80 replies to this topic

[Marvel]

Depressingly efficient, this SD machine. I was trying to forget it. Though actually not so efficient - Marvel wrote her post 1 hour 39 minutes too late, her time.....

Which raises an interesting question. Where are you, Marvel? Europe?

LOL! No, SE Florida- just a slacker, I guess..... but I do hope you had a great b'day!

[WreckWench]

I hope that brings some clarification to the topic. My long two cents.

Grant

My dear....a very insightful two cents it was...all that and he's cute too!

Welcome back...we've missed you! -ww

[Genesis]

First, AGE is not only a risk if one does not exhale on ascent. There are two different issues here - pneumothorax (ruptured alevolar sacs in the lungs) is what you get from holding your breath.

An AGE can be caused by that, but usually isn't. An AGE is an embolism (free bubble gas) in the arterial side of the circulation. It can be caused by any too-rapid pressure change.

There was a lady who died from an AGE at Little River after a cave dive from one not long ago. She gave it to herself by climbing the steps after an aggressive deco profile - she nucleated bubbles in the arterial side of her circulation and collapsed.

If you think you can't give yourself one from a CESA, without breath-holding, you're sadly mistaken and should give DAN a call and talk to them about it. They are in fact rather common when one makes a "blow up" ascent without holding their breath. If there is no lung damage, then the diver did not breath-hold on ascent - that's all there is to it. Indeed if you read DAN's accident reports (they publish them annually - every diver SHOULD read them) you'll find that they're awfully common - about as common as garden-variety Type I DCS hits, yet they also frequently to leave the victim with permanent disability (and sometimes worse.)

On a freeflow, if the reason for it is some malfunction switching to the octo will only make it worse, particularly if its freeze-related (increasing the gas flow rate - which you do by breathing the other reg - only increases the adiabatic cooling and thus the ice buildup!) The correct answer is to breathe the freeflowing reg (it will not hurt you to do that) and feather the valve to control the gas loss rate if you are on a single with no redundancy. If you have redundancy, shut down the bad post and either let it thaw or stay on your backup (whether that be doubles or a pony) and make your exit/ascent. You can reach your valve(s), right?

As for deep dives without redundancy, go ahead and make 'em if you want. I'm not here to play scuba police, unlike some. I do, however, believe that its appropriate to give you the information necessary to determine if what you're about to do is wise.

You are correct in that panic kills in a recreational diver context. However, it is more correct to say that "brain failure" is the root cause; brains, as much as we'd like to believe otherwise (especially when they're ours!), have a quite-high failure rate. In fact, they fail more than any other piece of equipment we take with us on a dive, which is one of the reasons that relying on one (your buddy's) for your redundancy is, IMHO, not all that well-thought-out.

Now let's think here. What leads one to panic? Well, there's really only one emergency, you know - not having something to breathe. So from that we might conclude that watching your gauge drop towards zero (or being at zero when you look at it since you can't draw a breath!) is pretty conducive to generating panic......

A huge percentage of technical diver deaths are directly tracable to three things:

1. Brain failure, usually due to inappropriate gas selection (that is, narcosis), which causes "the dragon" to appear when things go sideways. Once you're not in your right mind, everything you know you must do goes out the window. This is how you wind up with a guy who has an hour-long decompression obligation "choosing" to rocket to the surface. He didn't give up. He was narced out of his footen mind and had a brain failure as a consequence.

2. Improper gas switching protocol, leading to death by O2 hit. Grab the oxygen at your 70' stop instead of youir 50% reg and there's a good chance you die right there. Add to that improper gas MIXING protocol (the guy who decided to use a deco bottle at Jackson Blue that had 100% helium in it is a good example of that one.)

3. Willful disregard for the basic rules of overheads (e.g. the rule of thirds, guideline management, etc.)

I disregard deaths due to physiological causes in both recreational and technical diving because we don't call a heart attack on the golf course a "golfing death." It is therefore unjustified hype to call a heart attack underwater a "diving death." I will note, however, that there is some evidence that gas contamination is the actual root cause of "believed" physiological problems underwater.... there have been several reported "near misses" in the last couple of years that lead me to believe this is a hugely unknown factor among technical diving incidents. More on that if you'd like; its getting into serious topic drift territory here...

There is no recreational agency that currently believes in the use of elevated FO2s at safety stops, or, for that matter, on OW training dives. NONE. I challenge you to find any published material on that; its absent. IMHO they should, but they don't. There is no escaping that the lower the nitrogen load you have in your body, the less risk you have from a DCI standpoint, all other things being equal. There is no escaping the fact that the person taking their OW class is THE prime candidate for an uncontrolled ascent. There is also no escaping the fact that the other "costs" are monetary given the hard limits placed on training dives (e.g. 60' fsw hard floor, etc.) The issue of "special preparation" is nothing more than agency BS without foundation - it comes from a single NASA study where they were unable to make a grossly-contaminated regulator ignite when slammed repeatedly with a 3,000 psi bolus of 50% EANx, but when 100% was used, they repeatedly got fireballs. Thus, the "40%" recommendation was simply pulled out of thin air. The CGA (the guys who actually write standards in the context of industrial - read that as "OSHA" - rules) says otherwise - they say that any FO2 over 23.5% requires oxygen service ratings - period - and they must be maintained. There is not one scuba agency or shop that pays one whit of attention to these rules, but if you go look it up, you'll find that is in fact the case. Go read Luxfer's web site if you don't believe me. Here's the cite, along with further cites to the CGA (which is the controlling authority on these matters) rules: http://www.luxfercyl...numoxygen.shtml

Now, about your dive shop that fills Nitrox cylinders without them being O2 clean, and those shops that mix with sticks or membranes not using Hyperfilters or oil-free compressors......

I do not believe my argument is unreasonable in any way, shape or form. To claim that it is IMHO intentionally ignores reality.

As an example there are tens if not hundreds of thousands of cave and wreck penetration dives made every year by non-overhead-certified divers. Only a very small number (you can count 'em on your fingers) manage to kill themselves doing this. At one dive park near here on any given weekend or summer day you can count a hundred or more cave dives made by people on single-cylinder OW rigs without a single reel or spool, carrying only one $20 flashlight - and sometimes only one $20 light between the pair of them!

The last death there was quite some time ago.

To argue that people "get away with it" when they make a dive that they are not objectively equipped for (and with gear they know how to properly use!) somehow means that the proper equipment is "not necessary" is fantasy. It just means that they got a good roll of the dice - this time.

The position that "its perfectly ok to do deep dives on recreational singles rigs with no redundant gas supply" is equivalent to the position that its ok to do a cave dive on a single with one $20 flashlight and no reels, in split fins and while walking on the bottom, because the flow is high, the bottom is sandy or rock (hard to silt out) and neither the light or reg will fail often.

The latter suggestion (correctly) gets immediate howls of protest.

The former does not, but IMHO it should.

BTW, I have had a "Come To Jesus" dive. On a single, at roughly 100fsw, with an equipment failure. It disabused me of the notion of singles without a pony beyond 60fsw and began my critical examination of what agencies and instructors claim against the reality of the underwater world.

A friend of mine who did not formerly believe in pony tanks or doubles (too much work, too much money, etc) nearly expired last summer after getting severely entangled in steel fishing leader during a spearing dive last summer from my boat. Only the fact that I was scootering the wreck, and thus came back around to him many minutes before I would have if I had been swimming, (and that I had shears rather than a knife!) kept me from doing a body recovery that afternoon. We were at approximately 85fsw and he went through an entire AL80 in less than ten minutes. That ought to wake those of you up who aren't aware of exactly how high your breathing rate can get when you're stressed. It damn sure got his attention.

Yes, I feel strongly about this stuff. Having a personal near miss and a friend of mine come within a couple of minutes of cacking himself has a funny way of doing that.

If you want to know why I dive dubs or a pony on dives below 60', advocate that you should too, and further believe that the agency "standards" are dangerous to your health, you now have your answer.

Edited by Genesis, 27 January 2005 - 09:12 PM.

[Brinybay]

3rd reply and we're onto sex. Woohoo!

Is Nitrox considered Tech Diving???? For some reason I had it in my brain that you didn't get into Tech Diving until Advanced Nitrox.

Generally, tech diving is when you start having to plan into a dive mandatory deco stops (with proper training of course). Recreational diving means no deco stops. A basic nitrox cert does not prepare you for doing deco stops. I don't think the advanced nitrox cert alone does either, it's only part of the training for tech diving. But then, I have no desire to get into tech diving, too much algebra involved, another large outlay of $ for a whole new set of gear, etc.

[Sophia]

About the only part that is not fun for me is carrying and washing the equipment. Somehow, I have just never been able to get into that stuff. I welcome anyone who wants to carry my stuff and wash my gear for me to join right in anytime.

I even like washing my equipment. Carrying it, now thats a different matter.

[Genesis]

About the only part that is not fun for me is carrying and washing the equipment.  Somehow, I have just never been able to get into that stuff.  I welcome anyone who wants to carry my stuff and wash my gear for me to join right in anytime.

I even like washing my equipment. Carrying it, now thats a different matter.

Try double 104s sometime.... I have a folding handtruck for those beasts!

[fun2dive]

About the only part that is not fun for me is carrying and washing the equipment.  Somehow, I have just never been able to get into that stuff.  I welcome anyone who wants to carry my stuff and wash my gear for me to join right in anytime.

I even like washing my equipment. Carrying it, now thats a different matter.

I am with you on that one. I will not refuse if someone offers to bring my doubles to the water (or even better back to the car!). Even more points if he is cute! LOL!!! Guess we got off subject a bit. I think the doubles configuration with diving overheads is technical diving with or without cards...

[Sophia]

Because of the rebreather, my tank is only 60-something. But it's steel! Steel is heavy! People tell me how cute it is while I am lugging it around.

[WreckWench]

.....If you want to know why I dive dubs or a pony on dives below 60', advocate that you should too, and further believe that the agency "standards" are dangerous to your health, you now have your answer.

So Karl...I see your point and the same logic can be applied to just about anything...including driving a car. A 16 year old does not have the same where with all that an older person has to deal with problems, make good decisions and well basically...drive a car as well as someone more mature, better trained and most likely...the survivor of many 'near misses' that then taught them to drive better. But are you advocating that we don't let them drive...or that we require more training then the standard driving course and test to ensure that they have the skills to really drive well?

Or more to the point...is your take away that all divers should learn the basics first...then move onto learning redundancy and more detailed gas management as well as how to dive doubles, stage bottles etc before they are allowed to dive at all or just to say over 60 ft? If this is the case how many divers do you think we might have? I know I for one have opted to learn more as I've progressed in the sport...but had you presented me with all of that upfront I'd still be a bubble watcher. (And I'm sure some say that would have been a good thing!)

Or is your take away from your personal experiences and observations that one should obtain the barest minimum certification such as OW in order to have a license to enter the sport and then proceed to teach themselves the rest since it is nearly impossible to find 'qualified' instructors as you call them...and perhaps rely more on qualified mentors or their own iniatives such as you've done? While I think you have no doubt accomplished many things in life that defy traditional thought processes and practices...do you really think that everyone else is capable of doing what you have done? To me it sounds as if you are a lost soul in the wrong time continum....you need to be on the cutting edge of the sport where there are no rules and no one has blazed the trail yet...because once its been blazed its hard to say its wrong and doesn't lead you to where it should be going.

I do think you've provided some thought provoking discussion and for that I thank you. I do expect that you continue to be courteous as all our members need to do when discussing an emotional topic such as this and others we have on the board from time to time...as flaming or promoting irrational or unsafe practices will get you warned and/or asked to leave the site.

I do think you've touched on an issue that we all need to consider more deeply and not just take for granted...and that is that just because someone has a certain qualification does not make them an expert or even good at what they hold that qualification for. For example...anyone who's ever gone to college knows that some profs are good and some give new meaning to the saying..."Those who know do...and those who can't teach!" Of course that is not always true but I know several profs that I'm sure the saying was written for. The same holds true for almost any sport or area of expertise that exists in this world. So Diving is no different. However you may be right in that we don't question as much as we should. I for one would certainly recommend a number of instructors I've met via SD to anyone for instruction...they hold the same rating and qualifications as other instructors yet we all know one can be superior to another.

And of course it is fine to question the 'system' however in doing so you walk a fine line between brilliant and heretic. Or is that 'radical' and 'heretic'??? Either way...your contribution has been thought provoking and has inspired excellent discussion from the tremendous amount of talent we have within our membership ranks!

We now return you to your regularily scheduled ongoing discussion....-ww

[Diverbrian]

It's interesting that (according to IANTD, whom I have no reason to doubt) the biggest killer in scuba accidents is not equipment failure or running out of gas - it's panic. Many a body has been found with the means for the diver to have surfaced. Sure, (s)he might have had DCS, and possibly even an AGE (though barring some physical predisposition that can usually be avoided by technique), but he would have had a chance of living and making a recovery.

The second major factor, particularly among "technical" divers , is simply "giving up". Very surprising, but apparently true.

This is where learning "technical" diving is valuable, if it's taught properly. Once you know what mistakes others have made it makes it much easier for you to avoid that mistake yourself.

Peter,

I have read that article in Tech Diver's Encyclopedia. Personally it is my favorite and I have referenced it at times underwater when I have pushed things farther than I really should have (and Mr. Murphy was NOT on vacation that day). Those aren't stories for open boards. I knew better, pushed it, insisted on making it out and I did. Lessons learned from the screw-ups, end of story!

Thanks for referencing it!

[Genesis]

So Karl...I see your point and the same logic can be applied to just about anything...including driving a car.  A 16 year old does not have the same where with all that an older person has to deal with problems, make good decisions and well basically...drive a car as well as someone more mature, better trained and most likely...the survivor of many 'near misses' that then taught them to drive better. But are you advocating that we don't let them drive...or that we require more training then the standard driving course and test to ensure that they have the skills to really drive well?

You raise an interesting parallel. Are you sure you wanted to?

When I took my driving test, the examiner got in the car, had me pull out of the DMV parking lot, drive around the block and parallel park. If you accomplished this you were issued an unrestricted driver license and immediately thereafter were free to go drive on any road, in any conditions (ice, snow, blinding rain, night, limited vis, overhead - oops, I meant in a tunnel!) that you, as that driver, deemed "ok".

Yet I was not tested in any of these "enhanced risk" environments. Indeed, during the driving test I never exceeded 25mph! There was no evidence presented of any sort that I was qualified to operate a motor vehicle on a freeway, in rain, on snow-covered roads, in icing conditions, at night or in a driving rainstorm. Yet that driver license "test" said I was free to do any of the above - as I deemed appropriate, in my sole personal judgment, comparing the risk of same against my personal belief in my experience, expertise and ability.

When I got my motorcycle endorsement many years ago I was required to ride two figure 8s around three cones and when the examiner stepped in my path to stop without hitting him. That constituted a "pass". Immediately thereafter I was qualified not only to ride said motorcycle, but to carry a passenger on the back - even though they'd never seen me do that either. And again, I could (even though it might be suicidal) choose to ride that motorcycle in the snow, rain, etc.

Or more to the point...is your take away that all divers should learn the basics first...then move onto learning redundancy and more detailed gas management as well as how to dive doubles, stage bottles etc before they are allowed to dive at all or just to say over 60 ft? If this is the case how many divers do you think we might have?

No. But that is the logical conclusion of the path that those who take the opposing point of view to my position.

It is my position that as the only person who will die or be seriously injured if you screw up, it is your place alone to choose the equipment you will take with you, the level of experience you must have, the gas(es) you select, the day you choose to dive (a site that is one day simple may on another be tremendously difficult due to environmental considerations), with whom you choose to dive, if anyone (a buddy can kill you just as they can save you), etc.

You can shove 27 pages of waiver under my nose and that's perfectly fine - I fully accept and understand that it is my decision alone to dive on any given day, and that if I am uncomfortable for any reason I have the right - and responsibility - to stick up my thumb, from the parking lot onward.

In short, it is my position that a 'certification card' (at any level, including OW) is a personal achievement award which one should choose to procure, or not, as one elects. How one elects to learn is and should be one's own free choice.

C-cards are specifically not intended to be licenses. So says every agency in their official pronouncements.

However, it is the position of those who demand that I produce one that it is a license.

The problem with this is that the industry has turned itself inside-out due to the lack of external regulation (good), yet has promulgated the idea that its "certifications" are in fact licenses (bad).

Indeed, the only valid use of a certification card is by an agency itself in determining if you may take the next class.

In other words, let's say you want to be a 'cave diver'. An agency might require:

OW
AOW
(Maybe Rescue)
Cavern
Intro/Cave

and, if you wish

Apprentice/Full Cave

with some number of dives cumulatively between each.

There is no problem whatsoever with the agency saying "you must present a Cavern card to take Intro." Why? Because that is an entirely internal decision with no external consequence and no regulatory - that is, no licensing - framework.

But that's not what they've done.

Instead, they've promoted and pushed onto unaffiliated third parties their "certifications" as licenses. So now, when you show up at Key Largo and want to dive the Grove, you must present an AOW card to do so. If you have that card at home, you don't get on the boat. That's the definition of a license!

Under what regulatory framework did that card turn into a license, and exactly where did the authority to do that come from? Regulatory authority in the form of licensing comes from laws, passed through a legislature, and subject to the will of the people. This metamorphasis has gone through none of that - it was established simply by fiat, driven by money.

Last summer before driving down to Key Largo I called over a dozen Keys dive shops, and put on the table the following question:

"What is required to dive the Grove?"

I was told the requirement was an AOW card. I then asked if I presented a log from my computer download (darn hard to fake!) showing well north of 100 dives below 100', a bunch involving mandatory staged decompression, a significant number in hard overheads including caves, and a lifetime total of dives in the hundreds if this was ok instead.

The answer was no. No AOW card, no trip. Period. Oh, but we'll sell you the AOW class while you're here for $300, was the reply!

So now "voluntary" certifications have been turned into licenses. And it has happened because a lot of people have pushed the idea that one must do things "their way", or you're "unsafe."

They did this without any peer review, without a shread of examination of their claims in the open, public forum of debate, without the approval of any elected body, indeed, without any sort of check and balance at all!

The cynic in me says that when PADI and others decided to turn the "diver" class into 57 varieties of specialties, it was done in no small part for the purpose of turning divers back into revenue streams via "continuing education" requirements, and at the same time they 'dumbed down' the OW class to get you "hooked", so they had a captive audience. Thus, having spent $200, you now are "roped" into just another $200, or $400, or $1500 to actually do that dive you want - as a price of admission, not necessarily to prove competence.

I have no quarrel with anyone choosing any path for their learning that they find appropriate for them. There are many different ways of learning a thing, and we all respond differently to different approaches, venues, and methods. What works for one does not work for another. One person may be able to compute no-stop times in their head (its actually not all that difficult, once you recognize a few basic facts and ratios - but if the agencies taught THAT, then they couldn't sell you those pretty plastic "tables" any more, could they?), while another needs the tables, a wheel, or even a computer to be sure they've done it right. I've seen an OW diver miscompute his tables for his second dive, and only by the Grace of God did he not end up bent (he was over the no-stop time by nearly 10 minutes - which he realized once back on the boat!)

What I quarrel with is a position that turns what I, and every other diver, was sold in their first OW class onward into an act of fraud by conversion (of money in one's wallet) and a bar across the boarding gate at the dock. That is the position that one's C-cards are in fact licenses, much like an instrument rating on a private-pilots license.

If the agencies and industry want to promote this, then I will demand (in court if I'm forced to!) that said procedures are vetted by a government agency, that one be tested by independant, licensed examiners affiliated with said agency, that said testing be decoupled from teaching or any other revenue-producing act of any private firm, and that enforcement be even-handed, effective for all, and that it all be done "in the sunshine" where the public can view and comment on the proceedings and results.

I believe (speaking as a businessman who has been in biz for more than 20 years, not as a lawyer) there is a valid class-action lawsuit here under the consumer fraud statutes in most states if this continues much further than it has already, and as defendants I'd say that every 'professional' in the business, every land-based dive site with said restrictions, every boat operator, and every agency could wind up being named.

You simply can't sell something to someone as one thing when it is another thing entirely. That's illegal everywhere. IMHO either certifications are voluntary or they're licenses - there is no middle ground.

Further, I believe that instructors and agencies, should they wish to enforce certification paths, must (under the general principles of the law) take responsibility for their errors and omissions - not to mention negligence. No agency or instructor has any business demanding that I comply with a "mandatory licensing" scheme that requires I use their services, when they then force me as a condition of using that scheme to sign away my (and my heirs!) right to sue them if they screw up and injure or kill me. By definition someone who claims to be a professional must take responsibility for their actions - otherwise they are not, indeed, a professional at all. If such insturctional waivers were banned then you'd have agencies suddenly become very interested in the quality of their instructors, for obvious reasons.....

Until that time I reserve the right to treat 'certification' as what it was sold to me as being - a voluntary system demonstrating achievement for personal purposes, and not a license. I will patronize those firms that recognize this fact, and will avoid spending money with those who wish to abuse what I was sold from the first time I stepped into a dive shop. If I choose to make exceptions to this, for access to sites that I consider worth compromising my principles upon, it will be at my discretion and initiative - and not due to arm-twisting.

And of course it is fine to question the 'system' however in doing so you walk a fine line between brilliant and heretic.  Or is that 'radical' and 'heretic'??? Either way...your contribution has been thought provoking and has inspired excellent discussion from the tremendous amount of talent we have within our membership ranks! 

Of course I'm a heretic. But isn't heresy the foundation of all positive change? When you stop asking questions and refuse to challenge a person who has sold you a bill of goods, then you become a sheep - and ultimately you find yourself shorn.

The problem here is that being 'shorn' can leave you crippled or even dead. Anyone who argues that the current system is 'working' is simply not paying attention or is willfully blind. Attendance at DEMA is in the tank, both for manufacturers and dealers. Equipment sales are likewise in the tank. The divers one sees these days in the ocean and otherwise are disgracefully bad - and most of them don't even know it. I nearly puked through my reg last summer on a dive at the Benwood in Key Largo with all the OW folks standing on the Coral - that's damage that will take tens if not hundreds of years to be repaired. Are those folks "certifyable?" Obviously someone thinks so. I think they paid their $300 for nothing, and that the actual value they received in dive instruction could have been summed up in one sentence: "Don't hold your breath."

I have not and will not advocate that anyone follow any particular path in their diving or education. Indeed, the only advice I give in that regard is one that I believe leaves you with the safest possible set of conditions for your underwater activities:

Never, under any circumstances, not even with an instructor, make any dive with which you are not comfortable or in which you need to rely on any other member of your dive team, at any time, for your safety.

This can be shortened to "Never make 'trust-me' dives", so long as one recognizes that there are no exceptions to that rule, no matter who you are diving with, why, or in what role.

How anyone can argue that such a position advocates "unsafe" behavior is something I've repeatedly asked for an explanation of - without constructive response.

[TraceMalin]

Sophia,

All you need to know is that tanks and stage bottles are simply phallic symbols. The more tanks a guy has and the bigger they are, the smaller his condom catheter will be.

P.S. Grant & I just use snorkels most of the time. Take from that what you will.

Trace

[fun2dive]

You should see the size of the cath's Genesis has... VERY IMPRESSIVE!!!

[ScubaDadMiami]

I even like washing my equipment.

Hmmm. Are you single and available?

If you would have been into carrying gear, we could have starting discussing the marriage right now.

Edited by ScubaDadMiami, 28 January 2005 - 03:51 PM.

[jextract]

Thanks for the posts, Gen. Great things to roll around in my skull. I have seen instructors first hand who push students straight from OW into AOW without them mastering basic skills, let alone buoyancy. A handful of dives later, they are virtually no better but are hundreds of dollars poorer. This is the 'qualification' that dive operators require to do more difficult dives? I think that examination of dive logs and personal verification via check-out dives is far more telling of readiness than any marketing-driven plastic-card system could be. I will grant that the card is intended to act as a proxy for true skill attainment and experience, but the current system has left me very, VERY disillusioned. I would submit that my agency (PADI), and maybe others as well, needs to implement the old "mystery shopper" quality control mechanism, as an example, because the current code of silence is troubling at best. It seems as though the higher I've progressed in my training (DM and holding, currently), the greater the epiphany that the "diving business" is business first and diving a distant second.