Human element is becoming very important topic these days in SCUBA diving world, especially in technical diving and rebreather diving.
With high helium prices deep diving on open circuit is becoming part of the history, and for mixed gases diving rebreathers are used almost exclusively. But rebreathers are not here only for technical divers. Rebreather manufacturers are starting to target recreational diving community with so called “recreational rebreather units”. Even though there is no such thing as recreational rebreather, all rebreathers are technical in nature and require proper training and mind-set to handle them well, recreational divers are turning towards this type of diving more and more as they recognise advantages rebreathers offer.
On the other hand, standards for becoming a rebreather diver are relatively simple and easy, with very little pre-requisites as we would expect. Traditional open circuit technical diving training can totally be bypassed, where certified Advanced Open water diver with only 20 logged dives, can enrol into rebreather course and become a rebreather diver in no time.
Is this easy route for becoming a rebreather diver good or not? I guess it will depend on whom we ask?
From the rebreather manufacturer’s perspective is probably a good thing. More rebreather divers, more rebreather units sold. Also, more certified divers, higher profits for SCUBA diving agencies. So, from their perspective this is also a good thing.
But is this a good thing from diver’s safety point of view?
SCUBA diving industry, especially technical and rebreather industry, is developing fast.
New rebreathers come on the market “every day”. With new technologies they are becoming very reliable. Some more complex than others, with more features or less, some basically doing everything for us,.. but nevertheless, they are all very technical, require proper training, proper mindset, continued education and training, but most importantly they all require procedure to be followed. One miss during a pre-dive check can literally lead to death.
So, coming back to advanced open water diver with 20 logged dives which by the standards can enrol onto rebreather course. This diver is nowhere near the skill level and level of experience required to handle even just a regular rebreather dive, especially rebreather emergency situation. With so little dives under his belt this diver is missing fundamental skills to start with: good buoyancy, trim, situation awareness,… not to mention he is missing entire OC technical diving training and education, which in my opinion is extremely important in ordered to be a good and successful rebreather diver.
It takes time to gain experience. Through our diving career, we make mistakes and learn. With every mistake we learn something new and we make “deposits in the bank”. As we become more experienced our comfort zone expands, and if emergency occur, all we have to do is to make a “withdrawal from the bank”.
Rebreathers are the tool that allows us to do amazing things. Allows us to do dives that would not be possible on open circuit. They allow us to go deeper, stay longer, penetrate deeper inside a wreck or a cave, but if divers are missing fundamental skills, all they do is taking their poor skills deeper and longer, making their dives extremely risky, putting their buddies at risk, also environment is suffering due to poor finning techniques or poor buoyancy control, but most importantly if they have an issue they will die.
Rebreathers are becoming very reliable, almost to the point of no failure, but how good rebreather will work underwater will also depend on how good a rebreather diver is. If a rebreather diver is not comfortable underwater, lacking basics, with diver’s constant changes in a water column rebreather will work hard to keep up with diver’s poor skill level, and will automatically make the diver work hard too, and this is where the problem starts.
Many times, I’ve seen divers having wrong reasons to start diving rebreather in the first place. Poor air consumption is one of the reasons I often hear. This is horrible reason to start diving rebreather.
Poor air consumptions usually mean diver has issues with buoyancy, trim, propulsion techniques, fitness level… Diver with such poor skills are not efficient and work much harder underwater.
They take a rebreather thinking that is the solution for their problems, but actually they haven’t addressed any of the issues, they made them even worse. They are missing fundamentals, and those fundamentals should have been addressed long ago during their training. Which means their skill level did not match their level of certification from the start.
Divers have tendency to rush through the certifications. They progress too fast, looking at the “final destination”.
It’s good to have goals. Arrive at the “destination” is nice and rewarding, but the journey is often more important than the destination.
Fundamental skills, the foundation, or as I like to call it the platform, of every SCUBA diver must be buoyancy control, trim, propulsion techniques, positioning in the water and awareness. This should be the main focus for every single diver (and instructor) out there, on any training level, starting from Open Water scuba diver level onwards. If a diver hasn’t mastered those skills, he will be unable to do any task efficiently underwater.
After establishing the foundation, if there should be any changes, whether something related to the equipment configuration, or perhaps different type of diving, or different level in diver’s training, etc… we have to start from beginning and establish the “platform” first, re-address the fundamentals before we continue further.
But it is not a problem with unexperienced divers only. With experience often comes more relaxed approach to diving and diving safety. On a dive boat we often hear experienced divers say: “Don’t worry it will be fine, I’ve been diving like this for 30 years”.
Well, to start with, doing something incorrectly for 30 years it doesn’t make it correct now, also many things have changed in 30 years. This kind of attitude usually leads to problems, especially in rebreather diving.
If you look at the diving accidents today, huge majority of accidents are caused by human error, almost never because of equipment failure.
The reasons are usually simple: exceeding level of certification, not trained for the dive, unfit for the dive, exceeding personal limits, not following procedure and so on.
This brings us to conclusion that technical diving and rebreather diving is not such a dangerous activity as many think. Danger comes from divers and their terrible attitude towards training and diving safety.
Aviation industry always fascinated me. Activity of flying, which was not particularly safe, aviation industry has made to be the safest activity humans can do. Despite the fact that there are thousands of jets up in the air at the same time, with pilots that come from all around the world, speaking different languages, etc. and yet remains incredibly safe.
How they’ve done it?
There are numbers of things they have done, and for sure that includes technical improvements and plains themselves, but the huge part of it is set of strategies that comes down under one umbrella called Human factors.
What that means?
They have strict rules and protocols, which are also strictly followed. There are checklists in place for every single job involved. Following those protocols and using checklists risk is brought to a minimum.
The main part is that rules and protocols must be followed, otherwise it doesn’t work.
In technical diving standards and procedure exists. “Rules” and protocols exist too, as well as checklists, but for some reason divers choose not to follow them.
It takes literally 30 seconds to go through the pre-dive check list on a rebreather. Doing it properly can save our life, but divers still decide not to do it, they rush through the checks and forget to do something so obvious but yet so important that can end up in fatality.
Why do we do that, and we change that?