Scott,

you do check the masthead for the green over white before you reply to these
dont you??

Al Marvelli

Scott wrote:

> 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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