Death

[flyboy748]

Cali,

Until recently my standard line was that it was either freedive solo or don't dive at all. That has changed though since I found someone crazy enough to dive here in the Toronto area with me this winter! However I continue to freedive solo.

I think if I was in your situation, having lost a friend to the sport, you and I would have a similar opinion on this topic. After reading your post however, I am rethinking my stance. I have never said that solo freediving is okay, and I even went as far as to make a list of "strict" rules to follow while freediving solo. But the other day (after posting my set of rules above) the conditions were grand, the vis was better than I'd ever seen in this particular location, and I dove deeper than I'd ever been before. Obviously a gross violation of my "strict" rules. It was an easy dive (I'm not excusing myself...) on a day when I was feeling great. My perceived safety net certianly cannot keep me safe even if I did follow all my rules, let alone otherwise.

I don't know if I can bring myself to stop solo freediving completely. I realize that as I say that it sounds a bit like the person with liver disease saying "I dunno if I can lay off the bottle." I hope I'm not the reason someday that someone else vows never to freedive solo, but at this point I'm unwilling to say that "I'll never freedive solo again." Of my last 20 dives, 12 were solo. When you only have one buddy, one nice day and schedules don't line up it's hard to stay out of the water.

While I deliberate this point I think I'll spend some time with my wife and kids, thinking about how much I owe them.

Thanks for making me consider this again, I know you're steering me in the right direction.

Aaron

[Chris M]

Just a few names to conjure with: John Bachar [solo climber], Peter Croft, Robert Alain [Alain Robert? Always forget], B. Moitessier[legendary french single-handed sailor, re-wrote the book on heavy weather sailing], Reinhold Messner, etc. etc. There is in fact a tradition in many fields of athletic endeavour, a soloist tradition. This tradition has not infrequently yielded great insights not only to the technical aspects of an activity, but also to the true potential of human psychology and psycho-somatics. Read some of the writings of such athletes [eg : Messner] and you start to see another side to the picture of "risk vs. reward." These athletes did what came naturally to them, they didn't seek "risk-taking behaviour" or some kind of "extreme encounter" with death [see one-dimensional hollywood flicks such as "point break"]. What they did was often a natural progression out of long experience in their fields. For my part I am grateful to the likes of B. Moitessier as are many others for his unique approach to life and his sport. We live in times now that seem far more certain, deceptively predictable in comparison to the earlier half of the 20th C from which many elite soloist "adventure" athletes emerged. Focus on leisure activities by high-tech innovators has led to rapid improvement in safety gear in many fields and also to the rapid increase in participation in what were once considered "high-risk activities". There are a lot of aspects to be considered in this matter of "soloing." WHile it's true that people have died emulating the great solo athletes, perhaps proceeding with inadequate experience, I think the tradition itself is valuable. As for presenting a positive image of freediving, I think that's relatively unimportant when compared with such issues as the rapid and continuous damage that commercial fishing and industry are doing to marine environments world-wide.

[Paul Kotik]

Hi, Cali. Long time no see.

I think that the right way to look at is this: if you freedive solo enough times you will drown freediving solo.

Why ? Simple. Everything in th universe varies. Your physiological parameters vary. Some days up, some days down. The environmental parameters (current, temperature, animals, chop, etc. ) all vary, too. Up and down.

Dive solo enough times, and there will come a time when random variation in all these gazillion variables randomly sets up a combination that will result in you blacking out and drowning.

And, almost certainly, under circumstances wherein a buddy save would be a piece of cake.

That's a good way to think of the risk. The question then becomes: how many times do I have to roll the dive before it comes up craps ?

And, Cali was right again - even if you like the number, even if you like the odds, YOU ARE NOT THE GAMBLER ! You are toying with the happiness, peace of mind, sanity and welfare of all the people who like you and love you. You're putting THEIR suffering on the table, not yours. You won't feel a thing.

That really doesn't seen so bold, now does it ?

[Tommy Engfors]

Paul,

It's easy to say you should give up freediving until you find a buddy if you already have one.

Everything with a probability larger than zero will eventually happen given long enough time. True. A thousand monkeys on a thousand typewriters will eventually write Shakespeare. I still think it can be more dangerous to drive a car than to do conservative freediving in the style mentioned earlier in this thread, yet we all drive cars. How does that work?

The problem is, that diving solo does not kill you. If that was the case then everyone diving solo would die.

The death that started this tread, happened for reasons unknown. Let's not blame the 'solo' part too much without looking a bit 'deeper' (no pun) first.

[Paul Kotik]

Didn't say you should give it up. Just be clear what you are doing: you are gambling with other peoples' lives.

Didn't say or impy all solo divers will die. Rather, it is that all solo divers will e v e n t u a l l y die - if they do it enough. There is nothing profound or mystical in that statement: it is the same as saying that you will eventually die eating canteloupe unless you die first under some other circumstances. Point is, your death diving solo will almost certainly be a death easily,easily prevented by a buddy.

It is no secret that perhaps 95% my lifetime freediving has been solo. I didn't know any better. I never heard of anybody blacking out until August 2000, some 45 -odd years after I first took a deep breath and dropped beneath the Atlantic waves.

Now, having rescued blacked out divers perhaps 100 or do times, I am quite convinced that a) it happens, b) it can happen to absolutely anybody, c) it is usually unexpected, d) they all would have died if they were alone, and e) none of these people did die.

And now, to my sorrow, there have been a number of freediver drownings in my life. None were solo divers ! All were under very, very extreme circumstances. All were absolutely devastating to the people left behind, including me. And that's why I look upon solo diving with a very, very jaundiced eye.

Look, not all people who drink a liter of whiskey and then drive he wrong way on the autobahn at 200 kph get killed, and yet none, I think, would deny that is an activity that kills !

Random chance, my friends. Is there anyone among us who has never had the experience of suddenly, inexpicably coughing ? Sneezing ? Gagging ? The body does these wierd things sometimes. No big when they happen in the living room, but very big when they happen 50 meters down or at 120 kph on a tight, closing radius Alpine switchback.

Blah-blah. I think the main thing I want to say is that when you kill yourself unneccesarily, it is very, very, very, very painful for your friends and family. Keep that in mind, please. It is in many ways even more painful than a suicide, where at least one can imagine the person found relief from some awful suffering.

[flyboy748]

Thanks for the clarification Paul,

All good points. I think when I'm out by myself in the future I'll call it snorkeling, stay shallow, follow my rules ect. I'll also drive the speed limit on the way to the dive site! No need for extra risk in any area of life, however there are some we will take.

I, like you, never heard of "freediving" until recently. I remember heading out "skindiving" with 10lb on my weightbelt and no wetsuit. I was really negitive even on the surface! I would also hyperventalate and dive down to where the scuba divers were ( 20-30 feet max) and see how long I could lay on the bottom ect. All in ignorant bliss. Never felt safer! I realize now that I survived all that through more luck than good management. Same way I survived my teenage driving probably ;-) I am now much more aware of the very real dangers of solo freediving. With a buddy I'll purge, pack and drop down onto the bottom for two and a half minutes, by myself I never purge and I restrict myself to one minute max total dive time. Will this and my other rules (presuming I follow them) keep me safe? Of course not. Will they reduce the risk? Of course they will. Is the risk reduced enough? That is the question I ask myself over and over.

I'll continue to dive with a buddy as much as possible. In the meantime I won't dive deep or long when solo. Hopefully in the future all my diving will be with a buddy. I have way more fun when with someone else anyway!

Thanks again for the encouragement towards a more conservative standpoint. I'd far rather be accused of being too carefull than have everyone putting in bets to see how long I'll last!

Aaron

[Bill]

ÒIt is no secret that perhaps 95% my lifetime freediving has been solo. I didn't know any better. I never heard of anybody blacking out until August 2000, some 45 -odd years after I first took a deep breath and dropped beneath the Atlantic waves. Ò

Your views are very close to mine, Paul. The problem is, the divers that could benefit most from your advice will not read past the first line.
Aloha
Bill

[flyboy748]

I read as much as I can about diving when I can't actually dive. Hopefully I'll learn enough to keep me safe. One thing I am noticing though, is that the more experienced freedivers almost all very strongly advocate never freediving solo. I have to at least ask myself if that's the way they got "experienced" without drowning...

Cali, Bill, and Paul (not to exclude others) I respect your views and give as much heed to your advice as I can. I would now consider myself an advocate of always diving with a buddy, albiet a somewhat hypocritical one.

I think I'll just paddle around in my dive kayak until my buddy can make it out. Maybe I won't even do that, it's freezing outside!

Happy New Year all!

Aaron

[Tommy Engfors]

Very good posts. Great thread.

I agree with Paul (and the rest of you) 100%. Dive with a buddy whenever possible.

Problem arises when it seems almost impossible to find other local freedivers. What can one do? No good answers to that from a safety point of view I guess... except don't dive of course. Or... dive anyway. At the end of the day, like Aaron says, it seems to become a matter of what risks one is prepared to take.

It also seems that we have two generations of divers here; Those who have been doing this for a long time and have learned by trial and error, and those who are starting with this right now and can benefit from the experience of the veterans.

I belong to the latter group myself and find the info at this site very valuable indeed. Keep it up and maybe these mysterious drownings will at the very least be reduced in occurence (I am sure at least some of the deaths throughout the years are due to ignorance).

Just one little question, to Paul, where the heck is seat 22B located??

[Jon]

I used to freedive solo as well as scuba dive solo.

I must have at least 1,000 solo scuba dives under my belt in over 20 years of diving, but once my daughter was born that all ended. Actually, it ended before that,once I was married, but having a child put the last nail in that coffin.

I stopped solo freedivng after I attended Kirk's clinic. After watching people samaba right in front of you, one after another, it makes you re-evaulate everything. I now make sure someones around. When I am wreck diving it might be a scuba diver and when spearfishing it's my buddy, Ted.

We have a wreck that we dive on all the time in the Great lakes that sits in only 55'-95' of water. She is a great wreck to freedive and I get to dive her on a somewhat regular basis. She has also claimed at least 4 lives. These were divers of varying abilities. Some were experienced instructors, or trimix divers, while others were newbies. The one thing they all had in common was that when they died they were ALL solo- whether they started out that way or not. It's not a lot of fun doing CPR on a rocking boat deck to some guy you where just talking to an hour ago. It's even harder to watch his finace throw flowers into the water where he died a week earlier.It makes you realize that your not as invincible as you thought.

I don't have a group to train with so I don't push things in the pool. I don't have a group to deep dive with, so I don't. I know that I am capable of greater depths, but refuse to try without proper back-up, which I don't have at this time. So now I just wait until I can cultivate at least one more freediver and get my diver recovery sytem up and running.

This past week has seen record high temps for us, over 50 degrees in December, but since Ted has been sick I have elected to go ride my bike instead of chancing it. I know that I could stay shallow and probably be Ok, but I also know that I can wait for another day. Hopefully Ted will be healthy enough for a Newyears Day dip.

There's an old saying that goes " There are old divers and there are bold divers, but there are NO old, bold divers". I think that applies to freediving as well as scuba.

Just my $0.02

Jon

[neshamah]

The problem is not only to dive solo-- I did that a lot -- but the time your are going to spend in water and diving at certain ( profundidad).without resting.time ...there is to many factor than can provoque a ( trajedia) or black out- the lack of food- so you can become fatigue......todo estos factore pueden provocar una trajedia ....

Page atencion to your body ... and to every movement you do in water....never go to your limited..and know when is the time to stop diving and go home

saludos

safe dive

Daniel.

[cjorca]

Hey Paul, hope all is well, long time no hear from

Keep in mind everyone, while I know we're all itching to get our time in the water, there are other ways to train. Yes, I know its not as fun or rewarding, however, they are just as effective in keeping the "training going" ( Dry static, cardio workouts etc. ) There are times when I can't find a buddy either, hell I live with one, and I havn't been able to get him to dive once since we've been home from Cayman!!!!!!!( 7 months ago)
My mom use to always tell me " you can drown in a teaspoon of water, as long as it covers you nose and mouth"
Shallow or deep, I really feel free diving should not be done solo. Would you do static solo? Most wouldn't even consider solo in-water static training. Why should shallow constant ballast be any different? For those of you that consider solo freediving, I'm not saying thats its any more or less dangerous than other activities, but lets face it, if we can make one of our acivities a little safer, why not, However, if solo diving is something you just have to do, there's another activity out there you can do thats just as effective in your chances of death. Anyone heard of Russian Roulette?
Safe and Happy New Year's to everyone
Cali

[flyboy748]

Thanks for the imput all.

My views are definatly changing. Good point about the wet statics Cali, probably no-one (I hope no one!) does those solo.

Jon, as usual from you, some great points and good thinking. I've got 3 little ones that really want me to make it home at the end of the day. My little guy wants to start snorkeling in the open water next summer. I owe him that chance.

To those of you who continue to freedive solo, take it easy and continue to give it lots of thought. Take Jon's approach and try to convert some of the local scuba people! Even diving with a buddy on scuba is better than solo in spite of the fact that they may be less able to assist.

Once again, thank you all for your efforts to caution those of us who are new to the sport. I believe I'm beginning to see things a bit more clearly.

Aaron

[cdavis]

Hi all,great thread,

At risk of sounding like a maniac, it seems like we are going overboard a little, at least as far as most divers are concerned. Bill and Paul gave a hint, both been diving many years without even even hearing of a blackout. I started about the same time, experianced a couple of sambas in very shallow water as I got a little bit competent (several buddies, all of us way to agresssive, experianced the same) and had only seen one bo (in 15m) by a guy who we all knew was grossly pushing his limits.

The truth is, for most divers, a bo is incredibly rare. Most free divers in my part of the world are diving in a lot less than 15m with average bottom times of less than a minute. They don't train and their c02 safety margin is accordingly pretty wide. This is doubly true if they are aware of the possibility of bo and dive conservatively. I was in this group for many years and thousands of pounds of fish, only I wasn't conservative. Way too many times,down way way too long. If bo was much of a threat, I (and a bunch of my buddies) would not be here.

The problem arises in the category of diver where depth, skill and training start to rise. At that point, bo gets a lot more common and a lot less predictable. Members of this forum are either in that category or have the strong desire to be. For us, the hard ass attitude, don't dive alone period, makes a lot of sense.

Of course this raises the question of how to tell where a diver is at. I have no answer, but realize the reality of diving for most divers is not what most of us do, at least in this part of the world. It would be very interesting to get some idea of the skill level, average bottom time and depth for divers experiancing bo.

Thanks

Connor

[cjorca]

A large chunk of the black outs I have witness ( or experienced ) have occured while diving relatively shallow without pushing bottom times, whether they were students or experienced freedivers "out for fun". After recovery, all said, the felt they were not pushing their limits, and felt great throughout the whole dive.
As for my own experiences, on 1 dive, I'd felt great through the whole dive, my breathup had gone well ( it was a 6 min breathup after a 5 min recovery from a previous dive ) my kicks were smooth and relaxed, and yet about 15 ft from the surface, I knew I would I would need help. I calmly shook my head to my buddy to let him know I wouldn't make it. I had a BO after surfacing. I'm thankful I had a buddy there for that, oh, I'm being conservative, but just in case senario. I guess what I'm trying to say is no matter how conservative you are, a bo can occur anytime.
as alway dive safe, or as safe as your willing to make it,

Happy New Year
Cali