Here is the news....

[gobfish1]

FFS golden balls
No comment .

[Allan Carr]

Years ago, I had to intervene to rescue a diver when I was diving from a shuttle boat. She had surfaced out of air, overweighted and in a state of panic. No sign of her buddy. Fortunately, she was wearing a Buddy Commando with an emergency cylinder (though she had never been taught what it was for) and I simply swam up and inflated her BCD using it. Three minutes later, her buddy appeared. I gave her a piece of my mind but she had said that she had been taught never to miss a safety stop, regardless of the situation.

[Adrian]

Years ago, I had to intervene to rescue a diver when I was diving from a shuttle boat. She had surfaced out of air, overweighted and in a state of panic. No sign of her buddy. Fortunately, she was wearing a Buddy Commando with an emergency cylinder (though she had never been taught what it was for) and I simply swam up and inflated her BCD using it. Three minutes later, her buddy appeared. I gave her a piece of my mind but she had said that she had been taught never to miss a safety stop, regardless of the situation.

Fortunate the emergency cylinder had gas in it given its use had not been taught.

[Allan Carr]

Fortunate the emergency cylinder had gas in it given its use had not been taught.

I think it was a rented BCD, but yes it was fortunate. The back-up plan would have been to release her weight belt but the way she was panicking It was better to not get too close.

[MarkP]

A diver whose Open Water course dives I'd signed off went on a Red Sea holiday.

I spoke to him afterwards and he said he'd got a bollocking for going into deco on his computer. I said I thought crews often overreact and that he shouldn't worry too much... only to have him say he'd racked up well over 30 minutes and had had to have a tank brought down to him.

I doubt a bollocking was ever more justified.

Oddly, he became an excellent and very safe diver I happily dive with. I put it down to the bollocking rather than anything I did.

[Jay_Benson]

My brother becomes even more ancient later this month and I am printing off for him a neck tie for him to assemble. It will go with his collection of home made wooden ties. https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:218459

I have three other brothers so now I need to figure out what to print for them…..

[dwhitlow]

Anyway, as the old saying goes: you can cure bent, not drowned. It sounds entirely avoidable. Very sad for the victim and his family that some very poor decision making by others led to his death.

Yes, the awful decision-making by the instructor reminded me of an incident I had the joy of sharing (April 2012, BSAC 12/100).

In that case getting the casualty-in-waiting to the surface was the only thing that mattered. The choice of the Oceania on a spring tide (in low viz) as a first UK sea dive with drysuit and SMB was madness. They were lucky they didn't make the papers.

I'd go further and say when they realised his air was "significantly below" where it should have been would've been time to start questioning the wisdom of continuing with the exercises on the dive.

I've often wondered how anyone actually can runs out of gas if they are monitoring gas... maybe I'm old and like a dull life?

[Chrisch]

I read the write up and have much the same view on the matter. I did wonder if perhaps task fixation might be a factor? Under stress humans do become task fixated and the "need" to do the stop overcame the obvious real need to surface? I am sure it is possible to become an instructor without ever really having experienced any trauma underwater, the "oh shit" moment that can make you realise just how close to the wind we often sail.

I think it explains the fatality I was involved in where a trainee drowned looking for something rather than surfacing. He ran out of gas. Why he chose to search rather than surface only he knew. Again I have long felt that task fixation was the reason. I have never been able to come up with any other explanation.

[Allan Carr]

I do wonder if it was commercal pressure. The guy had paid for the course and it had to be completed. I have seen that with commercial operations taking trainees into conditions that I wouldn't dive in. I saw this at St. Abbs on one occasion when my wife and I decided not to dive because of rough conditions and we were talking to a couple who ran a PADI school in Scarborough but were on a personal dive trip. They too had decided that conditions were too rough. We all looked on in amazement at the sight of a Newcastle based company who were leading trainees out of the water but they were being bowled over by the waves.

in the Stoney incident, the fact that it was decided to continue with the exercises when the trainee was low on air is a worrying sign. I would have been tempted to abandon the dive when the trainee was having real problems clearing his ears but then I don't have to worry about commercial pressures. Reading the report again, what really puzzles me is that the trainee's DV came out twice and had to be replaced. There seems to have been so many indications of a threat to life which were ignored, all of which would indicate a need to surface in a safe and speedy manner.

I do worry about this obsession with safety stops. So many new divers have it drummed into them that it is critical that they are done rather than should be done whenever it is safe and expedient to carry out.

[notdeadyet]

I've often wondered how anyone actually can runs out of gas if they are monitoring gas... maybe I'm old and like a dull life?

I ran out of air on my first ever wreck dive in the UK. The Cuirassier in the lower Clyde, came up the shot and my reg went dead at about 10m. Luckily I was still in the new diver mindset of doing stuff by the book and my buddy was an arm's length away. It was a non-event and a lesson that stuck with me throughout my whole career. "Low on air" generally doesn't have any consequences so as a near-miss there's no learning experience with it. "Oh shit I was lucky to survive" moments are different but don't take much to push them into a bad outcome. Like this one.

I suspect this guy has sealed his fate in court with the "significantly below" observation and continuing the dive.