instructor that I didn't really understand all the complicated formulas etc. I was told 'don't worry you will be fine'. I took the test and he then said 'you need 1 more mark to pass - try some of the questions again.' I told him I couldn't because I didn't understand it. To which he replied 'well just guess you never know you may be right (it was the normal multi-choice). I told hime I wouldn't and I would rather fail as I didn't want to pass when I didn't understand it - I would hardly be a safe diver through guessing!
But remember don't let a misunderstanding or a poor to you instructor hold you back!
May all your dreams be wet ones!
Reed's Rod dive Tool Please help save the worlds Coral reefs! http://safemooringfoundation.org/
