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Another useless death which can be attributed to the bogus buddy system. Why does the current training system dictate that, upon loss of visual contact with your dive parter, you should immediately do a free ascent and float around on the surface? The current system is drilled into students to the point that the loss contact with a buddy results in a panic attack, dangerous free ascents, and pointless floundering around on the surface. Buddy diving is preached but not trained. Why do people dive? To look around underwater. Thus loss of buddy happens all the time. The result? Either the diver go's "hey wheres my buddy?" and continues the dive, only to be chewed out by the resident Dive God upon surfacing. Or to immediately do an ascent. I can tell you that divers only do the "immediate ascent drill" a couple of times before they realize that it sucks and is pointless. So divers would rather at least get a dive in even if it results in the Dive God chewing them out. The solution? The Europeans use a line tied between the dive buddies. While I recoil at the thought of being strapped to "Mr. 2 dives a year", it seems that it may be the only practicable way for the buddy system to be something other than the useless or at worst deadly system that is practiced today. Another solution is the (oh, lord I can hear the whining now) WKPP way of having identical equipment on buddys and actually, hold on to your hats, training as a team! This would turn the buddy system from a vauge co-dependency psychological crutch into something which could actually be attributed to saving a few lives. Until that time, solo diving will still be my (and many others) preferred method of going down. Jim Sender: Alton Hall Date: 7/28/98 11:57 PM >I understand that a middle aged, female, recreational diver died in the >hospital yesterday following a near drowning on the coal barges offshore >Pensacola, FL this weekend. Apparently this was a surface drowning. The >victime came to the surface, indicated that she had lost contact with >her buddy, put her face back in the water, and passed out. A physician >on the vessel was able to revive her with CPR and mouth to mouth but the >victim later died at a local hospital. Does anyone have any further >details? Alton >-- >Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'. >Send subscribe/unsubscribe requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'. > ------------------------------------------------------------------- Learn About Trimix at http://www.cisatlantic.com/trimix/trimix.html -- Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'. Send subscribe/unsubscribe requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'.
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