Rescue Procedures for SWB

[laminar]

Hi Sebastien,

Nice to see you on the forums!

No descent line--now that sounds wonderful. What are your thoughts though on not having a descent line in murky or dark water. I would still want to have someone meet me on the way up--or are the lifelines visible enough to use as a reference on the way down?

I guess my question is, what new design challenges do you anticipate for a green water version (ie. north pacific with occasional plankton blooms)?

Diving without a descent line must really increase self-awareness of body position.

Pete
Vancouver, BC, Canada

 

[Bill]

re:Fatal Flaw

Thanks for the thoughts Pete. Some of the procedures have bothered me. Even in warm, clear water.
Aloha
Bill

 

[immerlustig]

alun

your procedures are quite the same. as for communication i personally incorporate handsignals, since i don't have permanent diving partners where things work with eyecontact only.

about o2 equipment: maybe someone on the forum is qualified to explain the benefits of giving o2 to an unconscious freediver.
the scuba situation is always well documented, but not so much can be found for freediving blackouts.

does anybody know of cases where a swb-situation didn't end after 30 seconds or so and the diver remained unconscious?
i would like to know some more examples of probable complications.

about the buddy system:

to what depth would you say it's "reasonably safe" to emply it, before starting to use a different safety system?

about procedures with a bo'd diver:

when on the surface keeping the airways open seems to be a very difficult affair. avoiding that water splashes into the victims mouth, and if there is water/vomit inside trying to get it out efficiently?

a laryngospasm can be caused by water entering the trachea; a body's mechanism to prevent water going down into the lungs. when water remains in the mouth the laryngospasm won't necessarily release.

by just practising to empty a divers mouth from water on a calm surface, we realised that this is quite a difficult thing to do. so a 2nd backup diver on the surface to assist is extremely helpful.
also a proper float to take the diver out of the water or at least to support him better.

i should mention that myself and the divers i freedive with are mostly recreational freedivers. my intentions are to come up with a safety system that is adequate, financially and logisics-wise.

thanks already to everyone for your replies and ideas.

cheerio

roland

 

[Alun]

Roland- there was something i forgot to mention earlier...
whenever possible we try to make sure that there are 3 people in the water when someone tries a new depth (PB). in the event of a problem, then you have an extra pair of hands available. (the third guy just stays at the surface, but ready to dive down if necessary).

one of my buddies told me about when he dived with someone else abroad once, and this guy blacked out at 15m, during a 47m dive, and he was out cold for something like 2mins (or more?). i cant remember the exact figure. they were diving as a pair at the time, so they were very fortunate that my buddy was able to cope with the situation. :king

reaonably safe maximum depth for buddy system? - now that's a tough question. i suspect that it's going to depend on a lot of factors including the environment and the individual and a whole bunch of other stuff. in the past we've been using the standard buddy system down to around 70, but we now think that we should have a better system for dives over 60. we're hoping to have a new system by this summer... we'll see.

personally, i have no idea about the O2 issue... i would ask the opinion of a diving doctor (or hyperbaric specialist) about that.

alun

 

[efattah]

Brett LeMaster blacked out for 4 minutes during his failed 81m record attempt (he crashed into the bottom diver and then B/O'd around 12m). The next morning he set the world record.

There was a case in Sweden (I think), where a diver was in a group training session, doing repetitive 60m dynamics. He blacked out during one of the dynamics, he was brought out immediately, and all resuscitation methods failed, and he died.


Eric Fattah
BC, Canada

 

[samdive]

dangerous buddies?

there seems to have been a lot of talk on this thread about "dangerous buddies" " people going way beyond their limits" and the like. Not once has anyone mentioned possible other causes for black out. I have come across a fair few scenarios personally and through my dive buddies where people have blacked out (including me) not because they were way beyond their normal depth and time but because they were
* tired
* cold
* ill
and many other factors that may make a dive well within their normal performance record too much for them that day. So bear these in mind when you go diving and don't get into the feeling that - hey he's done that before he'll be fine.
It's amazing how easy it is to deny the effect things like work stress, illness, dark, hungry, cold, hangovers and (girl touch) time of the month are having on your body. I frequently deny them to myself let alone my buddies... so come on guys, don't be shy.... if it's feeling like harder work than usual then your safety buddies need to know - apologies if this is off topic but this discussion seems to have many tangents!
Sam

 

[Ben Gowland]

Absolutely Sam, and I think that was what Alun is referring to when he describes the 'dangerous buddy' - the one who thinks that his PB was 'well within his limits' and then blacks out with a few metres more. Someone more focussed on the depth than on their physiology on that day. The french freedivers have a very solid ethos of slow progression so that people learn their bodies signals at faster rate than their depths improve. That way they are better prepared for how to deal with odd scenarios and bad days. This ethos is unattractive to the more competitive minded people who constitute the greater risks - and sadly it encourages them to either sort themselves out or go elsewhere and dive under less safe conditions.

O2 issue

not much reason to use it for standard BO victims, but may be useful for people who have damaged lungs and therefore a reduced surface area for respiration, or possibly of help for someone who has inhaled water (although if they have inhaled enough water to affect their O2 transfer functions they should be dead or about to die very soon).

Dynamic Death - (a bit of physiology thought needed here)

I had not heard of such a thing happening although I have thought for some time that dynamic is possibly the most dangerous discipline from an O2 starvation point of view, because the diver is constantly using the O2 up at the extremeities and supplying seriously deoxygenated blood to the heart which will quickly sap the lungs of available O2 - so if the diver blacks out, then their heart will continue to supply a rapidly deoxygenating blood to the brain unless they breathe in. I.E. the diver will 'die' quicker than if they were static breatholding or doing a deep dive where the blood would deoxygenate more slowly because of lower metabloism and blood shift respectively.

Very sad and illuminating to hear of it - can anyone shed more light on the circumstance?

 

[immerlustig]

ben

i like the 'slow progression' approach myself as well. my pb in cw (40m=100%) i can definitely repeat any given week (i live at the sea right now and dive every day), and a 90% dive is possible on every day.

sam, alun

prevention of a bo is the best first aid procedure and selfevaluation should be exercised before every dive.

the bo'd diver from my first post stated that there were a few(!) factors which should have led him to not do this particular dive in the first place.

eric

those examples of yours: do you know maybe know about the rescue procedures of those incidents?


i also would like to repeat one earlier question about a 'reasonably safe' depth for using the buddy system:
1. up to what depth are you guys comfortabel with that? especially under light of those examples where narcosis might already have influenced the diver.
2. and what do you consider safe solo diving depth (for yourself!). i'd like to know also how that relates to your pb's.


thanx for all the replies so far. you guys helped me already a lot in improving my personal approach.

any more recommendations or points you'd like to make are highly welcome.

cheers

roland

 

[immerlustig]

resuscitation in water

...some more questions:

did anyone ever have to personally resuscitate a bo'd diver while in water? or know of somebody who had?

i personally believe that with water splashing around, the buoyancy problem, not much stability in water and the issue of how to empty the mouth of water etc., resuscitation must be extremely difficult
i wonder about the reality of such an action since i never personally had to resuscitate anybody anywhere. but just practising it gives me a whole lot of disbelief in the effectiveness.

a platform at the dive site seems to me to be my next project.

cheers

roland

 

[efattah]

The maximum depth that I will dive to 'solo', is about one half of my pb. It is very similar for my friends. Half your pb seems to be common.

Even diving to half my pb, I must be feeling *very* good and in the zone. Otherwise even that wouldn't be safe, and it also depends on my suit configuration etc..

I watched Kirk Krack give Mandy Cruickshank in-the-water artificial resuscitation after a bad blackout in Florida when Mandy wouldn't come around on her own. The waves were 6 feet high. Bifins are important here; doing it with a monofin would be very difficult. There is a special position Kirk teaches for doing that -- you can take his course and learn it.


Eric Fattah
BC, Canada

 

[ivan]

hi

Eric that is interesting that you limit yourself to half your pb depth. So if your pb is still 88m a 44m dive solo is still deep. When spearfishing im usually by myself although I have mates in the water they are up to 500m away, I usually hit pbs all the time whenever I feel comfortable whether Im solo or with a mate, to me my Rec spearing depth is all about comfort in the water.

cheers

 

[bruno]

where is...

Some day, one will ask where Ivan has gone.

Long time no hear about him on this forum...


:rcard :rcard

 

[ivan]

hi

Hey I take it slowly I never usually beat my pb by more than 10ft per day this way Im learning my limits.

cheers

 

[zipy]

hi

If i was to dive only one half of my PB when solo at the moment it would be about 12m.
No do for me!!
What bruno said for ivan might count for me.

Zipy

 

[Shadowkiller]

Here in Oz we've lost 4 freedivers (spearing) in the past couple of weeks. SWB is suspected in each case.

If that isn't enough of a warning to divers to take it easy I don't what would be.

There are bold divers,
and there are old divers,
but there are no old, bold divers...

 

[Walrus]

Hi Sascha,

That's really sad to hear.
Something that the AUF should probably think about.........
Perhaps if the buddy system were enforced in spearing comps(like in NZ) people would be more inclined to dive with buddies normally.

There is this mentality I've seen from many people that spearfish that think apnea/comp freediving is really dangerous. ie You should always dive within your limits, blackouts should be avoided... therefore will never happen if you do the right thing :duh
And no of these people want to talk about SWB ?

Like if you look at a Australian book on spearfishing from only a few years back. It also talks about training for apnea comps etc. No where does it mention what to do if someone Blacks out ?!
You just shouldn't do it right ? :head

I have trained with lots of people now, mostly for apnea comps and we were pushing much more then someone would when spearing. Six times I have had to pull someone out of the water due to SWB.

Granted they would not have pushed themselves, or even dived without a buddy there. But if no one was there, then they would have died, end of story.


Wal

 

[loopy]

Originally posted by Walrus

Granted they would not have pushed themselves, or even dived without a buddy there.

You've got that right

 

[ivan]

hi

Zipy same here if I was to dive half my depth I would only be at 12m and that sucks most fishes I hunt are living at 60ft anyways I can hunt to 20ft behind my max depth freediving. Deep diving is all new to me thats why I dont want to rush, sometimes I get angry cos I use the 1min = 10m rule and think that for a 6min static I should be going 60m :naughty . But I cant even make 1min=5m :waterwork

cheers

 

[cebaztian]

An old thread worth reading.
Intresting to read how the "debate" was going 5 years ago.

My contribution to the topic:
How to handle a freediver suffering from blackout

Sebastian

 

[fflupo]

once you have meet the situation of an accident like BO, your perception of taking risk and personal safety and awareness to other dive-buddies will change, it always hits you as a surprise
and after it is tougher to deal with the distraction control

it is difficult to escape from the statistic especially the more you dive