Mailing List Archive Mailing List Archive
Austin: With all due respect, I think you're missing the point. All divers should plan their dives and manage their gas. This is of particular importance for deeper diving requiring staged decompression and gas switches. Any diver who doesn't plan their gas for the dive and requires assistance from others is endangering themself and the other divers. An instructor who sets up a situation during training which is such a poor example of gas management and dive planning is doing a disservice to all involved: the instructor, the student, the other divers, the training agency, and the diving community. Maybe you don't mind diving with such a diver, but I do. I don't want to be his buddy, I don't want to be around when he is diving. Why? Because I have a lot more fun when everyone is safe and things go right on the dive. I don't want to have to decide if I want to risk myself and my gear to perform a rescue that was caused by actions I deem careless and stupid. I don't want the way he dives to be a reason that my access to diving becomes curtailed. I can only hope that the instructor and other divers in his group on this particular dive learned a lesson and will never repeat this type of mistake. I think they are lucky that they had other divers on the boat with both the equipment and the ability to assist them. Additionally, I have an issue with a dive instructor who doesn't know the procedures and implications involved with the type of diving they are instructing. The need for air breaks and watching the O2 clock is part of the basic nitrox training. It's been around long enough. It should not have been new information to the instructor. Austin, truly I don't care how deep you've been. If you enjoy your dives and do them safely, then I'm all for whatever you want to do. I've dived with Mike before, and I'd do so again anytime. I feel that he is a qualified diver and a buddy with whom I would feel very comfortable when diving deep. JS Your note: Great, just what we need. Another scuba cop telling people how to dive. Judging by your experience level, (my longest dive, 150fsw for 30 min, a cakewalk dive in my neighborhood) you have no business telling an instructor what to do or how to dive. This guy obviously has more experience than you and you have the conceit to demand an explanation from him about his dive???!@!# Maybe you don't know all the facts and it probably isn't any of your business that you do. I am glad that he ruined your day and your dive. Maybe it will make guys like you think twice about going on the boat trips and keep you away from guys like me. Mike Rodriguez wrote: Dive Report: Clinton (10/2/99) A group of five divers dove the Clinton Saturday (10/2/99) off the Tonto. Bob Sheridan of Anchor SCUBA was captain. The conditions were good. There was a light breeze, and the ocean was running about three feet. It was sunny and warm. There was a moderate surface current at maybe 3/4 knot with no discernable bottom current at all. Visibility at the bottom was about 80 feet and about 40 feet near the surface. Air temperature was around 88 and water temperature was about 76 at the bottom and 80 near the surface. I had agreed with Bob earlier that I would jump the wreck with the floatline, and my dive buddy, Mark Zurl, volunteered to jump with me. Bob set us up and we jumped. We headed down at about 150 FPM so we were on the wreck in about 60 seconds. The drop was nearly perfect. I tied in the floatline near the middle of the ship on the port side and made a mental note of the non-existent current. I exchanged OKs with Mark and began exploring. My planned bottom time was 30 minutes and this would be my longest dive to-date on the Clinton. I intended to enjoy every minute of it. I immediately headed over the starboard side to the sand at 172 feet and swam toward the stern. There were a few of the usual critters near the bottom of the hull in the sand... crabs and a few anonymous fish. Along the way, I found one of the explosion holes made during the sinking and went inside. I was in a corridor with electrical boxes, electric motors connected to what looked like pumps, and various other hardware. Near one of the electric motors I found several things that were about the size and shape of batteries, but I could see no terminal posts. I must have spent several minutes there just staring at these things trying to figure out what they were. I never did. I'll go back again next time and take another look. When I got tired of staring at the battery-like things, I exited the corridor the same way I entered and continued my swim toward the stern. Along the way, I swam under a part of the side of the ship that had collapsed to the sand and formed an interesting swim-through. I reached another explosion hole and entered the wreck again. This time, I swam down a short corridor, through a bulkhead and into one of the cargo holds. By now, the other three divers were on the wreck and exploring. I made a mental note that all five of us were down now. Continuing through the cargo hold toward the stern I found an old compressor with an electric motor. It looked like a single-stage low pressure deal. I headed up to the deck and swam further along when I passed an opening in the deck. I stuck my head in to look around and was astonished at the sight of a jewfish that mush have weighed 250+ lbs. It was enormous. I must have startled it because it immediately and gracefully swam through a bulkhead and I lost sight of it. I wanted to follow the fish, but the hole I'd stuck my head in was too small for me to get through. I quickly looked around in the direction the fish had gone and found another similar hole that appeared to be past the bulkhead the fish swam through, so I swam there and looked in... nothing. This huge fish managed to completely disappear without a trace. I sat there imagining the fish hiding someplace and snickering at how easily it could evade me, then I continued my dive hoping to get one more lucky glimpse of that fish... I never did see it again, though. I finally made it to the stern and I stared at the two pairs of rings on the back of the ship. I've speculated about what they were since my first dive here, but I've never been able to figure it out. Later, on the boat, one of the other divers pointed out to me that the rings were probably used to anchor the Clinton (which is a barge) to the bottom of the ocean by running pilings through the rings. That made sense, but I'd think there would be similar rings on the other end of the ship, and there aren't any. Maybe there were at one time. I don't know. About now, my bottom time was approaching my planned 30 minutes and I headed back toward the line. Mark was on the line headed up, and I could see one of the other divers still on the wreck. I recognized him as the one who had volunteered to unhook us, and I let him know that I was now leaving the wreck. As I left the wreck, I saw a cool optical illusion created by light and shadow playing over part of the ship's structure. For a second, it looked like large black bird perched on a railing near where the floatline was attached. A moment later, the illusion was gone. I kept staring in that direction hoping I could get the effect back, but the bird was gone for good. I grinned letting some water in my mask which I quickly cleared, then I headed on up. While moving along beside the floatline, I took a look at my Nitek 3 (which is not suitable for mix diving) and noticed that it coincidentally indicated about the same deco as my tables. This seems to hold pretty well for dives to about 180 feet with moderate bottom times. It diverges rapidly on deeper or longer dives, but it's good to have a feel for what the Nitek says on these dives in case it somehow becomes my only source of deco information some day. In the zero-current, I just free-swam near the line and regulated my ascent with buoyancy. I was still in sight of the last diver when I reached my first deep stop and saw that he was unhooking the floatline. I continued my deco as usual except that I was trying a new way to carry my tables on this dive. I usually generate my schedules with Decom and write them on my slate and keep my contingency schedules on a pad in my pocket. On this dive, I switched to Voyager, which prints tables in a much more compact format. The plan as well as several contingencies end up on one small, easy-to-read piece of paper. It occurred to me that the time-consuming and error-prone process of manually transcribing Decom tables onto slates and pads could be bypassed by finding a way to take the Voyager tables with me on the dives. I've seen other divers use some sort of plastic lamination to do exactly this, but the lamination always seem to be peeling off and the tables are always hard to read so I went to a local office supply store and bought a quality laminating machine. It was expensive, but I'm glad I bought it. This machine uses a cold adhesive laminating process instead of heat; and I think the adhesive works far better for this application. My tables stayed dry and readable during my deco and as a bonus, I can reuse them next time I dive the Clinton without having to calculate everything again. Anyway, I was at my 10 foot deco stop with Mark when I noticed there seemed to be a problem with the other three divers. They were all hanging on the line at about 10 feet and looking at and comparing gauges unusually frequently; a sure sign that there's a gas shortage. I grimaced and hoped I was wrong. It turns out that these guys had done a deep dive earlier in the day and failed to account for the residual in their dive planning (yeah, what planning) for this dive. Due to the multi-dive profile, they had over two hours of deco time pending (according to their dive computers) and had nowhere near enough gas to finish it. What's even more perplexing is that they were all diving on computers and should have seen the deco time rising rapidly if they'd bothered to look at the computer from time to time while on the bottom. This was about as big a CF as you can have without anyone actually getting hurt. To make matters worse, one of these guys is a tech instructor! Frankly, it was inexcusable. If I seem irate, it's because I am. I love tech diving. I put up with the hassles, the gear, the expense, the long deco, and all the other crap because I enjoy it so much. However, when something like this happens, it ruins my whole day. Here I am at the end of a great dive and it's overshadowed by the threat of injury or worse to a bunch of guys who couldn't be bothered to plan a dive. I ended up wishing I'd never gone diving that day, and it sucked. When my deco was complete, I unhooked my O2, made eye-contact with the guy I was going to give it to (the instructor), pointed at the MOD and made certain that he understood, then I clipped it onto him. I looked at his computer which still indicated over100 minutes of deco. I signaled that I was heading up to the boat and I left. While the most present thing on my mind was the safety of the OOA diver, a close second was the memory of my perfectly good aluminum 30 deco bottle and regulator that now sits at the bottom of the ocean somewhere. In a similar incident a few years ago, another OOA diver dropped my bottle when he finished his deco. I was never reimbursed for it and got only an apology for the loss of several hundred dollars worth of gear. Once on the boat, I got in a healthy dose of complaining. Mark was already aboard and he, Bob and I discussed what to do. Meanwhile, one of the three remaining divers surfaced. His deco went normally and only the last two were in trouble. We decided to send down additional O2 for the OOA divers. I have a steel 72 with two second stages on 10 foot hoses. I usually use it to breath prophylactic O2 for a few minutes after a dive. The long hoses allow me to move around the boat easily and pack my gear while I do this. This bottle is also along with me in case of a DCS emergency. Since these things often happen in pairs (two buddies) I have two second stages on long hoses on it. We decided to send this bottle down and clip it to the line. There was plenty of gas in it to finish decoing the OOA divers. Bob found a slate and began scratching out a message; I suggested he mention that the guys down there should be taking air-breaks due to the long deco. I got my O2 tank ready to take down. Thoughts of my beloved steel 72 complete with 10 foot hoses neatly stowed in their bungies resting at the bottom of the ocean after being dropped by a careless diver flashed through my mind. Then, unexpectedly, one of the two remaining divers surfaced (not the one with my deco bottle). He indicated that his deco was complete but that the remaining diver (the instructor for heaven's sake) still had quite a bit of deco left. This is the same guy who unhooked the line and I wondered, in astonishment, what lead him to stay down there so long. Before we managed to get my O2 bottle in the water, he surfaced (fortunately, with my deco bottle still securely clipped). We got him aboard and asked for an explanation. Essentially, the explanation was that the dive wasn't planned, and before they knew it, their computers racked up two hours of deco. Pretty poor explanation, I think. I asked if he'd taken air-breaks and he (get this) said that they weren't needed because he was only breathing 80% not 100%. And this guy is a tech instructor? I gently suggested that he was in error and that air-breaks are dictated by the CNS 'clock' approaching 100% and their need has no direct relation to the FO2. If the PO2 is over .5, the CNS 'clock' is ticking. Before it runs out, you take air-breaks or you risk a tox. How a tech instructor could be so blissfully unaware of this is utterly beyond me. Despite my explanation, he insisted that air-breaks are not necessary on 80% deco. Whatever. The trip back was uneventful and other than the CF at the end, I enjoyed the dive. I will not dive with those guys again, though. -Mike Rodriguez <mikey@ma*.co*> -- Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'. Send subscribe/unsubscribe requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'.
Navigate by Author:
[Previous]
[Next]
[Author Search Index]
Navigate by Subject:
[Previous]
[Next]
[Subject Search Index]
[Send Reply] [Send Message with New Topic]
[Search Selection] [Mailing List Home] [Home]