Hi list,

      Kinda quiet these past few days - either people are outdoors diving
or indoors daydreaming about future dives (sadly, I belong to the latter
group) and in case you're also part of the unfortunate group here's
something I'd like to ask.

     Where'd you learn about "proper" emergency procedures ? I mean things
like what to do when the BCD inflator got stuck and it keeps on inflating,
when is the best time to ditch your weight belts, what to do when your BCD
leaked underwater rendering any attempts to inflate it useless, what to do
if a Vortex was sucking you down (I read this in the archives) etc. Are
these things taught and practiced in Advance Classes or should I just
research in the internet ? Are there any books that give examples of
emergencies that can happen while scuba diving and how to "solve" it ? Do
you practice it regularly ? Take the BCD inflation problem, do you actually
practice flairing and disconnecting the "something" or will you be doing
these things for the first time if this emergency actually happens to you ?

    Reason I'm asking this was that I came across an article in
scubadiving.com about what to do if your BCD inflator got stuck. It was the
first time I heard about things like flairing up, disconnecting the "power
inflator or something" (SEE - I'm not even sure what to disconnect) etc.
This wasn't taught in my OW class which means that if this things happened
to any of my "classmates" I'm pretty sure they wouldn't know what to do
(unless they also read about it). I was wondering why it wasn't taught.
I've read stories on "near-death" mishaps and that the only reason the
people survived was that they knew what to do. And for those that did not
survive, the usual comments was "IF he only ditched his weight belt" ...

   SO, where's the best place to get information about these procedures ?
And if possible, can you provide some personal experiences so that I can
learn from them (you can email them to me personally if you want). I'm not
a paranoid guy but it makes me comfortable to know that I can handle or at
least be able to try handling any surprises underwater.


- Angelo