What’s Really Important
Okay, here’s what is really important:
- Healthy divers do not spontaneously lose consciousness while resting at the surface.
- Any diver who loses consciousness, whether from heart attack, stroke or any other reason, is in mortal danger — regardless of whether or not he or she is floating face up or face down.
- So long as there is a capable dive buddy close at hand, it is easy to place an unconscious diver in a face-up position, regardless of the type of BC he or she may be using.
As a consequence of the work I’ve done for various training agencies, I’ve been reading dive accident reports (and working body recoveries) for nearly 30 years. I have yet to come across a single incident in which how a BC floated an unconscious diver appeared to have any meaningful bearing on the outcome.
I’ve posed this same question to training agency officials and lawyers at firms that investigate dive accidents. They agree.
There was a time in technical diving when it was fashionable to carry all the back-up equipment you could manage to clip on to yourself. Was it possible that all three of your lights could fail? Then carry four. Or five. Or six. And why carry two reels when you have enough D-rings for four?
Eventually, though, we figured out that the risks of entanglement, drag and complexity caused by all this extra crap far outweighed any possible benefit. Thus it is with the “innovative solutions to the nonexistent problems” supposedly caused by back-inflation BCs.
Therefore, for the reasons you’ve read about thus far, all the collective silliness associated with back-inflation BCs earns it this issue’s Bronze Turkey Award.
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