It is perhaps unfair to blame it all on the divers.
Yes its true i have read about fatalities where Darwin awards were well deserved and fatalities where it was obvious the divers skills were not up to the task. These deaths amaze me.
However.
As someone who has been through the learning curve of CCR recently (over the last four years) I believe that the machines have design issues that the training courses fudge over. They do it so well the divers can be forgiven for not understanding the enormity of the problems. The training courses work around the design issues of the unit being trained. They highlight the good bits and gloss over the bad bits.
Hear are a few I have observed.
Calibrate first ask questions later. Thats what I was taught in Mod1. After a while when we have built up an understanding of how galvanic cells work we have to start to question this logic. Why would a cell suddenly be out? They just don't deteriorate that fast under normal conditions.
For me the training should have a check on cells in air and 02 to check for problems. Since adopting this attitude i have found cell errors due to broken multi strand wires, dry joints and corrosion on connectors that I would have otherwise calibrated over.
Such pre dive checks would have no doubt saved me from countless cell errors on my inspo. Yet we are not taught to do it.
Not covered in my course and brought to my attention my Ann Marie. Now every dive I am checking for current limited cells but i dived for the best part of a year without any knowledge of this malady.
Whilst cell check diluent flushes were covered in the course, spiking wasn't. With the broadening of knowledge it probably is now but I wonder how many CCR divers are out there who don't live on the Internet and don't understand the issues of current limited cells.
I really didn't understand this issue. Scrubber packing pro's and cons, breathing resistance, retained C02 as opposed to scrubber failure C02, how fast it can come on, how long it can last even after getting back to clean gas. These issues were fudged over. After training I felt like a C02 hit would be mildly irritating and solved with a couple of good dill flushes and getting shallow.
Only the Internet and sites like RBW opened my eyes to the bigger issues.
In Mod1 I was taught to bailout first and then sort the problem. In Mod 3 I was taught that due to conservation of gas at depth that we should stay on loop and sort things out there with, dill flushes and open loop.
This seems insane to me now. You’r already on the slope to disaster and the guidance is to try and sort it out whilst sliding further down the slope??
Should all CCR have pressure transducers on the 02 bottle connected to a dive computer that is wet switch operated and linked to a HUD. The HUD is essential as they obviously weren't checking wrist units so existing passive warnings are inadequate.
No matter what any one says, you can’t monitor your hand sets all the time. On a MCCR your expecting to manual inject and that keeps you on your toes but on an ECCR that worked perfectly for the last 150 hours it’s easy to go 5mins+ between checks.
Always know your PP02 is the bench mark of CCR training and only a HUD makes this possible.
Current HUDS need a re think
Below 1.0PPo2 my HUD flashes red. When sitting on the boat I see loads of flashing read lights so my brain switches off to flashing read lights and they don’t register as a warning of imminent danger.
I have noticed this in my self and watching other CCR divers task loaded and doing skills in shallow water. Their HUDS are flashing read like mad but they just ignore them because unless they are running pure 02 the HUDS always flash red like mad in shallow water.
Either we need another level of color warning or the vibrating back up of the Borris and Hammerhead to kick in at something like 0.2PP02
I was taught to dill flush with C02 hits and I was taught how to bailout on to OC but no one taught me that in the event of an actual C02 hit its likely that it would not be possible to do so.
Despite all the reports of just how hard it is to bailout in an emergency we still have resistance to the one safety device that fixes, C02, Loop Flood, Caustic Cocktail, and sanity breaths.
With scrubber sticks now encouraging divers to push scrubbers further than ever before, surely efficient means of dealing with C02 should be standard
Looking back i dont beleive for one moment that my instructor was below par. I just beleive that we have all lerned a lot since 2004. The explosion of information on the internet since the advent of open sites like RBW has braught easy access to a masive cross section of skills and experiance.
Great if your an internet junky with an open mind but what about all the other divers who were taught between 1998 and 2004
ATB
Mark