Diver Down: Real-World SCUBA Accidents and How to Avoid Them

Additional Diver Down: Real-World SCUBA Accidents and How to Avoid Them Information

One diver, after a seemingly brief period below the surface, discovers that his gas supply has run perilously low. Another, paralyzed, bobs helplessly on the surface, and when a poorly trained divemaster attempts rescue, things go from bad to worse. Two other divers, fascinated by the bountiful undersea life of the Caribbean, fail to notice that a powerful current is sweeping them rapidly away from their unattended boat.

These are just a few of the true stories you’ll find in Diver Down, most of them involving diver error and resulting in serious injury or death. Each of these tales is accompanied by an in-depth analysis of what went wrong and how you can recognize, avoid, and respond to similar underwater calamities. This unique survival guide explores the gamut of diving situations, including cave and wreck diving, deep-water dives, river and drift diving, decompression sickness, and much more. It shows you how to prevent tragic mishaps through: Inspection and maintenance of primary and secondary diving gear Learning and following established safety protocols Confirming the training and credentials of diving professionals Practicing emergency responses under real-world conditions

What Customers Say About Diver Down: Real-World SCUBA Accidents and How to Avoid Them:

Ange's book is a series of short stories relating to diving accidents. Interposed between the stories are a number of other side bars that explain various things relevant to an adjacent story. It is an extremely readable series of short account that provides examples of the things which most often go wrong. The first couple of stories have happy endings, which may lull some into a false sense of security, but that comfort blanket is rudely stripped away for the rest of the book.Each story is no more than 3 or 4 pages, making the book easy to pick up and put down. That helps make the book much more readable, as it explains new concepts to less experienced divers, but allows others to skip across bits that they know and get back to the meat. Across the scope of the book the sidebars cover almost every aspect of equipment and training, and really do a good job of illustrating the purposes of most of the safety equipment and training in diving.Altogether a very well put together book with a great deal of diving wisdom available in readily digestible format.

After each accident report, there is a section detailing the lessons learned from the mishap, and often a box adding information about a relevant topic (caves, wrecks, rebreathers, safety devices). I think of myself as an experienced (> 400 dives), skilled, and mostly pretty careful scuba diver. It contains a number of accident descriptions with scenarios ranging from novice divers running out of air, divers taking unnecessary risks to poorly maintained equipment causing serious accidents. He could not see his buddy." than to read the general advice to regularly monitor your air consumption and stay close to your dive partner. When was the last time I checked my safety equipment. In some of the accidents, the protagonists survive with a serious scare and some hypothermia, in others they get seriously injured or pay with their lives.

I found it useful to ask myself after each chapter: Could this happen to me. This book made me seriously reevaluate my diving practices. The accidents range from absolutely reckless behavior (a teenager attempts a solo bounce dive to 125 ft while his friend distracts the instructor during a safety stop) to cases where seemingly well-prepared divers all of a sudden find themselves in trouble (in a strong current). The book is written in a clear, sober and non-sensationalist style, but nevertheless the fact that the accidents are described with a focus on the individual human beings involved sent chills down my spine. It is psychologically so much more powerful to read "Jason tried to breathe from his regulator, but his tank was empty. If yes, what should I change in my diving procedures.

Am I sure that I am not pushing the limits in this or that respect.An extremely useful book, both for the actual diving knowledge it contains as well as a reminder how things can go wrong and how catastrophic that can be.

I would recommend this book to beginner divers. I would not recommend it to experienced divers, or someone (like myself) who's already read and learned about scuba diving. Having read Shadow Divers and Deep Descent previously, not much in this book was new to me, and the tales here are very basic, simple.

This book should be read by all divers. Comparing to other books on diving accidents I read, it shows that accidents happen not to newbies only, but even instructors and divers with houndreds of logged dives can overestimate their qualifications or underestimate dive difficulties. While reading the book I noticed, with shame, that there are things I do, that puts me in potential jeopardy, that I should fix immediatelly. The book stories are fabularized and it makes it very easy to read (despite of its sad subject).

This is one of those books that is hard to read yet also hard to put down. It should be mandatory reading for all new divers. Learn from the mistakes of others. This book could save your life someday.