Alert Diver Article
Experience Is a Good Teacher
November/December 2008 Issue
By: Jeff Myers

We've all heard one of our sport's most quoted axioms: "Diving is a relatively safe sport, but there are inherent risks associated with it."

In diving, a risk that might not be as easily defined  - e.g., decompression sickness or marine life injury - may very well be the failure to learn from one's experiences, good and bad. In the example of the previous story ("Lost in the Sea of Cortez"), the writer identifies many of the crucial issues that he'll try to avoid in the future.

After every dive, self-reflection and then open discussion with your buddy is one great way to learn from your experiences. Do it with an open mind and an eye toward constructive problem-solving. Dive buddies are partners in the dive, and, like a good marriage, this partnership requires open and honest dialogue.

Considering the real-life experience this diver had, it's not surprising that he has cited many good examples of how the dive could have been executed better.

Begin with the charter boat and dive staff: It's vital that each guest be accounted for, from the time they board the vessel until they safely return to the dock. This includes those guests who will snorkel or swim as well as those who are "along for the ride."

These methods of accounting should include some redundancy. Two or more methods may seem repetitive or unnecessary due to time constraints, but it's much better to spend a little extra time to have complete confidence in each guest's whereabouts than to inadvertently leave a diver floating aimlessly in the water: Worse things might happen.

The anatomy of a predive briefing

A comprehensive predive briefing of the dive site is another critical feature leading to a dive. The briefing enumerates the conditions - visibility, depth ranges, bottom time, topography, current, marine life and areas to avoid. It underscores buddy assignments and what buddy procedures - whether diving in pairs or as a larger group - divers will use.

Plus, as the writer pointed out, the predive briefing should cover what a diver should do if he becomes separated from a buddy or the group. If that happens, the diver should conduct a one-minute search for other divers; if he finds no one, he should slowly ascend and wait at the surface for the buddy or the group.

Taking charge

Ultimately, the captain and crew are responsible for the overall well-being of everyone on board. If they find that diving conditions or the divers' levels of training and/or experience are not appropriate for the dive, they might decide to move to a different location with better conditions for diving or abort the dive altogether.

This diver enumerated quite a few actions that he personally could have taken that might have saved him the trouble he experienced. Thankfully, this incident had a positive outcome, but additional planning on his part may have helped him avoid this cascade of problems.

We never stop learning

Some divers boast about their total dives or their cumulative experience as something of a "badge of courage." While it's good to be enthusiastic about our experiences, too great an emphasis on them can lead to overconfidence. The diver we just read about mentioned calling upon his 30 years of experience to help him sort things out once he became separated from his buddies. It doesn't appear that he seemed overconfident about making the dive.

Instead of feeling overconfident about our training or experience, we should always be ready to learn and put that knowledge to good use. Overconfidence can result in missing a critical step in predive planning or attention to details on the dive. While overconfidence doesn't seem to have played a part in what happened, it would appear that the predive planning steps lacked one of those critical steps identified above - buddy assignments. This resulted in haphazard descents and group separation once the divers made their way to the bottom.

Buddy up

Even though the captain and/or crew should have taken the lead in this respect, all divers should be wary of entering the water without a clear designation of who their buddies are. Divers should speak up. Each will end up with a buddy, and they will benefit from this choice.

Once a buddy has been identified, divers can get together to discuss individual details such as hand signals, equipment configurations, possible concerns about the dive, what each buddy will do to maintain buddy contact and the actual specific dive plan - depth, direction of the dive, bottom time and other details. These discussions will help divers avoid confusion once they are in the water.*

Have the right equipment

Having the proper equipment on every dive is crucial. On this dive, a compass would have been helpful. But simply having a compass on a dive isn't enough; it's a good idea to practice using the compass to become proficient. And just because you're diving with a computer, you should not be lulled into a false sense of security. Remember your basic dive table training and the inherent precautions learned about dive exposures.

Remember, equipment failure, including computers, can cause problems. Technology has created many improvements in how we dive, and dive computers have certainly simplified keeping track of depth, bottom time and ascent rate, but returning to ideas of redundancy, old-fashioned dive tables, depth gauges and watches can come in handy if your computer fails. It's always a good idea to have these available on a dive, and, of course, it is important to know how to use them.

Communication is key

This diver's narrative showed that communication among all participants - the captain and crew, the divers themselves - was lacking. We do not know the details of the divemaster's predive briefing, but it appears that he should have taken a greater leadership role on the dive.

In an ideal world, your buddy or the dive leader will be in a position to lend a hand in the event of a system or procedural failure on a dive. This example demonstrates how dependence on another could have led to disastrous results, at least for this diver.

Rather than conduct a lengthy search for others in the group, the subgroup of three would have been better off by doing, as the writer suggests, ascending together after they conducted the one-minute search for the remainder of the group. Not only is there safety in numbers, it's easier to see a group than a single diver. Plus, three people may have been more likely missed on the boat. Quite possibly the three divers would have been able to assist one another if they all had ultimately been required to swim for the island.

This dive could have had a terribly different outcome, but luckily the diver kept his wits about him and came up with a sound survival strategy. For this he is to be congratulated. Now that he is safe, it is important that he reflect on the events that led to the incident, understand the errors and assess ways he might avoid these in the future.

Diving presents a high degree of responsibility for everyone: the divers, the dive operation, the captain and the crew. If participants play their parts to the best of their abilities, dives as they relate to problems will become uneventful.

That way, there's far more time to enjoy yourself.

For More Information

This was discussed in greater detail in Rick Layton's article titled "Last Chance: Diver Safety and the Predive Check" in the September/October 2008 issue of Alert Diver.

DAN Members, see: www.DiversAlertNetwork.org/membership/alert-diver/article.asp?ArticleID=949

© Alert Diver November / December 2008