Learning to live.

[WaScubaDude]

I have searched the "death" boards to try to find out what % of divers die at the surface due to drowning??? It is very unclear but anecdotaly I think many divers may have lived by simply ditching their weights or otherwise establishing positive buoyancy.

Do you have any insights on this?

[ScubaToys Larry]

I was a guest speaker for a DAN conference here in Dallas about 5 years ago when they had a conference teaching medical examiners how to do Autopsies on dive related deaths... fun stuff!

But it was informative! They had me there because these guys are just Docs' and maybe have never seen scuba gear - so I showed them what to do when the police or ambulance brought in a body with gear still attached. How to shut it down, remove it, etc.

Anyway... the numbers we saw showed about 75 - 90 deaths a year, pretty consistent for some time. Of those - about 1/2 are medical. Heart attacks that happened diving that could have happened shoveling snow or bowling.

Of the remaining, about half sounding like Darwin putting a little chlorine into the gene pool. Guys with very little experience trying to set a maximum depth record on air... guys moving grates with big signs that say "don't go past this point unless you are cave certified" and they weren't and died.. etc.

So then maybe 25 or so scuba accidents left - and most are people running out of air at depth, freaking out, holding their breath, shooting to the surface and having an embolism or drowning trying to get up. And a fair number found on the bottom dead, with weights on and air still in the tank. Just panicked for some reason, spit the reg and died.

I'm not sure how to stop that from happening. The military goes through tons of training with soldiers, and still some, when the stuff hits the fan - panic. Can we stop that from happening in a scuba class for a diver?? We do our best in training - and I responded to your other post on a parallel topic - stressing students - but I don't know if that will help either. Soldiers get stressed... crawl under barb wire wile live rounds are being fired, bombs going off... get through training - but when it get to be real - some folks just don't hold up. And I'm not sure what the answer would be.

[BuzzGA]

Larry I think you hit it right on the head, no matter the training people are people and despite all the training some people just freeze/panic. Hopefully a level headed buddy or other diver near by can help the paniced diver before the problem becomes a statistic

[Formerly 45yroldNewbie]

Training training training. You can train someone til the cows come home and they are still vulnerable to the dreaded "Panic Freeze". When I was in the Navy they would drill us to death on procedures for battle situations like what to do for an NBC (Nuclear, Biological, Chemical) attack. How to perform damage control if the ship was hit by a missile etc etc. It would get to the point that it was mundane and we would start to liven it up by kidding around and adding our own "stressers" to a given scenario. The idea was when the real thing happened you would react like being on autopilot and do the right thing. Can the same tactics be applied to an OW or even an AOW course. I doubt it. The time and cost would be too great. That doesn't mean that you and a trusted buddy or two or three or more can't go to a local quarry or pool and practice different scenarios together.

Remember ULTIMATELY you are responsible for yourself and your survival above and below the water. That is why I read the accident forums and threads and the reports in Scuba Diving magazine. I try to project myself into the scenario and think through what I would do if I were actually caught in the same circumstance.

[WaScubaDude]

Thanks for the info and thoughts.

[diverdad]

My thoughts on deaths in diving is that people tend to dive beyond their training. You may get away with it the first or second time but sooner or later it will catch up with you. Like someone else said train, train, train, and then train some more.

[FyVe]

about heart atacks and all that... it's the same principle as any normal day in the world, keep yourself healthy and make sure you are in shape or healthy enough to dive... it makes sense that you're more susceptible to heart atacks or whatever underwater where your body is in a more demanding environment and out of it's usual. then again i don't know of scientific facts to back that so it's only my imagination.

[FastPirate]

i am new to diving...but ill add my two cents anyway...

i do alot of sports that are considered "extreme" sports, i was a long time sponsored skateboarder who competed, quit that, started riding motocross a little competitivly, and i do alot of work on performance cars...
and in all my years of doing these types of activities ive seen alot of people get hurt and even one incident where i am almost positive the kid died (however he was rushed off so quick no one knows for sure)...and of course 911 which i lived 2 blocks away from... my observation is this...there are 2 defiantly different characters that come out in people when something bad happens, there are those who instinctivly calm down and almost methoticly start taking logical action in a very confident manor (sometimes people you wouldnt even expect)...and there are those who loose thier head and freak out and start making stupid mistakes...

i am a strong believer that you are either one or the other, but i believe that those people who freak out can be trained and can learn rituals (maybe not the best word choice) of how to deal with individual scenario's one at a time, and that it can be drilled into thier head.

But most of all i believe common sense is the biggest advantage one can have.

and finnally i would also say that i strongly believe in the buddy system, HOWEVER its still ur butt down there, and you need to take care of yourself and not expect your buddy to react appropriatly every time something goes wrong, even to themselves....

[scubasamurai]

the panic or stress factor plays a big role in how things go. training and making your actions second nature when that " sh+t hits the fan" so you will be ready. the biggest thing in what has happened to me and to others is when the panic sets in, the your lack of experince becomes evident. you forget what you should do, it is not second nature because your still green and uncertain. only training and yes the occasional going through that panic stage yourself will make you stronger and more knownledgable diver. going through a bad narcosis/disoreintation episode in pitch black at 110 ft teaches you about yourself, for me after realizing what was happening i called the dive. live a learn the training worked, simple. now i make sure i have plently of light and give myself time to reorient myself helped me avoid such situations now.
training and more training with lots of experince will help you get through a panic situation.

" you can prepare for everything, except the one thing that will kill you"

[ChrisA]

Originally Posted by BuzzGA

Larry I think you hit it right on the head, no matter the training people are people and despite all the training some people just freeze/panic.

I just read the Dan report for last year. I agree there is nothing you can do about the medical cases and the idiot OW divers penetrating wrecks at 200ft But the others aren't just random and you can predict who it will be who just panic underwater. It's mostly all people who don't dive often. it's the few times per year divers, the ones who have been out of the water for months at a time. Frequent divers are comfortable in the water and don't get stressed.

Of course we can't required all divers to dive a minimum of four times a month. The training agencies could do what the FAA does with pilots. Your pilot's license is good for life but if you have not flown a minimum number of times in the recent past you are required to get checked out by an instructor.
Possably a rule like an OW c-card reverts to a "scuba diver" c-card if you have not done a dive in 60 days.