Michael Ange - Diver Down: Real-World SCUBA Accidents and How to Avoid Them

DIVER
DOWN

REAL-WORLD SCUBA ACCIDENTS
AND HOW TO AVOID THEM

Michael R. Ange

Copyright 2006 by Michael R. Ange. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

ISBN: 978-0-07-177873-2
MHID: 0-07-177873-X

The material in this eBook also appears in the print version of this title: ISBN: 978-0-07-144572-6, MHID: 0-07-144572-2.

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Photographs courtesy the author unless otherwise noted.

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N MEMORIAM:

Ottis Ray Ange, my dad.

Not an educated man, but a better teacher than

most of the educators I have known.

Great spirits have always encountered violent

opposition from mediocre minds.

ALBERT EINSTEIN

This book is dedicated to the innovative spirits of our sport: To those divers who have quietly pushed the limits, set the records, and changed the rules, frequently without fanfare and usually without recognition. To those who have been ostracized to the point of subterfuge, forced to conceal a cylinder of nitrox or trimix, like an alcoholic hiding a bottle of rum, just so they could dive safer or longer than ever before. And to those who can appreciate the days when a supposed law of physics suddenly changed.

Read the label on any piece of scuba equipment or the opening pages of any training manual and you will no doubt be informed that scuba diving is inherently dangerous. Of course, the same can be said for driving your car or any number of other daily activities that we all participate in. Although it is counterintuitive to think of strapping a high-pressure cylinder of compressed gases to your back, sucking air from a hose, and descending dozens of feet below the surface of the water as being relatively safe, the statistical fact is that diving is safe. Of course, if you are one of the 100-plus people who die in diving accidents every year, or perhaps one of their family members, statistics will mean little. Diving is an adventure sport, and, like rock climbing, skydiving, or even snow skiing, it involves certain inherent risks. Accidents do occur. It is sensational and media-worthy when someone dies or is seriously injured while participating in a sport, but we never read about the millions of dives completed safely every year. In fact, the biggest unanswered question has to be: Why is it that an activity that has such a high potential for disaster in reality has so few accidents?

The answer includes extremely reliable equipment, voluntary self-regulation by scuba instructors and agencies, fairly good procedural training, rigorous accident analysis, and the fortitude of our industrys explorers. One of the key reasons that diving becomes safer with each passing year is the superb engineering and quality control that goes into the vast majority of the life-support equipment used by divers. Many divers will go through a decade or more of active recreational diving without encountering any of the equipment failure emergencies they are trained to handle. In fact, of all the accidents that occur, equipment failures undoubtedly cause the smallest percentage, even among divers who refuse or neglect to maintain their equipment.

Diving instructors, as with the instructors in any adventure sport, are a unique breed, even a mixture of paradoxes. They are at once adventurous individuals and conformists, risk takers and safety conscious, and most are somewhat egotistical while remaining respectful of their industrys icons and legacies. However, they all share a devout commitment to safety, adhering to accepted procedures and never pushing outside the envelope or flouting the laws of chance. Fortunately, these instructors train the vast majority of new divers entering our sport.

Then there are the explorers. Like any adventure sport, ours is populated by a small percentage of innovative spirits who are always willing to question the norm, challenge convention, and expand the realm of accepted practice and even the underlying science supporting it. They are usually outcasts from the mainstream of the sport and quite satisfied with that position. The procedures they use and the techniques they apply are nearly always condemned by those who understand the reasons for the procedures. Most of them endure the taunts and disapproval with a sly grin as they descend on every dive with true conviction that their death-defying maverick stunt of today will become the standard procedure of tomorrow. And in the majority of cases in which the explorers live to tell about it, undoubtedly it will. Any list of divings explorers would be inadequate, neglecting too many individuals. As a group, though, these divers have expanded our understanding of the earths oceans, explained the previously inexplicable in the longest and deepest of the worlds underwater caves, and opened the doors to historical treasures never before accessible. Along the way they have broadened the scope of our accepted procedures and methods and allowed the weekend diver of today to go farther and deeper, stay longer, and return with a far greater margin of safety than ever before.