Safety during trips or diving expeditions is related to a couple of situations that unfortunately happen from time to time during expeditions. First of all, environmental conditions create problems, and it’s not just that we dive in different places in different ways, but first of all that these conditions can be very variable which often surprises us. This is overlaid by the diver’s skills, because the better our diving skills are, the more we have, as it were, excess power, which can, in a situation of changing conditions, make us cope better.
If you read the descriptions of most diving accidents it was either during the entire dive, before the accident or at the last moment before the accident the diver was alone. This shows that the presence of a partner is a definite safety factor and diving alone increases this risk of an accident greatly. In particular, it should be noted that under water, quite often, from the point of view of nonetheless rare diving accidents, loss of consciousness occurs. In such a situation, a diver who is alone has no chance is found by worried team partners after some time and most often fails to be rescued. If the person is with a partner then a smooth extraction to the surface usually solves the problem
Accident scenarios
What is the scenario of a more frequent diving accident/incident.
I.
A diver on a diving trip in Croatia liked to dress in equipment more efficiently than others. He jumped into the water first and plunged a few meters, actually to the bottom near the stern of the yacht, waiting there for the rest of the team. It was a very shallow depth. The lonely plunge lasted only a few minutes, the situation seemed to both him and those in the boat to be reasonably safe. Unfortunately, one day those in the group encountered a diver lying unconscious on the bottom after a dive. Unfortunately, the diver does not breathe. After extraction, the diver unfortunately could not be rescued. Simply put, this waiting period for partners to respond was too long.
II.
A situation somewhat similar to the one described earlier. This time Egypt. A reasonably experienced diver with less air consumption. At the end of the dive, he and the group did not go to the surface together. With still quite a large supply of air in the cylinder, he stayed near the bottom on the reef, actually under the stern of the boat, and swam there for several more minutes. One day after a long period, when his partners noticed that he was not surfacing, they entered the water and found him unconscious at the bottom. In both of the cases described, the divers still had air in the cylinder, the cause of the loss of consciousness was not directly explained. Both accidents ended in the death of the diver.
How to increase safety/prevent similar accidents
Here the prescription is very simple requires only sticking to an important rule – do not dive alone. It was not a lack of skill or an equipment problem that led to the accident. The problem was breaking one important rule – “We don’t dive alone.”
III.
A pair of divers went diving at one of Poland’s lakes. The dives were typical from the shore on the slope of the lake; on the following days the divers dived deeper and deeper at about 15-20 meters crossing the line below which it became completely dark but the flashlights made them actually see everything. The dives seemed completely easy, descending below the zone or the dark zone and below the thermocline, where the water temperature was about 6 degrees, except for a slight freeze did not bring any problems, until one day at a depth of 30 m one of the divers froze an automatic, a cloud of bubbles, a rapidly falling pressure gauge. The diver asked his partner for air and they began to surface vertically toward the surface. During the ascent (in the dark), they found it difficult to master buoyancy and simultaneous even and parallel ascent rates. One of the divers let too much air out of the buoyancy bag and started pulling the steam down. They tried to stay together but at some point the buoyancy differences tore the team apart and-as could be read from the dive computer of the person who drowned-they made a few zigzags up and down and then sank to the bottom. Further on, the graph was flat. This is the scenario of one of the typical fatal diving accidents. At the time of the accident itself, the person was already alone but had previously dived in a team, but the situation was too difficult even though it seemed quite easy. Such dives that go straight to the point of failure are such a trap and one of them is diving along the slope where divers see the bottom all the time until failure. Submerging and ascending along the slope, even in the dark, is nothing difficult, but an emergency vertical ascent without a rope, i.e. without a reference point, requiring the cooperation of two divers in an emergency situation was beyond their skill. Such an ascent requires considerable skill and a lot of partner flotation as well.
In the case described, the advice on how to prevent such an accident is more complicated and requires more work/training.
First, when planning dives, take into account how the dive will go after one of the quite likely failures – freezing of the automatic in cold water.
If you are not prepared to react in such a situation change the plan:
- Dip by the rope.
- Don’t enter the zone of darkness
- Practice ascending in the depths first in the light zone and then in the dark.
Environmental conditions
When we dive or plan to dive one of the important things we should pay attention to must be based on whether the conditions in the water are too difficult for us. Of course, the guide staff running the base should take our skills into account, but sometimes, under pressure from divers, they make a mistake and decide to organize a dive in a situation where it is just hard. Sometimes it’s better to stand by the water and say to yourself – “I’m not going in today” – than to go for something that is too difficult. In addition, if you already decide to dive then remember that certain limits on the amount of air you surface with, maximum depth, keeping an eye on your partner are even more important in such conditions. In fact, impassable.
IV.
Here’s the story of one dive during which a group of divers went to dive in a rather high tide and having to go ashore afterwards through what we’ll call narrow canyons or tunnels, which helped when conditions were good to get out onto the reef but in heavy hit conditions turned out to be a bit of a trap, very difficult to get through. When this overlapped with the small air reserve in some people, it resulted in a person who was most likely a little physically weaker being unable to return and unfortunately running out of air underwater in such a gap and drowning.
As you can see from the scenario described, first of all, you need to stick to the basics:
- We don’t dive alone – ever
- We are keeping an eye on the 50 atm reserve
- We are thinking about the dive plan in case of an emergency and whether the situation will exceed our skills or experience.
