Refresh your rescue skills

If out of every 100 dives, the worst thing that could happen was that your dry-suit leaked 10 times then diving would be considered virtually incident free. However you would still say that there was a big risk of getting wet and cold and I'd bet that you would spend a lot of effort getting your suit fixed.

On the other hand, if out of every 25,000 dives, 1 dive resulted in decompression illness then would you still regard diving as virtually incident free? Without allowing complacency to creep in, we have every reason to be confident because in comparison to many adventure sports scuba diving is not dangerous. Avoiding complacency in diving remains vital because despite all our efforts there is always going to be a small risk of something going wrong in a very major way. Would you spend as much effort training to deal with such an eventuality as you would fixing your dry-suit?

I have personally done somewhere in the region of 4000 dives and have never had DCI (that I'm aware of) but I have witnessed many more 'man' dives being conducted - I estimate at least 40,000 in the last 29 years. In that time I have witnessed or been involved with very few serious diving incidents but I would much rather have a leaky suit than have to deal with one more case of DCI.

That most of these incidents were handled well was down to a mixture of calm determination, team work and training. Elsewhere in the media words like 'heroic', 'calm' and 'professional' are frequently used to describe the actions of members of our emergency services. Yet when interviewed those same people often say that they were just doing the job they were trained to do. Training is the key – quite simply you can't have enough practice. From training comes the ability to stay calm and keep an incident from becoming a catastrophe.

The RNLI are a good example of this, their volunteer crews train continuously and regularly repeat the most basic of skills – such as throwing rescue lines. Ask them why they do so much training and the answers will vary from “staying in practice” to “it's fun”. Staying in practice is fun and it will underpin your confidence to take on more adventurous dives.

In the last few years approximately 400 diving incidents each year have been reported in the UK. Of these the majority involve rescuing divers who are at the surface. Surface rescue skills are therefore every bit as important as underwater skills.

Buoyancy for both victim and rescuer is vital yet most divers can't remember the last time they practiced ditching their weights under 'emergency' conditions. Simply assuming that the weight pouches on a new BCD are easy to ditch because it looks easy is not sound logic. In water slightly too deep to stand up in, try treading water with no air in your BCD or dry-suit and then ditch your weights. Your buddy can recover your weights or you can wait for the tide to drop and then pick them up off the beach.

The Royal Life Saving Society use the principle of: 'Talk, reach, throw, wade, row, swim with an aid, swim and tow'.

This is good advice for divers as well. If you see someone in difficulty at the surface and you are dressed ready to get in the water – you may not have to put yourself at risk by getting in!

1. Give clear instructions and encouragement to the victim to help themselves – eg inflating their BCD or ditching weights. Once your casualty is buoyant you have time to think about how to recover them safely.
2. Try to reach them by some other means rather than actually getting in the water and grabbing hold of them.
3. Have you got a rope, or better still a rescue throw bag that you can throw? Rope throw techniques definitely require practice but one good tip is to aim your throw beyond not at the casualty.
4. Is there someone close by in a boat who can respond to your call? If you are on the coast you can phone the Coastguard by dialing 999 and they may be able to task an RNLI lifeboat. Call early because it can take several minutes to get a lifeboat on the water. It's not a problem to stand a lifeboat down if the situation is resolved before they arrive. Don't wait until you are desperate for additional help before you make the call.
5. If you really must get in the water, take something buoyant for the casualty to hold on to. Don't allow yourself to become the buoyant aid that a panicking casualty will grab.
6. Actually swimming to someone unaided who may panic and grab at you is the worst of situations to be in. Carefully assess the situation first. Are you really capable of making the rescue swim? Will you be fighting a current? Where will you land the casualty? Is there someone else who can assist – both in the water and on the shore?

All of these skills and many others are easy to learn or refresh on a Rescue Diver Course, but many a blown out dive trip has been salvaged by doing some impromptu training rather than sitting in the pub with long faces!