Always check your air

[kingfish]

I caught up with a friend of mine i hadnt seen in a few years the other day, and he told me about a drama he had on his advanced certification.

He was apparently doing his deep dive on a submarine we have here, and he looked at his air at one stage and he was down to 100 bar/1500psi....then next thing he knew he was out of air.

His instructor was quite a distance from him so he made a mad dash to him and gave him all the signals and his instructor gave him his second stage to breath from and begun to buddy breath with him.

He thought this was a bit odd but then realised there was already someone else breathing from the instructors occy.

The three of them started to make an accent when someone underneath dropped there weight and came crashing into them from below.

They all ended up doing emergency accents from about 10m/33ft.

Luckily no-one was injured but i know i will be keeping a very close eye on my guage when i do the same dive for my advanced shortly.


Jas.

[TAH 73]

Wow, that's a whole bunch of things going wrong, 2 people running out of air, someone needing to be ditching their weights, buddies not staying close enough to communicate if there is an issue, and ascending from a deep dive without a safety stop it seems.
I just wonder how he went from 1500, to OOA in an instant? Improper gauge reading? At 1500 he should have been sticking to his buddy if he was in a position to be OOA.
To me is seems like they have maybe not been ready for their advanced cert.

[Jaymeany]

Thankfully everyone is ok. At depth you go through air so quickly (especially your first deep dive) you really have to keep an eye on it. every breath uses more air. in my AOW my instructor identified who was sucking the most air and stayed very close to them. then stopped often to have everyone check their air and report it to him. I'm glad that the instructor in your story could easily handle multiple situations. that was a real challenge and everything ended out well.

[TAH 73]

I have heard once, good DM's and instructors deal with issues, great DM's and instructors know how to avoid them.

[cummings66]

This story is an example of why I've always thought a diver should know how to plan a dive and sadly many don't. Even at the AOW stage it's still just an everyday dive to 30 feet, at least that's how many treat it.

In this case the instructor did OK handling it, but he really screwed up by allowing two of his students go OOA. I'm kind of surprised the students didn't monitor their own air, as you said the lesson here is to watch your own air.

[JugglingMonkeys]

is it possible to avoid all of them?

[deepdiver47]

If you dive for awhile you should have a good handle on your air usage. I will often go through a dive and based on my depth and conditions guess at what my SPG will read before I read it just to get a feel as to where I am at airwise. My dive plan is that my SPG should NEVER surprise me as I should have an idea on what is left on my tank at all times.

[greyzen]

I have to agree with deepdiver on watching your SPG.
It takes seconds to tell if you are getting even close to an OOA issue.

On my OW course, my wife was deep breathing and went down to around 1000/psi before she noticed what was going on. We were only 30ft down on a platform, waiting for the rest of the class to get done with qual stuff so I started keeping an eye on her. Sure enough, a few minutes later she was around 500/psi. I gave her the ascent signs and we went up.

Watching your air (every few minutes) should be in your mental checklist that is cycling in your brain as you dive... maybe a few times until you are more comfy.

I'm a new diver, so I check my almost obsessively. Fish and coral and sights are pretty... but nothing is more important to me to look at than how much time I have to breathe.

[mountaindiver]

I think that the instructor should have also been monitoring the students air, or at least telling the students to monitor their own air every few minutes. I agree that the student should be responsible to monitor their own but in a class that the students are trying something new, it is the instructors responsibility to TEACH the students to monitor their air. I am an AI and am always telling my students to check their air.

[Ted S]

Wow. That's definitely not what you want to have happen but as they always say... when things go wrong, they really go wrong. In this case it was really lucky that the instructor had multiple airsources.

I agree with the instruction comment... my instructor would ask me my air all the time to the point that I realized it's better for me to know it than to have to look to tell him. That's the attitude I want to have -- I know my air supply at all times. Some people are dialed in enough to check less often but they still check.