Its getting louder.

Scott


----- Original Message -----
From: "Joe Emenaker" <joe@em*.co*>
Newsgroups: rec.scuba
Sent: Thursday, July 13, 2000 12:00 AM
Subject: "SCUBA Fight Club"


> My girlfriend and I got open-water certified through PADI a few weeks ago.
> Last weekend, we went on a dive boat to the California Channel Islands for
a
> day trip.
>
> On her third dive, with another buddy, she somehow got her regulator
pulled
> from her mouth at about 45'. She got a good breath of sea water and
> panicked. She shot straight to the top.
>
> Long story made short, a Coast Guard helicopter picked her off the boat
and
> took her off to get tanked for 5 hours.
>
> This has left me with 2 questions.
>
> First, I'm a little disappointed with the PADI instruction. We were
required
> to do partial and full mask floods in closed and open water. We were also
> required to remove/replace our mask and reg (not at the same time) in
closed
> and open water.
>
> However, when removing our mask or regulator, we always got to remove them
> when WE were damn good and ready... which usually means after finishing
> taking a breath. Now, having almost gotten my regulator pulled out a few
> times since then, I know enough to know that it's an entirely different
> story if I were to lose my reg in the middle of taking a breath.
>
> With that in mind, my current opinion is that current PADI remove/replace
> drills are marginally better than useless.
>
> Now, I'll digress for a moment. I saw a show on the Discovery channel
about
> the storm portrayed in "The Perfect Storm". They interviewed a few of the
> para-jumpers, the divers who jump out of the helicopters for the coast
> guard. The story I've heard is that their training is hellacious. I heard
of
> one part of training where the instructors bascially try to drown the
> trainees until half of the current candidate pool has dropped out. That's
> just ONE lesson. Whether it's true or not, I figure it's probably a decent
> representation of what they *really* go through.
>
> But anyway, back to the interview with the PJ's. They interviewed this one
> guy who said that the rescues he performed in that storm... the worst
storm
> anyone has ever seen... was "the hardest operation I've done.... except
for
> my training.".
>
> ".... except for my training...."
>
> Does everyone realize how important that is in helping someone not panic
in
> real-life situations? No matter how bad it got, he'd always know that he
had
> lived through something even worse than what he's in now.
>
> So, it dawned on me that normal divers... divers who really want to be
> prepared for most anything they're going to run into in recreational
> diving... should be drilled in situations that are just a smidge more
> hostile than anything they're likely to experience in the real world.
>
> I told my girlfriend that we need something like "SCUBA fight club" where,
> in about 6-8 feet of water, on the bottom on our knees, a group of divers
> could just generally mess with each other (remove their regulator, remove
> their mask, maybe unlatch their weight-belt, whatever....). The last one
to
> shoot to the top wins.
>
> Although extreme, this would definitely expose a diver to losing their
> regulator or mask at a variety of places in their breathing cycle and with
> marginally higher levels of fatigue.
>
> What I would prefer, instead, would be some more formal program for doing
> this. The guy at my local PADI dive shop tells me that PADI offers no
> program like this due to liability and also because it would increase the
> drop-out rate (one of the bad things about having a self-regulating
sport).
>
> So, my first question is: Does anyone know of any training program for
> divers that are open to the public (so things like SEAL training don't
> count) that would expose me to conditions and or equipment failures
> exceeding that which I'm likely to encounter in normal recreational
diving?
>
> Now, the second question is this. If I were in her situation, having just
> bolted to the top, I expect that my first reaction would have been to try
a
> "do over" of sorts so as to, hopefully, lessen any DCS symptoms; Resolve
the
> equipment problem, and quickly get back to the depth from which I came
> (maybe even about 10' deeper or so) and stay there for a couple of minutes
> and then come back up *slowly*... 20' per min or so. It would be my hope
> that a "half-assed" decompression like this would help erase the results
of
> the emergency ascent.
>
> After they airlifted my girlfriend off of the boat, one guy said that it's
> strange that they don't have a decomp chamber *on* the island since it
> happens frequently enough. I wanted to retort that there IS a decomp
chamber
> all *around* the island, only certification organizations like PADI would
> never, ever, advocate something like that for liability reasons.
>
> So, off the record, my second question is: Would it have worked?
>
> Sincere thanks in advance for your advice,
>
> - Joe
>
>
>
>

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