Tuesday, October 27, 2009
This is an irritating time to get sick. Down with a cold, and aching everywhere. I suspect it's part of the reason why I was so irate yesterday. Had a shouting match in my clinic with some dumbass.
Read all about Marcus, the ophthalmologist who passed away in a diving mishap this week. Too young, too soon - hope he rests in peace. According to the press and hearsay on dive boards, he was using a rebreather instead of the usual open circuit scuba that most people are familiar with. I don't know - he's really experienced, and if you ask me, I would say equipment malfunction probably has a lot to do with what happened. I think the dive operator needs to be hauled in for questioning and the rebreather seized and inspected. And it doesn't help that the press makes the whole sport look like it's some high risk thing.
Just out of curiosity, I went to dig out some figures. According to statistics from DAN (Diver Alert Network), the annual accident rate for diving works out to be between 0.011-0.02% per year, while US data from the National Safety Council reports an incidence rate of 0.094%. These numbers account for both fatal and non-fatal incidents. DAN is a non-profit association providing emergency medical services and evacuation for divers where you subscribe to them like you would for insurance, so the difference in numbers above can be attributed to both different populations (world-wide average vs US data) and demographics (divers who do plan for emergencies vs those who may or may not have emergency evacuation plans). The numbers do look small, but I suppose it's one of those things that are like a comparison between train collision rates vs roller-skating accident rates - when things do happen, they have a higher chance of being fatal in the former, safety figures notwithstanding.
Just as an aside, we had an interesting exchange with Grahame - our AOW instructor - about how some dive shops operate locally. As someone who's been through this before during our basic open water, I can say that it's just not safe, and accidents are just waiting to happen. Very typically of Singaporeans, people want to get certified asap. The basic open water cert requires 4 open water dives. What local companies do is to leave S'p on Friday evening and return on Sunday evening, as locals don't seem to want to take a day off just for this. So you basically arrive at your destination on Saturday early morning (4am, in our case), and go for your very first open water dive of your life at 7am. Safe? I think not. I knew we had a bad time, and it was really not enjoyable at all.
I probably won't stop doing dives, but will still stick with what we usually plan for - shallow dives (above 20m) so we can do a controlled emergency ascent within 1-2 minutes, tight buddy system (Yx, you need to quit swimming *above* me so that I can see you!), prepare to surface as soon as the tank pressure gets to 50 bar, and of course reputable operations with competent divemasters/guides - that extra $5-10 of savings per dive just isn't worth the risk.
Our next trip should be somewhere in Feb next year. We can't afford Palau (or rather, *I* can't afford it), so we're making do with the Gili Islands in Lombok instead. Not world-class diving for sure, but I don't need spectacular cliffs and drop-offs to make my day.
Wenky
10:30 PM
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