I am the opinion that each and every individual should have basic Medic First Aid skills. This includes CPR ( Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation). While in some countries a MFA (Medic First Aid) course is required for even getting a driving license, in others nobody cares. Living in the Philippines since quite a while, I saw horrible scenarios when people try to help with some simple cuts or burns.
Small injuries here are normal and you rarely see a young person without any wounds or scares which never healed properly. That comes many times from poor First Aid Treatment. Instead if disinfecting wounds you can watch relatives, taking weird stuff from trees, soil from the ground, leaves and other stuff to put it on the wound. The last step is having the grandma peeing over it.
This might have been the standard Medic First Aid procedure a couple of hundred years ago, but the world developed a little bit and there are other options available. Another thought I always have is when walking through cities in the Philippines and seeing plenty of older expats with very young attractive woman hand in hand – How are they reacting if the older guy has a heart-attack while overexercising, or just because of the heat and moisture they are not used to.
Are this young girls able to help the guy with life-supporting treatment until professional help arrives?
Did they ever get a MFA/CPR Instruction?
Well, this thoughts might sound a bit weird for my valuable readers but after a long time living here I do know of cases where people died because of the treatment. Being a PADI SCUBA Diving instructor it is my duty to be up to date with all MFA and CPR Procedures. Actually it is called EFR (Emergency first Response) in the PADI system. Each Rescue Student I have is required to have a valid EfR / MFA certification which includes CPR Instructions. IF they don’t have this, I can teach them EFR courses and they earn the status as a emergancy First Responder.
Anyway, I am not allowed to post any fractions of the PADI EFR instruction video here, but I found a great short CPR Instruction Video I would like to share with you guys.
… well, there Rudi (at that time I was far away from being Rhoody, but that story later) and Lissy walked on a sunny morning in Senggigi/ Lombok – Indonesia along the mainstreet to Astrid and Gerd’s Dream Divers at god-forbidden 7:30 am to start their first theory and pool lessons on their way to become certified Open Water Diver.
Of course we did not finish our assignment completely but went a good way through it. At the dive-shop we met our instructor and another couple who were (like we) quite nervous waiting for the things to come.
We went through the knowledge-reviews and first three quizzes… Fu@% me, I must have missed the quiz part during the introduction the evening before, but with 3 other students sitting next to me and 2 open rotating eyes, no problem, I passed all 3 quizzes with “honest” 90 %. At the end, PADI is teaching the buddy-system, so my buddies did one chapter each and I was following along … hehe
Honestly, I totally understand my students nowadays who wanna push through the course in three days, that they might have some problems in understanding how the course and the system in general works when they got explained everything, but I always try to remember my problems at the beginning. PADI changed quite a bit during the last years and things are just easier now with plenty of options how to go through the Open Water course.
Having that mastered it was time to get some equipment. Well, while Lissy looked super hot in a 3 mm Neoprene wetsuit, my living 100 German Kilograms squeezed into that tight fitting thingy let the Michelin-Man appear like a sex-symbol.
The dive-shop is actually located in a 5-Star Resort and I really apologize for that view to all regular guests there, who needed to experience and see that sweaty, red-head German Sausage running around the pool for some hours…
Finally it was time to assemble the equipment and get into the water. Standing in waist-deep water fully geared up like a scuba diver, breathing from a regulator, bending forward and making the first breath under water from the “high-tech” equipment …
Rhoodys 1st logbook
… didn’t really impress me at all. I know that this is for many the most rememberable moment, but I was just happy to get into the water that I stop sweating in the hot sun above the surface.
We were (at least what I felt) a pretty cool group and nobody had any major problems with all the skills, or panicked with some water around the nose. The start of each Open Water course is basically breathing under Water, clearing mask, practicing the use of a alternate air source and swimming around. Well, having no clue about buoyancy it is more or less hopping along on the bottom of the pool or popping up to the surface. Buoyancy skills are scheduled for the afternoon.
Even without any buoyancy, I liked the bubble-blowing and playing around with all that stuff under water, and most important I did not sweat at all. The time flew by and after my Instructor checked my tank it was time for me to end the first session as it was pretty empty and just a few breaths short of getting the shape of a coke-bottle.
Our lunch “break” was mainly watching video part 4 and 5, having a quick bite to eat, and for (Lissy and me more important) sneaking out of the dive-shop, smocking some cigarettes to get our lungs back into normal surface-conditions.
To be continued…
cheers
Rhoody
PS: I will speed up and not write an article about each breath, it just happened while writing that all that stuff, feelings and memories came back as it was just a few weeks ago… anyway, I don’t force anybody to read my brain-rubbish anyway…
I am pretty much emotional about the happening off the shores of Batangas, for those who are not in the PI or follow the news about several happenings, fishermen slaughtered a six meter Whale Shark.
The slaughtered Whale Shark was caught and his fins cut off. That all is covered by the Bantay Dagat of this area who is actually in charge for the protection of this creatures. According to that guy fishermen tried to free the Whale Shark entangled in a net… well, as you can see on the pictures they had the right tools to cut the fins in a very clean way.
Here the first report I found in the Philippine Daily Inquirer early this week:
BATANGAS CITY—A dead whale shark without fins and a tail was buried on the shores of Tingloy Island on Tuesday morning, inscribing a sad epilogue to a Manila conference of 50 nations for the protection of the endangered fish species.
Locally known as “butanding,” the juvenile whale shark (Rhincodon typus) was found at 9:30 a.m. on Monday by a group of foreign and local divers in Barangay Maricaban on the island, 44 kilometers from this city.
It was still alive but “very weak” when the group left it at 5 p.m., said Rey Manalo, head of the Bantay-Dagat (sea patrol) in Tingloy.
Manalo said the whale shark, measuring 18 feet, could have gotten accidentally entangled in a net laid out by a group of island fishermen who were catching fish nearby.
They must have tried to rescue the creature with their bare hands but could not do so without cutting its fins and tail, he said.
Since it could no longer swim, the hapless giant fish was placed in cool waters with Bantay-Dagat personnel watching over it, Manalo said. Unfortunately, it died on Monday night and was buried on the shore the next morning, he said.
Gimme a fucking break…..they cut the fins with their bare hands ???
Here another report from the GMANews.tv:
An international group seeking the protection of endangered species condemned the attack on a whale shark (locally called the butanding) found off the shores of Tingloy Island in Batangas province last Monday.
In a statement issued on Wednesday, the World Wildlife Fund voiced concern over the possible slaughter of the shark, whose fins were sliced off.
“WWF condemns the perpetrators of this illegal act. This is a real eye opener, for it proves that the slaughter of endangered species – even one as big as a butanding – can still take place if we let our guards down,” said WWF Philippines Conservation Programs vice president Joel Palma.
Divers found the shark last Monday. It was later taken near the Caban Cove where volunteers from Bantay Dagat, a civilian fisheries patrol in the country’s coastal areas, tried to attend to the shark.
“Sadly, its wounds were too great – and the shark, nicknamed Tingloy Baby, died the next day (Tuesday)… and was laid to rest in Caban Cove,” the World Wildlife Fund said.
The statement quoted Bantay Dagat members as saying that its members and local police recently found fishing vessels with strobe lights operating on Mabini town’s shores.
The fishermen were asked to leave, but they later transferred to Tingloy town. The incident prompted WWF and Bantay Dagat to allege that the fishermen could be the possible culprits of the incident.
Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources director Malcolm Sarmiento also said the agency would investigate the possible slaughter of the whale shark.
In the Philippines, whale sharks have been hunted in the waters off Bohol, Misamis Oriental and Sorsogon, the WWF said.
“Shark fins and meat are usually exported to China, Hongkong and Taiwan. Whale shark flesh, called ‘Tofu meat’ sells for roughly $8 (P360) per kilogram, while dried shark fins are valued a hundred times more – approximately $800 (P36,000) per kilogram,” it said.
Citing BFAR data, the WWF said about 200 whale sharks were slaughtered in 1997 alone, prompting the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) and the BFAR to call for legal action to protect the whale shark.
Republic Act No. 8550 or the Fisheries Administrative Order prohibits the possession or slaughter of whale sharks. Violators are punished with four years in jail, a maximum fine of P10,000 and the cancellation of the violator’s fishing license.
Well, if you look at the numbers and know even only a tiny little bit about the attitude of 95% of the population of this country it is easy to understand that they go for the US$800 per kilo as the investigation will end where most things ending here … in the middle of fucking nowhere.
I was one of the group of divers who found the Whale Shark in Anilao. Judging by the rope marks around the tail and damage to the underside of the fish, this magnificent creature had been roped up and pulled onto a boat to be finned before being discarded into the ocean.
It was still alive when we found it, though only just. The muscles around its fins were still trying to move them and eyes still alert.
The guys from the Acacia Dive Resort called out the Marine Police who arrived within the hour and reporters from the local and national news. Footage from one of our divers – Pete was aired the same day on the local news and the following day on the national news.
I understand that media pressure in the Philippines brought an end to the slaughter of Thresher Sharks last year (is this true?) and hope the same will come out of this senseless act. I fear though that this slaughter will continue while there is a demand and whilst the authorities appear to cover up what appears to me to clearly be a blatant capture and finning.
Of course the fisherman who perpetrated this act should be pursued but it is the demand that also needs to be stopped and how does one do that?
I wish my first encounter with these magnificent creatures had been much more pleasant experience but hope these photos and videos can be put to good use to help bring an end to the destruction of these gentle giants of the oceans!
While I write this and look at the pictures I am more than angry, I am shaking shaking shaking, got tears in my eyes, desperate …fucking assholes …
Here you can see what was going on the next few days after this dramaitc accident at Bushmans Hole which took another divers life while trying to recover a dead body from the bottom of the cave.
OVER THE NEXT FEW DAYS, as word spread of Shaw’s death, the Dreyers and most of the dive team went home. Andre Shirley arrived on Sunday, after driving all night from Badplaas, to take her husband for additional recompression treatments in Pretoria. But Herbst stayed at the hole, and he was in a grim mood. It had been left to him to retrieve all the lines and gas cylinders that still hung in Bushman’s depths, work he had started on Monday. By Wednesday, he was ready to go after the deepest cylinders, and he had called in his Afrikaner diving buddy Petrus Roux to help, with the police assisting at shallower depths. Standing at the water’s edge, the police team held an impromptu memorial service for Shaw. Police diving superintendent Ernst Strydom and Roux read from the Bible. Herbst hadn’t planned to say anything, but emotion gripped him, and a few words came.
“I’m going to miss you, mate,” he said, as if Shaw could hear. “It’s a good place. Rest here, stay here.” The group sang “Amazing Grace” as black clouds threatened rain. And then Herbst and Roux dived into the hole.
They dropped to 300 feet and attached lifting buoys to the shot line to raise the cylinders still at 500 feet to a more manageable depth. When they returned to the surface, they were approached by police diver Gert Nel, who had been helping to clear lines in the chimney. “Did you see them?” Nel asked quietly. “See what?” Herbst asked. “The bodies,” Nel said. “We saw Deon and Dave stuck in the cave at 20 meters.”
Herbst rested up and returned to the water. As soon as he cleared the narrow neck of the chimney, his cave light locked on to Shaw, floating eerily upright, his arms spread wide and the back of his head and shoulders jammed against the ceiling. Shaw’s light was hanging below. Looped around it was the cave line he had attached to Deon in October, and cradled almost perfectly in the line, its legs hanging down as if on a swing, was the headless body of Deon Dreyer. Herbst realized that Shaw’s light must’ve gotten tangled in the cave line. When Herbst and Roux had lifted the shot line with the buoys, it had pulled the cave line—and with it Deon and Shaw—off the bottom. As Shaw ascended, the gases in his body, as well as those in his suit, rebreather, and buoyancy wing, had started to expand. Up he had gone, dragging Deon with him.
Herbst brought Deon out first. The police team laid a white body bag along the water’s edge and lifted Deon into it. There was a surprising firmness under the wetsuit, and Strydom was shocked to get a whiff of rotting flesh. One of Deon’s flippered feet fell off. A policeman tossed it into the bag alongside the body, and the zipper was closed. Shaw had died doing it, but Deon’s body had finally been taken back from Bushman’s Hole.
Shaw was recovered next. It was a distressing job. His body was grotesquely swollen from the change of depth and pressure, and it was locked by rigor mortis in the free-fall position. Herbst, standing in the surface pool, had to cut Shaw out of his equipment. “That was quite bad,” he says, choking up.
Herbst cut the helmet cam free, too. Gordon Hiles, who had been filming the morning’s work, was relieved to see that the camera’s housing was still intact. Herbst was exhausted, with a pounding headache. He needed to call Don Shirley and Ann Shaw. But more than anything, he wanted to see what was on that video.
IT’S NOT AN EASY THING to watch a person die, especially if that person is a friend. Less than an hour after the helmet cam was removed from Shaw’s head, as Hiles made a copy of the video for the police at the top of the crater, Herbst watched the film of Shaw’s last dive. Later, he and Shirley (who calls it “a snuff tape”) examined it frame by frame, backward and forward, multiple times, to try and understand every nuance of Shaw’s death.
The picture is dark, and sometimes hard to see. But along with the sounds of Shaw’s breathing, picked up with perfect clarity by the camera in the stillness of the cave, the video tells the tale of Shaw’s final moments. When Shaw reaches the body of Deon Dreyer, he is 12 minutes and 22 seconds into the dive, and he’s been on the bottom for just over a minute. He pulls the body bag out and starts to try and work it over Deon’s legs. As he does, a cloud of silt obscures the picture. When it clears, Deon’s body, its head having fallen off, is floating in front of Shaw.
This was totally unexpected. Deon, as it turned out, was not completely skeletal, and he was no longer stuck in the silt. Instead of decomposing, his corpse had mummified into a soaplike composition that gave it mass and neutral buoyancy. And for some reason—no one has an explanation—the body had become unstuck from the mud as soon as Shaw started working on it. “The fact that the body was now loose, and not pinned to the ground, was not one of the scenarios that we had thought about,” Shirley sighs. “The body was not meant to be floating.” It’s a lot easier to slip a bag over an immobile body than a body floating and rolling in front of you at 886 feet.
Shaw starts fumbling and, for the first time, lets out an audible grunt of effort.
Herbst, listening intently through headphones, heard the steadily increasing distress in Shaw’s breathing and knew there was trouble coming. “Breathe slower, man, breathe slower,” he urged out loud. Watching the video with a clear head, it is hard not to wonder why Shaw didn’t just turn around right then and abandon the dive. In October, he had turned for the surface as soon as his breathing rate increased. Now he was panting, and Deon, who was attached to the cave line, was floating free. The body could have been pulled up. “All the options involved putting the bag on,” Shirley explains. “He’s sticking with his plan. Which is what you’ve got to do.” Still, when Shirley first saw the video, he couldn’t stop himself from pleading, “Leave it, leave it, leave the body now. It’s loose and can come up.”
Shaw, however, is responding only to the pounding of his narcosis and his determination to finish the job. He keeps working to control the body, letting go of his cave light so he can use both hands. Deon is rolling and turning in front of him, resisting Shaw’s efforts to get him into the bag. Shaw has been at it for two minutes, and the cave line is seemingly everywhere. It snags on his cave light, and Shaw pauses to clear it.
At this, Shirley and Herbst bridled. A cave diver should never let gear float loose. “It’s a recipe for disaster,” says Shirley, who will always regret not being present when Shaw told Hiles he would put the light to the side at times. “Do not do that,” he would have warned him.
Now Shaw is acting confused. He is working at the torso, instead of the feet. His movements have lost purpose. After more than two and a half minutes of work—and three minutes and 49 seconds on the bottom—Shaw pulls his shears out, fumbling to open them. The plan was for him to cut the dive tanks away as he rolled the bag over Deon. Shaw’s breathing rate continues to increase. Suddenly he loses his footing on the sloping bottom. He scrambles back to the body in a cloud of silt. The grunts of effort, hateful little bursts of sound, are painfully frequent.
Shirley and Herbst guess that Shaw’s narcosis was then closer to six or seven martinis. “You focus on the one thing. You don’t focus on the dive anymore,” Herbst says. “The one thing becomes everything. And I think with Dave it became the body, the body, the body.”
Still, Shaw keeps checking the time on his dive computer. After five and a half minutes on the bottom, he’s aware enough to know he has to leave, but he doesn’t get far. The video shows the bottom moving beneath him. Then Shaw’s forward progress stops. His errant cave light has apparently snagged the cave line tied to Deon’s tanks. Shaw knows he has caught something and turns awkwardly. His breathing starts to sound desperate. He pulls at the cat’s cradle of cave line, as if trying to sort it out. Every breath is now a sharp grunt. Shaw struggles to move forward again but is anchored by the weight of Deon’s body. The shears are still in his hand, but he never cuts anything. The pace of his breathing keeps accelerating, and there is a tragic, gasping quality to it, so painful to listen to that Herbst and Shirley will no longer watch the video with sound.
Twenty-one minutes into the dive, the sounds finally start to fade. Dave Shaw, with carbon dioxide suffusing his lungs, is starting to pass out. He is dying. It’s heartbreaking to watch. A minute later there is no movement.
I found that video about diving in Apo Island on you tube and it is probably the best quality I have seen so far about diving Apo Island. The guy who taped it was with sea-explorers. His name is Mika Ahola and what I could see, he is multiple world champion in Motocross. Visit his site for more info Mika Ahola’s site
Well, he is obviously also a passionate Scuba Diver and talented Video guy. As I have more daily visitors here then hie You Tube – side I want to put the Video here for you guys to enjoy it. I like it alot, even some of my favorite divesites on Apo Island are missing.
The Music and the quality of that dive Video are great. Seven Minutes to enjoy diving at Apo Island. Here you go :
Apo Islands Coral Gardens are just stunning, but I can’t hel[p myself in wondering where the fish are in some dive-spots. Even typical reef-fish are in some places around Apo Island just missing.
However, thanks Mika for the great Video, hope you’ll be back in the Philippines one day. You should consider a trip to Tubbataha Reffs , I guess as a biker you woul love the thrill there and the big stuff… but Apo Island was a good start…
Mikes Beach Resort in Dumaguete or better in Dauin is soon to open its gates. The Beach and Dive Resort had a tough head to head fight with Robinsons Dumaguete but finally made it and opens earlier.
Everybody who knows Mike from the Adventure Dive Shop in Dumaguete knows that his Beach and Dive Resort in Dauin was a big dream which finally comes true. As I am working as a freelancing dive instructor for the Adventure Dive Shop, I saw the growth and progress of the Dive Resort construction site in Dauin and know some of the troubles Mike went through.
Sometimes I still wonder how he can keep his great attitude with all that crap. Well I guess seeing the dream grow helps a lot.
Mikes Dauin Beach Resort will be a great place for guys who want to relax and having a great time in a family atmosphere. With only 8 rooms and the huge pool it is designed very spacious and won’t get crowded.
The rooms of Mikes Beach and Dive Resort in Dauin have 2 categories and are priced with 2000 and 2500 peso. With that prices he will cover a market for guests and travelers which don’t or can’t stay in other Beach and Dive resorts in Dauin which charge over 100$ and more than 100 peso for a local beer.
But relaxing and Diving is not all Mike offers in his new Beach Resort 15 kilometer south of Dumaguete. He will tailor you a customized program for your non diving days whether you want some adventures or just a city trip to buy some souvenirs.
The kitchen of Mikes Beach Resort will have extended menu of his Waterfront Café in Dumaguete which is well known for its Mexican delights and burger. Well my favorite is still the breakfast until closing time.
So from my side all the best to Mike, Joan and his team of the Dumaguete Beach Resort in Dauin.
Just finished another great week of diving and teaching. While my friends in Luzon complained about bad weather, it couldn’t be much better here in Dumaguete. Blue Sky, flat water and great visibility in the whole area.
Mike from the Adventure Dive Shop called me up last Sunday to teach some classes for him so I started Linda from Australia and Nicky from England to teach them the Open Water course.
The whole week together was just a blast and I had so much fun with that lovely couple. They were well prepared and paid attention to everything. I am sure the great conditions and the turtles on their very first open water dive was also encouraging them to run through the theory and skills with flying colors.
Midweek Dave from England joined them to do a refresher after some years of being out of the water. The week ended with a great trip to Apo Island. We were guided by some dolphins on our way to Apo Island, were the two finished their last course dive at chapel point, a nice wall with wonderful coral-gardens on top to do the safety stop.
So it was time for the first real fun-dive. I decided to go with them on a drift-dive, as they I was sure they are confident in the water and stay close to me. When we came to the huge school of Jackfish, I grasped both at the tank-valve and pulled them into the middle of thousands of Mamsa (Local term for Jackfish). Nose in the current and hard fining we spend a couple of minutes in the middle of these beautiful creatures.
The third dive on Rock Point was relaxing and just before we went on the boat to head back to Dauin, a turtle passed and waved us bye-bye.
Well, back at Mikes Diveshop we finished the paperwork and I signed the log-books. Here is where things started to become a bit weird. I am really not sure what made Linda and Nicky drawing that stuff in their Log-book, but I guess they will have to answer this question each time they enter a Diveshop…
Hope you two guys have a great time in Palawan…. and don’t forget body position and exhaling are the secrets of diving… Thanks for diving with me… I had a great week with you two
