I want to relate a story from my past and make the connection with a few
discussions I've been following on the subject of training.

The Incident
---------------

My buddy and I had just started a dive along a cliff. We were at about 120
ft when we came up behind a group doing a deep dive. We were following
along about 20 ft behind and a bit above them when I noticed the guy at the
end of the line start trashing his arms around like someone getting stung by
final ATTACH NO DOWNLOAD bees. When this went on for a few seconds it became pretty apparent to me
that he was panicking about something.....then he started to sink. (I got
thinking about this incident again because of the epileptic guy). His
buddy, who was in front of him, didn't notice and kept swimming further. I
signalled to my buddy to partner up with the buddy of the sinking guy and
take him to the surface. (to stop a bad situation getting worse) and I took
off after the sinking guy myself. This cliff is about 600ft deep at the
bottom and by the time I caught him we were really deep. I pinned him
against the cliff and then I could see that he was wound up like a mummy in
an enormous mass of fishing line. My new problem was that I was pretty
narc'd and I was thinking like "ok...uh...now what? .... cut him loose? go
up? where did I put my knife? Do I inflate my BC or his? ... this is
pretty bad eh?...." etc. which made it hard to formulate a plan. Just
about then, my buddy arrived on the scene (he sent the sinking guy's group
to the surface) and was signalling like a mad man to go up, which helped me
decide to go up first and then cut him loose. I checked my depth gauge,
which maxed out at 200 ft, and it was pinned. Based on how narc'd I was, I
guess it was 200-230ft but I can't be sure. My new problem was "how do we
get to the surface without DCS"? (at that moment, I thought we
couldn't...) Having no idea what to do, I took our friend to 30 ft and we
breathed our tanks empty at depths between 30 and 10ft. (I'm not even sure
we were over the NDL's with this dive profile). To stop this story from
getting too long, none of us got sick and it was a miracle that nobody died.
It did, however, teach me a few lessons and help me form an opinion about
how we are trained, which I would like to share:

Lesson # 1 - My basic training never taught me what to do in a decompression
situation, which never bothered me when I thought "I'm a good boy, I'll
never do that". It's like the sport diving world is flat and certification
agencies want you to believe that if you exceed the NDL's (or 135 ft) that
you're so f*ed there is no point in even talking about what to do about it.
Leaving it to blind-faith in computer manufacturers to save you is no excuse
for not including it in the training. Getting to the point, I think every
diver needs some training on the basics of making deco-stops in case of
emergencies. You might not avoid DCS in an accident but you could lessen
the severity if you had any idea what to do. To give myself a better chance
in the future, I personally started diving with a decent computer but I
still maintain that this should have been a bigger part of my basic
training.

Lesson #2 - It's dark down there. I happened to be carrying a light that
day but since then I've carried a small one on every dive.

Lesson #3 - Certification training should contain an element of
psychological evaluation. I'm pretty calm under pressure but I've seen so
many things happen to "stressy" people that I now firmly believe that it is
WAY too easy to get certified for scuba diving. I'm not qualified to
criticize all organisations but, despite some very strong points, the
organisation that certified me creates a lot of accidents-waiting-to-happen
based on too-low criteria for calmness and good judgement. The moral of the
story above is that Panic Kills. That's what got this guy in his particular
pickle, not the fishing line.

Lesson #4 - so THIS is nitrogen narcosis! This experience convinced me that
nitrogen narcosis is way more dangerous than people think. Hearing about it
isn't like having it and having it at 100ft isn't like having it at 200+ft.
I guarantee it! You become as stupid as a cow and your ability to reason is
(can be) severely impaired the deeper you go. You can simulate this sort of
thing on the surface and by incorporating such simulations in the training,
I believe a few lives could be saved every year. My buddy recently told me
a story of a woman who died diving because she sank to the bottom (250 ft or
so ... she was carrying too much weight and may have had an inflator
problem) anyway, after finding herself too heavy to ascend, neither she nor
her buddy could come up with the simple idea of dropping her weight belt and
she died. My assumption is that they were both narc'd to the gills and
couldn't formulate a plan. My point is that nonchalance about nitrogen
narcosis is dangerous and misleading and I think it should be given centre
stage in the part of the training about emergencies.

Lesson #5 - More on Panic Kills. As long as training agencies pursue the
policy of making people afraid of anything outside the sport diving limits,
people will die from a lack of knowledge. The woman in lesson 4 was in a
very serious situation, but her tank and reg were still functioning, her
buddy was with her and she couldn't sink any more. In short, this was
definitely a survivable situation. Why did she die? She might have been
able to remain calm if her training didn't convince her that anything deeper
than what's on the tables meant certain death. She might have been able to
handle her gear narc'd if she'd have done it during training and she might
have gotten to the surface with only a mild case of DCS if she had been
taught a deco model. Basically, this was a case of death by training.
(ergo, the subject of this message).

Summary: To summarize, I think that training agencies need to do better in
the following areas:
1) Stop discussing what's in the charter and what's out of the charter
and start teaching the *whole* game to sport divers. At least the theory.
Information about what happens when you fall off the flat end of the world
won't kill people, but deliberately withholding this information already
has. Students trust their lives to certification agencies but I doubt the
wisdom in this as long as certification agencies are withholding critical
information.
2) Give students training in "deco-stops for dummy's" in their basic
certification. It's better than nothing. It's not enough to say "never do
it" and close your eyes to the reality that accidents happen. We should be
prepared for them.
3) Narc students in a simulated dive during the training and get them
handling their gear in this state.
4) Learn how to identify people who are at a high risk of panicking and
refuse to certify them. Develop a screening test for this, or something...

That's all I have to say about that....

Cheers,
R..