People expect recreational diving to be an enjoyable experience of adventure and fun. Divers are explorers and retain a sense of optimism regardless of how many dives they have done. While we dive with great expectations, incidents do occur — often when we least expect them.
Ear barotrauma (pressure-related injury) usually occurs in divers’ middle ears, often as a result of congestion. In this unusual case, however, a diver experienced ear barotrauma that resulted from accumulation of ear wax in his ear canal.
Ensure your dive shop has properly trained and certified technicians. One couple dealt with a terrible ordeal because their scuba cylinders were improperly checked. Read more about the incident.
With adverse events, there is almost always a cascade in four phases: the trigger, the disabling agent, the disabling injury and the cause of death. Individually, each event is avoidable. Recognizing one at the time of occurrence is an opportunity to react and attempt to mitigate the risk before it becomes a problem. In root cause analysis of adverse events, the most significant factors are the lack of recognition and failure to react to the event.
Have you ever asked yourself, “What is my biggest fear in diving?” My fear has always been getting lost at sea. I am a technical diving instructor with almost 4,000 dives, and I’ve done plenty of boating, drift diving, and dealing with current.
A 38-year-old diver suffered from a burning sensation in his throat and had discomfort in his neck. The diver had pulmonary barotrauma. Read more about his incident.
Post dive, a diver had immediate symptoms including shortness of breath and tingling extremities, but the dive boat did not recommend emergency treatments. The situation progressively worsened. Read more about the incident.
I REMEMBER SITTING AT MY COMPUTER while thinking about all the ibuprofen I had been popping for the past 18 hours and wondering why I still had the dull, aching […]
While growing up I had two lifelong goals: become a diver and join the military to be part of the elite Special Operations Forces. I became a certified diver in 1994, when a close friend convinced me to plunge into Louisiana’s lakes with him, and I joined the U.S. Army a year later.
All diving has risks. To mitigate them, we must always pay attention to the details. The predive safety check is of utmost importance to help avoid a dive accident. The key elements are for each buddy to check the other’s BCD, weights, releases and air, and then give a final check and decisive OK. I could have avoided the entire incident had I adhered to my predive safety check and not gotten distracted, and I should have performed the safety check again before getting in the water.
