The reason why the presentations and consensus statement arrived at this position was because there is considerable evidence from aviation, medicine and other fields and disciplines that shows the proper use of checklists reduces the probability of incidents occurring.

Simple examples of how checklists have improved safety include making sure the limb for amputation has been actively and correctly identified, positive confirmation of the dose and identity of the drugs being administered or making sure the correct engine is being shutdown in the event of an aircraft engine fire.

But just culture is only one part of a safety culture, a term which is being promoted by a number of organisations and individuals as something that needs to be developed by individual divers to improve their safety. The funny thing is that a culture is something that is at the core of a community or group; it is ‘the way things are done around here’. (Williams et al, 1994).

 

But perhaps, evolution is too soft a word to describe what’s happened. So many things have changed. Gear, training, the places we visit to dive, how we exchange information, even what form dive magazines and textbooks take: case in point with X-RAY MAG for example.

Every diving accident has a chain of events that lead up to it, but often the chain is only visible afterwards when you reflect on what happened. You don’t always see a chain before an accident takes place, but if you do see one or if you only think you see one, you need to have the courage and determination to break it, even though you might be criticized by others for doing so.

The weather was awful—windy, wet and bleak. It had kept us out of the water and holed up in a small hotel for days, playing euchre and praying for a break in the weather. When a narrow window of opportunity finally opened up early in the morning on our last scheduled day in French Canada, we suited up on at the dock, threw our gear onto our charter boat, and hoped for the best.

Not only free divers

One of these concerns is a widely misunderstood phenomenon most frequently referred to as shallow water or hypoxic blackout, something that hitherto has typically been a problem encountered mainly by free divers.

 

Mask clearing and deployment of the Surface Marker Buoy. What’s the connection between these two unrelated skills, you may be excused for thinking. They are both giving many students problems during training, that’s what.  In both cases it’s all about getting it right from the beginning

We are all aware that as we descend the gas in our lungs and body tissues compress and becomes denser. The deeper we go and longer we stay, the more of the inert gas Nitrogen (and in the case of diving with trimix, also helium) our tissues will absorb and hold. Oxygen on the other hand is utilized in the metabolism, with carbon dioxide (CO₂) being a resulting waste product.

60 meter dives offered

Gluttony

Our body needs food. Our body needs oxygen, too. But too much food or too much oxygen can also kill you sooner or later. A setpoint too high on an eCCR, exceeding the MOD on an SCR, or simply exceeding the physiological limits of oxygen exposure can lead a rebreather diver to oxygen toxicity and its various manifestations (acute Oxygen Toxicity poisoning on the Nervous System, whole body toxicity and its effects on the lungs, O2-induced myopia).

● Limit your oxygen exposure.