83 replies to this topic

[PerroneFord]

I have no agenda, thought I do have strong opinions. If people choose to solo dive (and I am friends with several people who choose to do so), then that is a risk they choose to take. Personally, I feel that solo diving is more dangerous, but that is "my feeling".

Now is solo diving viable as a cause of death? Certainly not. Plenty of people do it, and return safely. However, it seems to be a contributing factor in some accidents. Again that is my interpretation of the events.

For me, solo diving, if chose by the diver, is a personal choice and really not that significant in terms of this discussion. Far more relevant to me is the failure of buddy protocols. I wish I had a dollar for every analysis where the buddy said, "I lost sight of my buddy for a moment..."

Health issues are also going to be hard to pin down but it comes to personal responsibility. Divers who are not fit enough to dive, shouldn't be diving. How to help them make the correct choice is the hard part.

[drbill]

The diving deaths I've seen in my time don't fall into PerroneFord's three categories, at least not in my interpretation. Most of the deaths I've seen or indirectly "experienced" out here are due to (1) panic in inexperienced divers causing them to bolt to the surface and (2) health problems not related to diving itself but which are magnified by stressful situations while diving leading to death by heart attack, etc.

While I can't address statistics overall for solo diving, I find my personal statistics regarding incident rates are 20X higher when I'm diving with a buddy than when I'm diving solo. Of course my statistics are by no means a large enough sample to generalize on.

Personally, I think divers who do overhead environments like cave or wreck diving are at much greater risk than most doing solo diving.

As for the health-related issues, I think too many dive shops (agencies?) accept divers who are obviously not in decent condition (morbidly obese) and are willing to train them... for the $$$. As for the "divers" themselves, I think many of them are in what Bob Woodward refers to as a "State of Denial" (and that has nothing to do with Egypt).

However, I agree with PerroneFord that good buddy skills are often lacking and a diver who starts out in a "buddy" team but ends up "solo" and dies as a result are a case in point. However, this is an issue (as PF points out) with poor buddy skills, not true solo diving.

Edited by drbill, 11 July 2007 - 04:22 PM.

[gcbryan]

Bill raises an interesting point...perhaps through greater training we can raise the awareness of divers not to do penetration dives regardless of their certification levels.

An awareness training program that is aimed at cave and wreck divers to dissuade them from this behavior would reduce diving deaths more than reducing the number of solo divers or those with poor buddy skills

[PerroneFord]

I am glad that people are not agreeing with my 3 criteria. As originally mentioned, they are my observations since looking at incidents over only the past couple of years. Many of you are able to draw from a much wider sampling time.

I feel Dr. BIll's comments about cave/wreck divers being at more risk has some truth to it, but my comments were meant to only address recreational divers for some very specific reasons. First, it is incredibly rare to see a "bad" cave diver, or an inexperienced one. By the very nature of that type of diving, you are looking at divers with a skillset that is quite different from recreational divers, with education generally well beyond recreational diving, with gear quite different from recreational gear, etc.

Dr. Bill notes that he finds his incidents in diving are far more likely when diving with a buddy. I would ask what kind of buddy he is diving with. Is it someone with skills and experience similar to his own? Or is it someone who is generally inexperienced, particularly with scientific diving which can often fall outside the realm of recreational diving both in terms of length of dive, and depth.

[ScubaDrew]

I feel Dr. BIll's comments about cave/wreck divers being at more risk has some truth to it, but my comments were meant to only address recreational divers for some very specific reasons. First, it is incredibly rare to see a "bad" cave diver, or an inexperienced one. By the very nature of that type of diving, you are looking at divers with a skillset that is quite different from recreational divers, with education generally well beyond recreational diving, with gear quite different from recreational gear, etc.

Agreed, my comments re: training are solely directed to OW training, not tech. I think most instructors do a great job, especially when you see so many people who are fairly uncomfortable with diving at first. But I do think there is some wiggle room in the system, and that is where I think some of the problems come from.

I wonder though if there have ever been comparisons, diving deaths of trained penetration divers vs ow deaths. Do the cavers and wreck divers perish at a higher percentage than us ordinary guys?

[gcbryan]

I just wonder what the point of this thread is...all discussion welcomed of course.

Is it that tech divers are more experienced as a group than rec divers? Of course. Are they more experienced than experienced rec divers? Of course not.

However, either the point of this thread is that some rec divers who don't dive much are less experienced than some who do or it's that this inexperience is somehow killing them.

I don't see that there is a large group of divers dying therefore as long as it's not oneself who cares if inexperienced divers aren't as skilled as experienced divers. How could it be otherwise?


(as an aside, to me any system falls apart in a recreational setting if it's relies on always having a perfect buddy-self reliance is always a good thing even with a buddy)

Edited by gcbryan, 11 July 2007 - 05:14 PM.

[WreckWench]

I feel Dr. BIll's comments about cave/wreck divers being at more risk has some truth to it, but my comments were meant to only address recreational divers for some very specific reasons. First, it is incredibly rare to see a "bad" cave diver, or an inexperienced one. By the very nature of that type of diving, you are looking at divers with a skillset that is quite different from recreational divers, with education generally well beyond recreational diving, with gear quite different from recreational gear, etc.

Perrone you are making quite a liberal generalization here. There are MANY recreational divers as you have defined that venture into caves, overhead environments or who have even begun additional training for said type of diving. That does not make them a 'tech' diver nor does it make them 'good'. They are still 'inexperienced'.

What YOU see are the very well trained cave and technical divers since you live in that part of the diving world...'cave country' I believe it is called. However, they represent a very small subset of the overall diving population and by no means represent ALL of the diving population that dives that environment or calls themselves cave divers or tech divers.

And I will speculate that as more divers enter into this realm...many without as much background of diving experience as their forefathers...we'll see an increase in accidents and deaths related to this type of diving. Will poor instruction be blamed? Will specific agency philosophies be blamed? Will diver incompetency be blamed?

Or will we perhaps recognize that when any arena increases exposure and therefore popularity and people start to gravitate to it that they as a group will no longer be the same as their predecesors, they will perhaps bring habits that didn't kill them as a recreational habit but could now in a more advanced arena of diving and that we also bring an increased pressure to allow more divers to start down a technical path sooner and sooner. All of which will impact the statistics regarding accidents and death in this diving realm.

[gcbryan]

I think the single factor that people have some control over that will help to keep them out of the diver death category is to dive more. Not everyone can of course but diving more will eliminate more fatalities than any other single thing that we have control over...in my opinion.

[Walter]

my comments were meant to only address recreational divers for some very specific reasons.

Unless you are being paid to go into that cave, you are a recreational diver. Your goal is either to put bread on your table, in which case you are a commercial diver or it is to enjoy a dive, in which case you are, by definition, diving for recreation.

[Parrotman]

On a recent dive trip I had the opportunity to dive with several different divers over several days. Out of the group the diver that I felt the most comfortable with was the one with the lease amount of experience. He was very comfortable in the enviornment, he new his equipment and how to dive with a buddy. The worst and scariest diver of the trip was an "experienced" diver with all the bells and whistles regarding equipment, had all of the C cards needed to go for his DM and in fact was currently working on his DM card.
The amount of dives does not always make the diver. Because of that, I would think it would be very difficult for the agencies to police this from their end.
Logged dives also don't guarentee a qualified diver. In Cozumel a few years ago I was on a boat with a fellow that could show you his log book with several hundred dives logged. He carried a DM card and this guy was one of the worst divers I have ever been in the water with.

Personally I would rather dive solo than dive with a buddy that I do not know or feel confident in.

Just my opinion

Jim

[ScubaDadMiami]

. . . it is incredibly rare to see a "bad" cave diver . . . .

I often see one . . . when I look in the mirror.

[annasea]

I think the single factor that people have some control over that will help to keep them out of the diver death category is to dive more. Not everyone can of course but diving more will eliminate more fatalities than any other single thing that we have control over...in my opinion.

I'm thinking along the same lines as Parrotman...

I believe it's quality, or striving toward it, rather than quantity that makes the difference. Someone can have a 1000 dives, but if they consistently dive in a reckless fashion, they're not any better a diver than someone with 100 dives. (And if they've never had an accident, they've probably just been lucky. )

[casematic]

I have a buddy who sky dives and is always razzing me that statistically there are more scuba accidents... He may be right, but I think that resort courses contribute to the 'bad' divers... The resort course probably doesn't instill much sense of the dangers... people thinking that they're safe because they're only going shallow... and people who have just had a brief 'crash' course... basically people who have no business having a C card... It would be interesting to see what the statistics are in relation to divers who take resort courses ... and those who don't.... And I'm not condeming the resort course... I'm sure there are a lot of them who do a very good job (and perhaps they let the people know that it is introductory and that if they like it they should get more training)... but I think there are a lot (especially in poorer locations) that are a lot more concerned with getting the pay than making sure the person knows the physics of diving...

[ScubaDrew]

I have a buddy who sky dives and is always razzing me that statistically there are more scuba accidents...

There are also more scuba divers...

[TonyL]

I agree with Gray on this one. I don't have the numbers but would be interested in seeing them. I would also like to see the stats on rec vs. tech fatalities. I seem to recall at least one death here in the PNW being attributed to poor physical condition (terminal lung cancer/chemotherapy). I do agree in principle about solo diving because a small, easily correctable problem can become catostrophic and fatal very shortly. I also agree that there are many people diving that probably should avoid the activity. I have seen a student kicked out of the class and the dive shop for being an idiot.

Any chance of getting DAN or a DAN intern to weigh in on this?