Getting Real About Lost Second Stages
If you want your students to be truly prepared to deal with a second stage that suddenly goes missing — regardless of whether they have just taken a deep breath or not — you need to treat a missing-regulator situation for what it really is: an out-of-air emergency. And what is the best way to deal with any sort of out-of-air emergency? By using an alternate air source.
Alternate-air-source second stages have been considered a standard piece of equipment for divers for over two decades. Yet, for some reason, we’ve never recognized this fact when teaching divers how to deal with a missing reg.
Yet, when you think about it, the most logical thing for a diver to do, the instant his primary regulator goes MIA, is to “locate, secure and begin breathing from” his alternate-air-source second stage.
Once this happens:
- There is no time limit to how long the diver has to fumble around reaching or sweeping for the missing second stage.
- It no longer matters whether the diver was at the beginning or end of an inhalation or exhalation — or anywhere in between — when the regulator was lost.
- If the cause of the missing second stage is that the mouthpiece has come off, it won’t matter that, when the diver finally finds it, he won’t be able to safely use it (unless he just happens to be carrying a spare cable tie).
Therefore, when teaching regulator recovery and clearing as an exercise in and of itself, you should teach students that their first response, before doing anything else, should be to locate and begin breathing from their alternate air source. Then they can reach or sweep as needed to find the missing second stage without the pressure of having to do so before they run out of breath.
Similarly, when conducting an exercise, such as air sharing, which may end with students having to locate and resume breathing from a regulator they have previously dropped, let students know that, if they cannot immediately locate that second stage, they need to find and begin breathing from their alternate air source before the situation gets any worse.
As mentioned earlier, when divers actually do lose a second stage under water, they are usually in a normal swimming position. Thus the “missing” second stage tends to remain in front of them, where it may be clearly visible. In fact, the only time a second stage will tend to get behind a diver’s back is when that diver is in a vertical position. When does this most often occur? When the diver is at the surface.
As a consequence, you should have students practice reaching and/or sweeping for a missing second stage while floating at the surface with their BCs partially inflated, and breathing through their snorkel or from the surrounding air. This particular skill can, literally, be a life saver in rough seas. (It also helps to stress the importance of your students keeping their primary second stages hanging in front of them at the surface, whenever these regulators are not in their mouths.)
As a final note, you also need to stress the importance of keeping alternate air source second stages properly stowed in a suitable holder. That way, should students need them, they won’t have to search for “octopuses” which have gone missing as well.
Alternate air source second stages have been standard equipment for divers since the early 1980s. It’s time we recognize this fact and use it to help better prepare divers for real-life regulator loss.
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