Another strange argument. You really think they fabricate spearfishing accidents by squeezing a spergun into the hands of all drowned swimmers they find, or what?
Last edited:
-
Welcome to the DeeperBlue.com Forums, the largest online community dedicated to Freediving, Scuba Diving and Spearfishing. To gain full access to the DeeperBlue.com Forums you must register for a free account. As a registered member you will be able to:
- Join over 44,280+ fellow diving enthusiasts from around the world on this forum
- Participate in and browse from over 516,210+ posts.
- Communicate privately with other divers from around the world.
- Post your own photos or view from 7,441+ user submitted images.
- All this and much more...
You can gain access to all this absolutely free when you register for an account, so sign up today!
"Safe" limits for a solo diver
- Thread starterNicInKorea
- Start date
Thread Status: Hello
, There was no answer in this thread for more than 60 days.
It can take a long time to get an up-to-date response or contact with relevant users.
It can take a long time to get an up-to-date response or contact with relevant users.
I'm unfamiliar with DAN statistics, but, if they include snorkeling fatalities(as cited above), they may be pretty useless for what we are interested in, freedive B0s. Too many snorkelers with too many simple drownings, heart attacks, etc.
Connor
Connor
For what I know, the DAN statistics are mostly real spearfishers and freedivers. As for the CROSS statistics, they split spearfishers and freedivers into two separate categories. While in the freediving category there is typically one case or two a year, at spearfishers the numbers are ten times higher. I am not sure whether the freediving category includes also simple snorkelers or not, but if it does, then the number of their fatalities is negligible in comparison with spearos. Especially if you consider that there are many more snorkelers around than spearfishers.
Last edited:
regarding blinds: i read and in general believe what i understand out of deeperblue posts.
i think you got me a little wrong. i wasn´t saying there are no fatal accidents. i was trying to explain a mechanism, which leads to increasing numbers of fatal "freediving" accidents. maybe read again
one thing in this respect is that the numbers of fatal accidents in one particular year. for many people this info would be enough to say this and that must be done.
much more problematic is when there is a trend over years, because this kind of info calls much louder for (paternalistic) consequences. having this in mind it´s important to see where the influences on those trends are. i mentioned one.
Esom's argument that wider knowledge of freediving results in more fatalities being ascribed to freediving is valid, not strange at all, just human nature. We have had numerous reports on these pages of unknowledgeable people ascribing what were probably B0s to other things because they had never heard of a B0. Seizures, overtired, etc. Give'm some education and they would have described those as B0s.
I do not understand how you want to falsely ascribe an accident to spearfishing. Either there is a speargun next to the body, or there is none. It is simple, and I do not think there can be much misreporting.
As for the growing DAN statistics, it was clearly told it had little to do with the reality. It is just because they manage to find a little bit more cases (but still only a tiny fraction of the reality). From this point of view, the statistics of the CROSS-MER are mouch more reliable, beacause the same methods are being used since more than a decade. And the CROSS data indeed does not show any such growing tendecy as DAN. There are peaks and lows, but the annual numbers remain over the time more or less on the same level.
As for the growing DAN statistics, it was clearly told it had little to do with the reality. It is just because they manage to find a little bit more cases (but still only a tiny fraction of the reality). From this point of view, the statistics of the CROSS-MER are mouch more reliable, beacause the same methods are being used since more than a decade. And the CROSS data indeed does not show any such growing tendecy as DAN. There are peaks and lows, but the annual numbers remain over the time more or less on the same level.
Last edited:
It shows 1 per year for the last five years, except for 2011 in which there were 5. That's for freediving. Snorkelling is a different kettle of fish; those drownings won't be due to blackouts and most likely wouldn't be averted by using the buddy system.
Eric died while he was buddy diving. To say otherwise is a case of "no true scotsman," i.e. "if you're not applying the system perfectly, you aren't applying it at all." By that definition nobody buddy dives because nobody do it perfectly in all circumstances.
Buddy diving is a framework within which there is still room for accidents to happen, especially in difficult conditions. When Eric died my buddy and I were following the same protocol a short distance away - could have happened to us too, despite best intentions.
Last edited:
In the DAN report they just refer to 'breath hold activities' to differentiate I guess from SCUBA - all breath hold activites are lumped together, as well as the fatalities/non-fatalities and the reason for the accident. They do refer to different reasons etc in their analysis and if I remember correctly the two most common reasons were medical conditions (eg seizure) and BOs.
In the appendix they have about 13 reports and you can see that they contain every reason under the sun, including a couple of fatalities from boat accidents if I remember correctly...
Well, not so important but even if you exclude snorkelling, the average is 2 per year in the last five years, and 1.25 if you exclude 2011. Anyway, even the 3/y or 8 in 2011 are fairly low in comparison with other lands.
Trying to exclude snorkelling is the same as if you told that for the road accident statistics you will not count the accidents of non-professional drivers, because they are not real drivers, and belong to another kettle of fish.
The whole purpose of this discussion is to show that there in an abyss between diving with a good safety buddy protocol, and without it. And it does not matter whether you are a semi-professional spearo, competitive freediver, or a snorkeller. The safety risks are simply much higher when diving alone, or with a buddy just looking the other way. These principles should be tought to sorkellers and kids as well.
Thread's specifically about freediving risks, so it doesn't seem very helpful to bring general 'swimming' risks into it, even when the mitigation is similar. The OP actually made this distinction. I expect the snorkelling deaths would be due to poor swimmers encountering swimming-style risk situations (current, waves, medical conditions) rather than breathhold activity. Buddy still useful, but not as much and in a different way.
I'm perfectly happy to do shallow spearfishing and surface swimming by myself. Assuming conservatism, decent fitness and gear, I see moderately deep spearfishing with a buddy as more dangerous because of BO risk.
I'm perfectly happy to do shallow spearfishing and surface swimming by myself. Assuming conservatism, decent fitness and gear, I see moderately deep spearfishing with a buddy as more dangerous because of BO risk.
Dave, what's "shallow"?
As a WR holder I would guess that what you're talking about is probably equivalent to me diving to 3m for 10" in the pool!
As to snorkling/swimming risks (current waves etc) I presonally feel that these are harder to mitigate IF you're not wel informed.
Here in the UK there are some ferocious seas. A couple of years ago 21 people drowned while collecting shell fish on the beach because they didn't know the tides!
As a WR holder I would guess that what you're talking about is probably equivalent to me diving to 3m for 10" in the pool!
As to snorkling/swimming risks (current waves etc) I presonally feel that these are harder to mitigate IF you're not wel informed.
Here in the UK there are some ferocious seas. A couple of years ago 21 people drowned while collecting shell fish on the beach because they didn't know the tides!
(this) discission has ONE purpose? i disagree. if there is one it´s discussion.
let´s assume it is ment as a statement. i disagree. A buddy can be a distraction from things which are crucial for safety.
Further (more important), a buddy system is depending not on rules but on communication.*
consequently not buddying enhances safety but the way diving together (or alone) is done. this is simple enough, we don´t have to generalise more, by prentending there exists such thing as buddying ("good safety buddy protocol" is just the long version of the same, in my opinion).
of course i feel the misunderstandings i see here should not be tought to snorkeller and kids. i´ll start an own thread on this soon, as we´d get to a meta level by starting to discuss what should be told to...
*this second point feels like a comment on mullins recent post (68)
Last edited:
Trux
Pretty sure you brought the DAN statistics into this discussion.
I don't think anybody disputes the safety "abyss" between buddy diving and solo diving. I, for one, agree with you that there are a lot more B0 fatalities than get reported, but you can't determine anything, one way or the other, with statistics that mix snorkeling and freediving/spearfishing. There is just too much difference.
As a real life example of the principle. Miami Beach in the 1970s had a large number of fatalities and near fatalities of "swimmers." If you looked at stats for swimmer fatalities you might conclude that this was a very dangerous beach until you found out that it had little wave action, no currents, flat bottom profile,warm water, and lots of buoyed ropes for people to hang onto. About as safe as you can get, but the average age of the "swimmers" was 85. The "swimmer" fatalities were nearly all heart attacks. We(the life guards) got real good at determining from the beach whether the face down not moving "swimmer" was conscious doing a dead man float, or whether he was an unconscious heart attack. Lumping all kinds of breathhold activities, including snorkeling, in diving stats is worthless.
Pretty sure you brought the DAN statistics into this discussion.
I don't think anybody disputes the safety "abyss" between buddy diving and solo diving. I, for one, agree with you that there are a lot more B0 fatalities than get reported, but you can't determine anything, one way or the other, with statistics that mix snorkeling and freediving/spearfishing. There is just too much difference.
As a real life example of the principle. Miami Beach in the 1970s had a large number of fatalities and near fatalities of "swimmers." If you looked at stats for swimmer fatalities you might conclude that this was a very dangerous beach until you found out that it had little wave action, no currents, flat bottom profile,warm water, and lots of buoyed ropes for people to hang onto. About as safe as you can get, but the average age of the "swimmers" was 85. The "swimmer" fatalities were nearly all heart attacks. We(the life guards) got real good at determining from the beach whether the face down not moving "swimmer" was conscious doing a dead man float, or whether he was an unconscious heart attack. Lumping all kinds of breathhold activities, including snorkeling, in diving stats is worthless.
Last edited:
Sorry Connor, but I do not agree. Not in this discussion where we speak about safety and buddying. It does not matter whether the dead guy is an 85 year old snorkeller, or a world class freediver. If he had a buddy watching him, his chances to survive would be incomparable to being alone.
And fortunately most of the statistics give more information, so you can see the gender, and age distribution, and often also the specification of the activity (spearfishing, freediving, snorkelling), so you can well see that there is no major skewing of the data by some old pensioners snorkelling 10m from the beach.
For example over 90% of the fatalities in the French CROSS reports happen further than 300m from the shore. CROSS is not being called when it is near the shore - such cases are usually handled by the terrestrial forces and do not appear in their statistics. So if there is a "snorkeller" diving more than 300m from the shore, I see no reason not including him into the statistics. I see no difference between him and myself, regardless whether he has carbon fins and an Elios wetsuit, or just some beach paddles and trunks.
Last edited:
pretending that for some special reason the buddy was not part of the problem that had been evolving, i agree here, i wrote the exact same in my first post.
but what are your consequences follwing out of this? regarding your own diving, speaking to others, posting on deeperblue? (is the latest point fully answered already when i read your posts? ;-) )