A few more lesson from Otter from a different perspective
As most of you know, there was recently an "incident" at otter involving two divers, a broken line, a no vis situation, and some restrictions...to say the least...
I was on the scene as surface support on this particular day, primarily for the science part of the day's activities. I was not diving, nor had any intentions of diving...I brought only enough dive gear to provide extra equipment if a diver needed something.
We have all been reading Jill's posts on her lessons learned from that final dive of the day, and I thought it would be beneficial to expand on this a bit and provide some more lessons learned by myself and the other diver involved. As we all know, different people have different perspectives and typically see different things.
I learned two very important lessons on this day, the first was, always have the contact information of the closest rescue diver on hand! When my buddy (or should I say, Jill's buddy in this case...although she is normally the person I dive with) popped up immediately asked if Jill was up, and that she was missing, we immediately thought of who we should call. Obviously 911 would be of little help in this situation, so we placed a call to Wayne at Amigos and informed him of the situation. He promptly gave us the number of the closest person to call and that call was placed.
A quick discussion with Jill's buddy informed us that she was pretty low on gas (500 psi, and 1300psi in her tanks, mainly from being stuck in a restriction for 30 minutes) and was not fit to return to the cave to a search. I instructed her to go down and position herself at the entrance of the cave (but not to enter it) and shine her light in in hopes that if Jill was coming out off the line she would have something to reference. It was apparent Jill's buddy was stressed out by the situation and was not fit to remain at the entrance alone waiting for Jill to come out. I had minimal gear and the other surface support person was not a cave diver. I wanted to get the other diver out of the water where she could get out of dive gear and warm up (she was diving wet).
This brings me to my other lesson learned, and that is...ALWAYS bring a complete rig ready to dive, because you clearly never know what can happen. I had with me my nomad and all the trimmings (lights, reels, etc), my sidemount regs, an extra set of bottles, a mask and fins. Basically everything but a suit. The other surface support person was roughly my size and was able to run home and grab his suit for me.
I should note at this point, although I am trained as a technical cave diver, I did not see myself fit to begin a searc, and the only in-water help we discussed would have been for me to bring a stage bottle in a short distance and drop it on the line in case Jill emerged running very low on gas. The rescue divers we called said not to enter the cave, and thus we obeyed their orders. What I did do was enter the water to replace Jill's buddy at the entrance and let her get out and get warm. Upon arriving at the entrance, Jill had appeared and was removing the primary line.
Those were my lesson I learned from acting as surface support. The first being important, not only to this dive in particular, but every dive whether in or out of the water. I had only the number for a diver in the Tampa area, where I conduct my research dives, but after this, I will be sure to have several other numbers on hand for the various areas of florida.
Maybe we should start a thread with the contact info for these people so it's available to all??
Now, to make this post even longer I would like to discuss some lessons I learned after doing a post-dive accident analysis with my buddy (jill's buddy). The first, and what we felt was the most important and probably encompasses all the lessons is...COMMUNICATION. What do you do when you find yourself in a situation where you can see your buddy is about to pull a line off a placement, or is about to break a line? I for one would physically grab that person's legs, arm, whatever and stop their motion. This is what I was taught, and this is what I have done in the past. It's simple, it's effective, and it conveys there is a situation that needs to be addressed immediately. As we all know, you don't always know when you are caught on a line, especially when you are going through some tight restrictions.
Another point on communication is...know the emergency plan before you ever start the dive. I have dove with new people before, and the first thing I like to discuss is..."what do we do if"...I think this phrase is very important in cave diving and discussing it will put everyone on the same line if a situation were to occur. When these points aren't discussed pre-dive, you end up with confusion underwater, and a complete lack of understanding between divers when every moment matters.
The last point I would make is to conduct a proper and full pre-dive assessment. When I dive a new system, I always hunt down a map of it and have it on hand when discussing the dive plan. This has helped me countless times to location sites when conducting research, and understand where bypass tunnels and connection are. Now, as we all know, maps don't always exist, and in that event, I would want to know as much as I could find out about that system's layout before diving it. When I dive with new people and they aren't familiar with the cave, I will tell them where we plan to go and what we will see on the way there. For example, when I dive Crystal Beach Spring (a cave I dive A LOT) I make it a point to mention where the jumps are located and where they cut back into the primary line. I think this is important and if a visual jump was accidently made everyone may be able to understand what happened when they reach a point that was discussed in the dive plan. The last thing about dive planning I would like to mention is...as a surface support individual at otter, I had no clue what was unfolding a mere hundreds of feet away from me. It wasn't until the first diver came up that we learned of the incident. Our only comment on the surface was..."man, they're having a nice long dive"...When I am on surface support next time, I want to know how long those divers will be gone, and when I should seek help.
These are the main lessons I learned from this day after being on scene and discussing the dive with Jill's buddy. I'm posting this only to add to what Jill is posting so we can all learn from past mistakes and become better safer divers from it. I agree with several things Jill has said, and some have made me thing hard about my diving style. I only wanted to address somethings from a different point-of-view and hope we all see how no matter what position we have on a dive site, we are all affected and can learn from it.
