Diving: Improved

[welleman]

Hi guys,

First of all – thanks for this great forum – I’ve learned so much here just be reading old posts. I love this place! :friday

Well let’s cut to the chase:
I’m doing a design-project on diving and diving equipment together with 4 other students at Aalborg University here in Denmark. In short, we want to make diving more safe, fun and accessible to more people and I hope that you guys want to help us out

I’m the only one that dives so I’m tying to teach the others on how to use the equipment etc. but I would also really like to give real world examples on how important it is to have some good product that you can count on.
So I wondered if any of you great people had a story or two about a situation where a good/bad product made or wrecked a diving trip – any story is welcome and doesn’t have to be a great hero-story about how you saved the world with your Omer fins :thankyou
Stories from both scuba and free diving are very welcome and it could be great if you would tell a bit about what you find most important when choosing equipment.

Thank you so much!

All the best from the cold and murky waters of Scandinavia!

/ René W.

ps. Links to any stories that’s already on the forum or other places could be very useful too

 

[nenrandir]

Interesting project! I'd happily read more about it when you're done.

One source of stories may be accident reports sent in to your national diving association. In Sweden, at least, these are made available for education purposes (anonymized). It's of course a rather limited genre as far as stories go (sort of depends on your research agenda whether this is relevant or not), but it should provide interesting data.

Good luck with your project!

 

[sjurba]

The norwegian diving website dykkesiden.com has on their forum a page dedicated to close calls and accidents. There might be something interesting there

 

[azapa]

leaky masks, suck bad.

Forgetting lead too.

Short but true!

 

[efattah]

I have seen scuba divers have their trip planned by a hole in their drysuit. Luckily a hole in a wetsuit is only an annoyance. But a hole in a shell drysuit means the dive trip is over.

Other commons issues that cancel a dive or a trip are dive computers that won't turn on or behave strangely; regulators that malfunction or free flow; for rebreather divers there are dozens of things that can kill a dive or a trip.

A leaking mask can kill a dive but most people bring a spare.

A failed dive light can be a killer if diving very deep or at night.

 

[Kars]

In case Of Martin Stepaneck, crashing his prototype F10 during a 120m CWT dive
Sara's WR attempt got killed by a diver who lost his lanyard not securely fixed on his ankle.
Loïc's NL rig somehow got stuck at the bottom or in a floating net. Audry's air bottle was nearly empty at the bottom. There a numerous stories on this site of people, organisation, equipment failing.

I think Freedivers like efficient, simple, thoughtful, elegant, sturdy, light weight, aesthetically appealing and a durable if possible.
The simplicity you can see in snorkel design, sure the snorkel is sleek, following the face, the right diameter, nicely designed mouthpiece, the proper material choice at the right place, etc. BUT it HAS NO VALVES, NO 'TECH' THAT DOES NOT WORK AFTER A WHILE.

People like Fondueset swim miles with their suits and monofins every week. And with such high use you want to have footpockets that are snug and have the load evenly transferred to the foot. Many have custom made fins. Even more have custom made freedive wetsuits.

Also it's becoming a sort of a tradition of making your own neck weight. Freedivers are making all sorts of equipment, spearguns, finblades, weigh setups, fluid goggles, lanyards, floats, counterweight systems, dive sleds, camera lenses, etc.


But a question to you, how are you planning to help making equipment more safe?

 

[cigarlung]

I bought a cheap wetsuit that was tight in my shoulders. I think it was a chinese extra large wanted it to use not for warmth but protection from jellyfish stings. I was to uncomfortable so i did not use it. The stings all over my body combined with heat and humidity in the Philppines made for some pain. Stings on top of stings hurt like hell however it did not stop me from diving glad i did not have an allergic reaction.

 

[welleman]

Hi guys! Thank you for the insights

I’ve read a lot of incident reports now and from that I could read that many accidents happens because of missing or failing equipment. Most incidents have root in human errors but the lack of good equipment often turns a bad situation in to a life-threatening one.

So we think it's very important to get all your gear with you, that its in good condition and that it does not get mixed with other peoples gear when you dive with a group.

Therefore we decided to work with transportation of diving equipment since this is a area that is often overseen even though there’s a lot of problems with it – especially with scubadiving.

To answer Kars’s question “But a question to you, how are you planning to help making equipment more safe?”:
We want to reduce the risk of damaging the gear under transportation and enhance ease of use and planning – thereby making sure that you have all your important stuff with you and that its ready for a good day of diving.

So any ideas on what functions you want/miss is very welcome or perhaps you have made your own cool solution for a problem? Anything could be great.

I truly appreciate the time that you all spend on this tread – thank you!

Cheers