Tech Training Dive Goes Bad

In light of the unfortunate annual diving fatalities that result from inexperienced divers going too deep too fast, I decided to share a video I shot a couple years ago.

I shot this video while observing an entry level technical dive training class at a midwestern quarry that shall remain nameless. The diver experienced a massive free-flow at 120' while practicing valve shutdowns and regulator switching. He had a few hundred dives under his weight belt and was intimately familiar with the quarry. Even so, watch him struggle to shut down his valves. Ultimately, no one panicked and everyone involved learned a valuable lesson. However, the important thing is that one never knows when something like this will happen. One can take every precaution and accidents still happen, albeit less often.

Cold, dark and deep water plays tricks on the mind. And remember, no one can hear you scream down there...

Category:

Sports

Tags:

• SCUBA
• diving
• technical
• free-flow
• accident
• quarry

[octavian300]

So Did he die? Or not? (no diving experiance/knowledge at all) just watching diving videos out of curiosity.

[jpd971]

@octavian300 No, he didn't die.  Just a little shaken up.

[ScubaInChicago]

Fourth, why do a drill at 120 down when that should have been mastered long before slinging a deco bottle.

Fifth, where is this persons primary light to conduct signaling, what if it were a fun dive and he needed to signal for attention in dark murky water?

Im stopping here because Im getting sick of seeing posts on what a great job everyone did. What they really did was set this poor guy up to fail and possibly die as a result of poor teaching and direction.

[ScubaInChicago]

Firstly, this video is a disgrace to technical divers and a bad call on the instructors behalf. Your crawl before walking should have meant being able to perform the valve drills in a horizontal position not to exceed 20 degrees out of horizontal trim. While performing this drill buoyancy shouldnt exceed 3 +/- for a new tech diver.

[amasodiksztalingrad]

I might be wrong but this looks very weird to me. I think the student's skills were not up to this task i.e. this excercise should have come much later and after much more practice and to me the instructors were very slow reacting to the situation. I would definitely have stopped filming and gone to help the guy instead. I think this dive was seconds from disaster.

[a6km]

Do It Right morons ?

[KleineHansel]

I guess diving is fun though? Why would people take these risks otherwise.

[lizardgizzard108]

I do remember on my cave diving course, we did have someone who almost died, his neck was cut on a sharp rock when we were going out of an opening and there wasn't too much to do help him. He lost alot of blood, and when we got back up the surface, the cut got alot bigger and the whole water was red. He got very sick, but he recovered.

[Brigadieri777]

This video is somewhat unique. I guess the guy doesnt even understand what a close call that was. If this was performed somewhat deeper, this one would be a RIP movie.

[matsopelle]

@kzd209 His main bottle started to blow, I guess, because they closed his main bottles valves, you are lucky when you have twins in that situation...

[Kamariah27]

I cried

[marinefish321]

hmm ok seadiver2 but there are also good dive stories and videos on the net... try the myscubastory site. type myscubastory into google and its the first one

[emparo]

this is a great video, especially for new divers like myself, it reminds us that things do go wrong and we can't just learn and forget because if that happened to a new diver there might have been one more death statistic at DAN