pPO2 of .08 is not a typo

Dutchy

Friday evening the anual fishnet training was organised in the swimming pool. EAD and O2 are on the pool side when club members try to navigate a series of different fishnets placed in the pool.
It is always troublesome to untie yourself when these nets seems to come to life with the sole purpose of wrapping you.

But it would have to wait as I had decided to bring my capped second scrubber in order to submerge it and test for leaks. Oops I didn't bring it... I doffed the SK (left it on the pool bottom), shut down O2 and left the pool to grab the scrubber. When I had tested it I left it to float on the surface as I had to hurry up. I donned the SK, found the pPO2 in the .9 range and quickly joined the divers navigating the fishnets. I struggled for minutes trying to crawl under a net that had no intend of letting me go.
When I finally broke free I realised I had been tied up for a while and wanted to inject O2. Nothing happened. Ooooh sh...it's closed. My vision turned bad (black and tunnel) and I switched to OC and surfaced. When I got a breath of fresh air I looked a my displays. .08

Lessons learned:
1) Whenever you don the unit do the basic checks, not just the first time! (I would have spotted the O2 valve closed in that case)
2) Don't get task loaded. The fishnets were obviously too much on CC. Maybe switching to OC is the better option in such a case. Alternatively remain calm enough to do proper checking and pPO2 control. (or go for a hybrid solution)

Lessons apparantly NOT learned:
1) Don't hurry things.

This was a controlled environment with divers on standbye and EAD+O2 present but it's a wakeup call nevertheless. The next round was a lot better with eyes closed (except for occasional pPO2 check) following the line that ran through all of it.
If you have a chance of organising/participating in such a training then I highly recommend it. It was the second year for me and I'll be there next year despite this years scaring event.

SteveJ

Thanks for sharing that one and pleased you're Ok!

Just shows that even in a pool a rebreather dive is a technical dive.

Accidents have certainly happened in pools before as it seems so non threatening and attentive buddies are often absent.

Steve

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Dr Steve Johnson
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jkaterenchuk

Dutchy

Thanks for sharing. 100% Complacency.

I am sure you realise how close you came to lights out and now will never forget again. mCCR scare the shit out of me anywhere near the surface and I watch the displays like a hawk.

Once you do a drill on the surface simulating some work like swimming in a current, helping a buddy, etc and see how quickly 0.7 PO2 on the surface can drop to 0.07 you realize it the priority and if you forget that even one time you lose.

John

EBT

...and this isnt a criticism. Above 6m I run any ccr as pure o2. If you feel a change in bouyancy/hear the adv fire, you know you have an issue.

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OceanOpportunity

I do the same...I actually dont even carry diluent in the pool when on CC..only O2 is plumbed into the rig. As an aside...this makes it easy to let folks try-dive the unit in the pool as well since there is so little that could go wrong.

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lizardland

I still think the scariest thing that has ever happened to me is virtually the same thing, only I was standing in the shallows putting my fins on with the loop in my gob. Lightheaded, something felt badly wrong, spat the loop took a big breath and looked at the handsets... I would have been face down, dead in about a foot of water on my next breath.

As others have said, from that point on I was on a pure O2 loop anywhere above 6m. Even now that I dive eCCR I still do it, near the surface is usually the busiest part of the dive.

Glad you're OK, it's a real eye-opener when you see just how easy it happens. Forget to turn a valve on? Yeah, as if I'd be daft enough to do that... So easily done in reality.

Cheers,

Stuart

Gobfish1

what d man says ,, (aways pool or sea )

EBT

ha, snap!

Was test diving a sports kiss the other day with dead cells, o2 in both tanks. Was magic when people kept looking at the displays reading -0.00.

It helps if you fail to respond to any signals then when they worried slowing remove the dsv and poke your tongue out ;)

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wedivebc

Thanks for sharing. Thanks for living to tell about it.

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Cheers,

Dave....

www.wedivebc.com

Dutchy

I'll have to reconfigure a few things I guess as I don't have gas for my wing when I do that. In open water that's no problem as I dive on the drysuit...