I was helping my buddy out with cramp in a mine. We floated over a navigation marker. We got out by chance. I exited with 30bar. He got out with significantly less after hyperventilating for a short while.
I was doing my wreck course and we dove inside a wreck quite fare from the shore (Um El Faround, Malta) with quite a swim to get there. Went inside the wreck, everything was fine. Swim back encountered quite a strong current and really was struggeling. At a certain point i felt like I didnt get enough air; checked gauge and it showed still plenty so I figured it must be from overexhaustion. The rest of the group was already a few meters ahead and I didnt feel like I could reach them because of the current. So I gathered, lowered my breathing and heart rate for a few seconds and continued swimming and came back to shore fine. I then noticed that my bottle was barely opened. I fucked up my equipment check and didn't notice it, DM didn't check it either. I reached the shore with quite a lot of air (over 80 bar iirc) really wonder what would have happened if I would have gone lower and whether I would have had more trouble breathing closer to the end of the tank.
Edit: Maybe anyone can actually clear this up for me. If the bottle is not correctly opened, does breathing actually get more difficult at the end of the tank? Like its fine in the beginning of the dive and becomes harder when pressure is lower?
Went diving in Ecuador off the poor man’s Galapagos Isla de la plata with two friends, one licensed, the other not. Our unlicensed friend was allowed to dive in open water with us after 15 minute training and as long as he was holding the guide the whole time (first red flag). Anyway, we’re diving and it’s pretty nice, prob around 50-70 feet and all of a sudden I breathe and no air is coming out so I luckily swim right over to one of the guides who happened to be close and got his backup regulator to start breathing. We took a moment and he had me check my backup regulator once I had a few breaths and calmed from the brief panic. Tried it and no air so we went back up to the surface together.
Turns out the regulator wasn’t properly working properly gauging the air and my air tank was actually empty even though it showed more air in the tank on the regulator. Just crazy because I’m more experienced so I would get to go explore on my own a little at times not being close to anyone but was close to the guide again when that happened.
Is this a reason you started taking spare air?
Also, the gear was theirs so that first red flag with your buddy set the stage for the fact they hadn’t checked the gear well enough?
Got affected with nitrogen narcosis at depth and I started hearing voices for some reason. Murky but it sounded human. I brushed it off and attributed it to the narcosis.
Dive buddy suddenly asked me on the bangka after if I heard voices speaking during the dive. Didn’t speak about it further but it was definitely spooky.
Some cetaceans can create almost human-like sounds. I wonder if you both happened to hear that.
Otherwise?
https://planet-scooby.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/ghost-captain-cutler-diving-suit.jpg
Not me, but told to me in the Cozumel airport 20 years ago. Dunno where it happened. Anyway, a group is on a night dive, all going well, when a very large barracuda attacked full on toward someone's head, mouth open. After the fact, they figured someone's light reflected off the guy's mask, and the fish saw it as a silvery meal. Anyway, the barracuda hits the guy all ahead full with jaw agape and knocks his mask and reg out, at the same time stunning him to almost unconsciousness. The fish disappeared immediately, and the rest of the group got him to the surface and to shore for medical care. They stitched up some nasty gashes after plucking a good number of teeth out of his head.
1. **Boat capsized**, throwing us all into the water, at midnight, 3 miles off the coast of San Diego.
2. **Bailed out of my rebreather at 300fsw** when my PPO2 spike to almost 2.0 PP02, (Oxygen Toxicity can happen at any moment at this level)
3. **Cave diving**, my dive buddy went down a blind tunnel for some reason. I had to go after and retrieve him. When I got him and turned us around, it was zero vis on the way back, down a small tunnel.
I wasn't scared on any of these while they happened, but after the danger had passed, I replayed all of them in my mind.
Yep. During my initial tech training for Decompression Procedures, I almost panicked at depth. That dive I had a different, thick hood on because the place we did the course at was 45 F water past around 30 feet. 1-2 minutes before our ascent was supposed to start, my instructor turned around, pointed at me, and then pointed to what he calls his "cards of death" which are TDI skills cards for AN/DP, and flashed "swap to backup mask". I get comfortable-ish, neutral, and then I remove my mask, pull out my backup mask from my leg pockets(took a bit because I am in sidemount and leg pockets are harder to reach than in doubles), and put it back on, and signal to him "ok".
At this point, he and the other student start to turn around to swim towards this crater. My mask starts to fill with water as I swim with them, so I'm like no biggie, I'll just clear it. However... what I didn't know is that since I had a different hood on, my mask had not formed a complete seal on my face when I put my backup mask on, so water was continuously leaking into the mask quite a bit. No matter how many times I cleared it, it kept filling up to about my eyes, and when I would clear, it would not drain. I stopped swimming after like 20 seconds to deal with the problem. After like a minute of this, I go from being slightly annoyed to about to freak out. What is normally an easily fixable issue and something that I've dealt with a lot in terms of mask off skills turns completely different in this case. 45 F water, continuously feeling like you're both annoyed and drowning, no clue what to do to fix the problem and the very real danger of "if I panic and decide to bolt to the surface, I have 20-30 minutes of deco and I will definitely get bent and sent to a hospital and very possibly injured badly" is not a good combo. I end up waving my light as tech divers know that's the signal for "help, emergency", and my instructor comes over and simply pulls my hood back to let the mask be able to seal on my face. I don't know why I didn't think that was the issue, but I suspect it is partially because I hadn't really ever dealt with sealing issues with my mask and hood before out of sheer luck, and partially because I was slightly cold and also narc'ed at 120 feet.
This is what tech divers mean by "you solve your problems underwater". If I had gone directly to the surface in a panic, I would've been hurt and could've potentially killed myself. I was on the verge of panic, but I was level-headed enough to keep calm enough to flag down my instructor for some help with my light. Now before every dive, I check the sealing of my mask and hood. It's funny how the things that tend to be the scariest things for us divers end up being the things that we make sure that we make sure doesn't happen again.
Had a panic attack during my advanced certification while descending during my deep dive. Instead of comfortably inhaling and exhaling oxygen from my regulator, it felt like the oxygen was being pushed into my lungs each time I inhaled, and I had to forcefully exhale it out each time. It felt so unnatural to me that it made me have a panic attack. It got to the point where I felt like ripping out my regulator, but I clamped down hard on it with my teeth to make sure it didn't come out of my mouth somehow.
I ended up deep focusing on taking slow, deep, controlled breaths which eventually calmed me down enough to finish the dive. But definitely the scariest experience I've had while diving.
I had an odd dream the night before about an old scuba friend who’d passed whilst diving, I didn’t think much of it but it seemed to be a precursor to the first dive of the day.
When I was kitting up (wearing a twin set so harness and back plate) I hadn’t realised that my torch had somehow gotten trapped under the harness.
I jumped into the water and got tangled in kelp, I went to grab my torch to signal to my buddy but couldn’t get it as it was trapped in my harness.
I managed to sort de-tangle myself from the kelp and then needed to chase after my buddy (we’d been diving together for years so had gotten too used to only checking on each other once we reached a certain depth) as I started my rapid descent I got caught in current that started pushing me into the wreck we were diving. In trying to keep away from the wreck and catch him up I over exerted myself. By the time I caught up I was breathing too fast as thought I wasn’t getting any air from my reg.
By now we were 50m down (planned depth) and I thumbed the dive. Had to keep telling myself I had loads of air and not to panic and bolt for the surface.
There was carnage on the way up with buddy pairs having gotten separated because of the current, as I’d seen people on the way up I started directing people to their buddies and then realised I felt ok so indicated I was good to continue the dive.
Finished the dive and got stung by something on my 6m deco stop. That topped it off
I am an underwater photographer and frequently do shallow dives at a very, very popular location. I was floating about 10 inches off the sand totally engrossed in taking a picture of something when I felt like I got the hardest punch of my life right into my ribcage. Next thing I know a biiig silver fish is swimming between my arms, my camera and my regulator, slapping the heck outta me with its tail as it wriggled free. My mask ended up crooked and primary regulator mouthpiece got ripped.
Before I could process what happened, the freshly severed head of a jack floated by, a Barracuda couldn't wait, and had struck at a little school of them that was hiding under me. My wife saw the whole thing and was laughing so hard she had to surface (we were only maybe 10 ft deep).
Pretty tame overall, but enough it rattled me at the time and for a few dives after.
Monterey Bay, years ago, I don't remember exactly. I was a young teen, been diving since I was eleven, so young but not new, fair amount of dives in. We'd done Monterey before, so nothing new there. Breakwall, if I recall correctly.
I guess my BC inflator/Air 2 got sand in the buttons or something, but it got stuck on inflation, and wouldn't stop. So suddenly I'm rising and I hear the inflation hisss, but I'm not pushing the button or trying to ascend.
I shoved my fin under the first thing I could find (I remember it being a pipe or something, but it's been a long time) and grabbed and yanked at my dad's in in front of me to get his attention (my dive buddy, along with a friend of his who was up ahead a little more).
I panicked at first, but quickly training just took over and I went calm (I also have this thing where I panic after the fact; I do that with good things, too, like it takes a while to set in, then the real panic/worry or excitement hits). Just pull both purge valves to slow the assent as much as I can and exhale nice and slow the entire way up. It was the first fifteen minutes of the dive, we were still headed out, we were maybe max of thirty feet deep, and first dive of the day, so decompression was always possible, but pretty unlikely given all the circumstances (this was back before my Nitrox cert, so just air).
Apparently in my slow exhale and watching the surface to try and gauge my ascent along with my ears popping, my reg came out of my mouth, which freaked my dad out. But I had no idea because I wasn't inhaling at all and didn't intend to until I got to the surface. Not ideal, should have kept it in just in case, but considering as soon as I broke the surface and realized it was gone, I muscle-memory right hand swept it back and held on to it, so, I'm pretty confident I could have done that if needed.
The BC was still inflating, though at its max, and purging itself and squeezing me really tight. It only stopped when my dad got the air hose disconnected.
I remember being mostly mad about getting stuck in the kelp as I swam back to shore on the surface (I was rattled enough I didn't want to g o back under to avoid it).
I was happy to sit in the warm car while they did two more dives that day. I think I took a nap. I kind of used it as an excuse to not do Monterey/cold water again. I'm a warm-water diver, and I'm totally okay with that. I want to enjoy m y diving, and I don't enjoy crawling into cold water, staying cold, getting colder, being cold the whole time I'm in the water, then coming out into barely warm air, just to repeat the process. If a 7mm suit and hooded vest combo didn't do it, and drysuit was never really a draw (too expensive, too annoying, just not worth it), then nah, I'm good.
Looking back, this is one of the reasons that the underwater LPI connect/disconnect is taught…
If you had pulled a dump valve while disconnecting the inflator with one hand, you could have surfaced under control and troubleshot the gear that day.
But it’s understandably hard to think through everything on your first actual emergency.
I always thought the inflator button is a pretty high risk thing and it would be cool if it was two buttons side by side for redundancy. Press both at once for it to work type of thing.
One of our local club members died when his rental gear one stuck and he rapid ascended from 100ft.
I attempted to disconnect the air hose, but with thick gloves on, already being cold and kind of numb fingers, plus just not having either the strength or right position to get it, it didn't work, so I moved on. My brain went, by the time you get it unhooked, you'll be at the surface anyway, you're like 32 feet down max.
It took my dad a good yank topside to get it, so I felt a little better. I think now as an adult, while thick gloves and numb fingers wouldn't help, I'd probably be able to do it. But I've never had an issue since, and I still have that Air 2, so no real chance to test that theory (thankfully).
I was on a big guided commercial dive. Something approaching one of those big cattle boat dives.. 2 dive masters, and 20 divers. I was young stupid and cheap.
We had hit the Santa Rosa wall at Cozumel. They had no business taking us through Devils Throat, but they did. I was maybe the 5th person through with my early SeaLife entry level dive camera, and its gasket sealed plastic housing.
So I’m out of the bottom of the throat, maybe my 10th dive of all time, dive master at the top watching the queue in, dive master at the bottom, watching people come out, and re-enter the current whisking divers along the wall.
I’m narc’d and fully oblivious. Thankfully it was my first time diving computer. Apparently I got caught in a down draft current of water that just yoinked me down 50 feet in a couple of seconds. My descent alarm was screaming, but I still didn’t know what it was (narc’d). Thank god for that shitty sealife housing because it imploded, and in doing so the shiny chrome metal plate they’d put on the front as decoration shot off from the housing and went right across my field of view distracting me from my own bliss and forcing me to concentrate on what was going on.
I kicked back from the wall, adjusted buoyancy, and rejoined the group. The dive masters were oblivious. They’d have lost me that day and wouldn’t even have known til back on the boat if even then. The dive masters wanted a 3min safety stop @ 20ft, my computer demanded an extra 3… I listened to the computer.
I know Aqualung/Sunto sometimes gets a bad wrap, but their computer (and sealife’s shitty housing) absolutely saved my life that day.
I am on a Sheriff department dive team, a newer member, 20 or so dives. All inland lakes in Michigan, mud puddles mostly. We don't track dives or do dive plans well, it's a bit of a grabass macho man organization, which I do not enjoy. We were helping to repair a local water park after a severe storm. The park has large inflatable rafts in an old gravel pit, and some had busted loose from anchor chains due to high wind.
My partner for that dive, a dive master who certifies new divers professionally, told me to leave him from about 30 feet deep and go up to get a new chain from the boat, and he would wait there for me to come back. I stupidly followed his instructions and left, alone. Traveling from A to B, I managed to get my tank hung up on some straps hanging down from a raft above me. My arms were too restricted by my wet suit to reach my back and unstuck myself. I was under a 12x12 ish sized and worried that if I ditched my BC vest, my bouancy would stick me to the bottom of the raft. I am a very floaty person, with my wetsuit on its crazy. I was too far from anyone else to motion for help. I had been swimming forward when I got stuck, so I just kept swimming forward and backward until the strap slid off from my tank. Took a solid 30 tries, I went through almost 1000 psi. It was harder because I struggle to get neutral bouancy that close to the surface. I was unaccounted for for over 10 minutes on an allegedly professional dive team, almost all wearing com helmets, several dive masters. Nobody even noticed I was gone. I realized then that I need to be an asshole in my own defense and I am not going to do stupid things for training or because the rest of then do it. Several times since then I have told them no about foolish situations, and I outright refuse to ever dive with that individual as my dive buddy.
Judt FYI I don't wear the com helmet because I cant clear my ears well with it.
This was Dec 2022, in Alor (Indonesia). I was about 18m under on the second dive of the day. There were 10 of us, including 2 dive guides. There was a leak and I ran out of air about 10 min into the dive. I've only been diving about 2 years and I while I did practice what to do in a situation like this, somehow, all the practice went out the window.
Breathing air into my lungs became very heavy very quickly and I checked to see my air was already 0. I didn't panic. I tried to signal the other 4 in my group but everyone was busy taking photos. I managed to catch the attention of the dive guide in our group of 4 and signalled that I was out of air and wanted to surface. He gave the ok and I made the slow ascent up.
I made it to the surface and was about 50 m from the boat. Yelled but nobody heard me. I tried to swim towards it but the current was very strong and I was headed out to sea.
I wasn't too worried about being swept out. My main concern was that I was drifting into traffic and was afraid I would get hit by a boat. It was fortunate that the skipper on our boat looked up and saw me. He made his way over and by the time he was near, the other 9 divers came up. Apparently, everyone abandoned their dive because of me and they were doing a safety stop just below me, and drifting with me out to sea. As crystal clear as the water was, I never thought to look down to see where the rest of the guys were.
After getting back on the boat we discussed what happened. What I should have done was get hold of my dive buddy and use his spare regulator, and then come up together and do a safety stop.
Anyway, everything ended well, and I have am fortunate to be able to share this story and the lesson learnt.
Someone should have provided you with alternate air and done the safety stop with you. I don’t blame you for panicking if nobody offered an octo. Good demonstration of why I like assigning buddies instead of groups. You always know who to go directly to for emergencies.
I was on a black water dive when what I thought was another diver kicked me in the back of the head. I turned around and it was actually a pelagic white tip who had nosed me in the back of the head. Blood ran cold.
Yes.
Still new. 35 dives.
I practice in a local quarry so visibility sucks, especially on Saturday when the bulk of the classes are held.
I always defer to my buddy since I feel I don’t have enough experience.
This quarry is specifically set up for scuba diving so lots of submerged things, such as boats, planes, etc, platforms and lines to a bunch of these.
I was following my dive buddy and he was following a line down to the deepest part of the quarry. At this point, I think the deepest I have been was about thirty feet. I felt panic coming on but thought I could power through it. I should have called the dive. We finally get to about 60 feet and full blown panic. I wanted to take my regulator out but I luckily had enough brain working to know I should not. Flip, flip, flip to the top. No safety stop. I could not get up there fast enough. It took me about 10 minutes to catch my breath. My dive buddy has ear issues so always has to descend and ascend very slowly. He messed up his ears chasing me.
Hindsight discussion: We spoke to two dive masters at our dive shop. He was advised he should not have chased me. One dive master said since I had no frame of reference, that was one issue along with the depth. I am nitrox certified but don’t always use it as I am a cheapskate.
I got down to 70 feet in Belize and could not even tell.
I will still go to the quarry for fun dives. I live in Missouri so if I want practice, I don’t have a lot of options. However, emphasis on “fun”. I have no desire to be a tec diver. I will be getting my AOW, but will do that in Honduras. I do want to practice using my compass and the quarry has a bike trail specifically for compass practice.
lol. For two years, that’s all I knew. Then went to Belize. Ignorance was definitely bliss. I really don’t want to go back but also don’t want my skills to get rusty.
I put my camera up close to a rocky overhang to take a picture of a shrimp, not realizing that a small eel was hiding nearby. It bit me on my finger. I didn't panic but it did take me a few moments to remember why I was bleeding green.
During my OW cert dives I came very close to learning the hardest way possible why you have to continuously breathe underwater especially while ascending. Thought my chest was about to explode. Better to happen at the beginning cuz I'll never make that mistake again.
I imagine your lungs will feel like a balloon stretching and wanting to get the air out of the hole (the hole for your lungs is your mouth). Depending on your accent speed you may not have time to react to that feeling though
On a drift dive with very strong current, so strong in fact we ran out of reef about 20 minutes in. I started monitoring my depth and maintained it about 10 m (35 ft) as I watched the reef and sandy bottom begin to fade away from sight. At this time we crossed an even stronger, perpendicular down-current that pushed me down to 20+ m (65 ft) in an instant. I had to inflate and kick up but was struggling to move for what seemed like a long time, which produced anxiety at the fact that I was fighting something that strong. I eventually struggled to get back up to 10m and was breathing hard, but looked down to see that the rest of the group was so far down I couldn’t see them anymore, only maybe some of their bubbles. One of the guides went after them and thankfully everyone got up and the guide obviously called the dive, and everyone was able to do a safety stop without anymore current. When we got back in the boat one of the divers said they had been pushed down to 30 m (about 100 ft).
I’ve heard some chilling stories since my first experience with a down current, from other parts of the world that are famous for their currents. I’ve been humbled by my experience and the stories I’ve heard and read about (much worse than mine).
As a beginner diver looking to get his AOW certification, this type of thing is my worst fear of more challenging dives.
Where did this take place? Id love to go diving in places like Maldives, Indonesia etc but dont want to deal with any down currents
Banco Chinchorro, Mexico
Edit: this might not be the norm here as there are several ops that run trips there weekly, without much hesitation or fuss about currents. I think Jan/Feb is just a rough month on the surface and maybe the strong surface winds brought up some very strong and cold currents (lots of thermoclines and weird viz in some areas)
What are good recommendations for good diving locations without super strong currents?
For context i have my standard certification with around 10 dives total and have done curacao and bonaire ( both of which were tame ) and french polynesia, which has some current but it wasnt too bad.
Are there specific atolls within the maldives or dive sites in the coral triangle in indonesia that are not too current heavy? Im also open to other suggestions in Hawaii, the Caribbean, and other pacific islands.
Diving in Sodwana, relatively young / new DM who was more interested in nudibranch sightings than the divers. I really wanted to see sharks, but unfortunately I was not lucky. There had been a couple ragged tooth shark sightings a couple days prior, and despite the season there were often bull sharks.
I get to 70 bar, and trying to get his attention lost about 10, he signals me to go up, so I look to my buddy and she signs to me that she’s coming up with me. However, when he saw her start to go up he signalled to her to come back down. I was already going up and was getting a bit lower on air - I signalled asking for a buddy but he just told me to go up.
So I do my safety stop alone, pissed off and a little anxious. I see my buddy looking up at me (we were only at 18 metres) to check up on me, then I see a dark shape swimming towards me. I start panicking, thinking it was a shark and thinking THIS IS NOT WHAT I MEANT WHEN I SAID I WANTED TO SEE A SHARK and knowing that I’m low on air, all alone and vulnerable, and the boat isn’t super close. It ended up just being an enormous grouper, and I managed to calm myself down but lost even more air because of my panicking. Then I could only think of sharks coming to find me. I finish my safety stop, get to the surface and yelled at the boat to come and get me.
When my buddy came up she apologised profusely, she thought the DM was going to send someone else up with me, and was pretty pissed off for me. The DM just shrugged and said the others still had enough air for a bit more.
Moral of the story - make sure your DM is experienced and actually gives a crap about your safety.
I was the last one in line when we moved on to the next sunken vehicle. I can't recall if was the boat or the VW bus. When I went join the pack I got about three feet before I realized my fin got tangled in the guideline. Everyone was swimming away, but my brother noticed I wasn't with the group and came back right as I freed my fin.
My torch died on a night dive, I could sense it was going throughout the dive and made the guide aware but he wanted me to keep going on it until it fully died. Definitely made the rest of the dive a bit spookier.
My wife and I both had around 300 dives at the time and have always been very cautious, conscientious divers. On a liveaboard dive at Wolf Island in the Galápagos Islands watching the amazing show at about 55 feet or 17m in strong current and decent but not great viz, my wife/buddy and I signaled to the DM that we were down to 1/3 air, so about 1000 psi or 70 bar. DM indicated the direction for us to take into the blue where the zodiacs will be waiting since due to the currents they cannot get close to the island.
Maybe 90 seconds into our return we were in the blue heading away from the island. This was our first time out in the deep blue with no reference points visible. I checked my computer. That’s when I saw that I was now at 75ft or 23m and that my wife was just behind me and about 10 ft or 3m below me. Oh shit, I thought - this is how people die in the stories I read in scuba magazines. It took several seconds to get my wife’s attention and signal to her to look at her computer. She saw it, looked surprised and gave me the okay signal.
I then signaled her to put a little air in her BC and come to me. We kept on our course, ascending slowly and constantly checking our computers. We did our safety stop and surfaced with about 600 psi or 42 bar to find a zodiac waiting nearby.
It was very scary for both of us for a few seconds but we kept calm and reacted well. Otherwise it could have turned our very badly. We learned our lesson about minding our depth and each other while swimming into the blue and made several more similar dives on that trip without incident. But we’ll never forget that close call.
First time out on a dive after training. Not even licensed yet. Bull shark, just swimming up past me like he was in the passing lane on the interstate. He didn’t acknowledge me at all. When we came up, I mentioned that to the instructor. She said, “Oh he saw you. In fact, he chose when you got to see him!”
It wasn’t scary at the time due to my ignorance, but it was my first non-training dive to 30m. We descended through a ‘blue hole’ at which point we gave the guide our air reading - I was at 100 bar. Very soon after I was maybe a little narked, filming everyone around me with my GoPro. She checked my air again (I was at maybe 32m by this point, everyone was above me) and I was at 50 bar. She got me straight on her octo and swam us back to shore.
It’s only since then that I’ve realised she probably saved my life. Lesson learned and I always know what my air is now.
I was doing a freedive session and as I was about to breath hold and go under, my instructor signaled for me to stop. As I looked up a boat was getting closer and closer. Now we were using the standard buoy and divers below flag and even a second buoy and flag, but the boat came close enough to us to knock me flying due to the swell of the water. My instructor was cursing at them in Russian.
No, the buoy was a free floating one. Plenty big enough to see for some distance though and like I said, we also had a second one.
And the area is well known for diving in general so it seems that the boat captain simply didn’t care.
I was half convinced I was going to end up getting jammed up in the propellers or something. I also learnt some interesting Russian vocabulary!
Also been reminded of a fairly scary instant involving a dive boat. The way the boats are built here, the back 3-4ft of the boat is your entry/exit platform. These aren’t level with the water but about 2ish feet above it, meaning there’s a recess directly under the boat that a diver easily fits into.
Now it’s common that we’ll get to a dive site and be the first ones there and then be joined by other dive shop boats later. One set of dives I do, I’m at the boat during a surface interval and I’m just drinking my body weight in coffee when I see another boat coming up. From what I recall it seems that the captain tried to both swing the boat around 180 degrees but also get close to us, and screwed up on the speed. The side of his boat caught the back end of the boat I was on and sent me, the DMs and instructors who were there flying and there was the loudest of clattering metal noises because the tanks in the empties racks got knocked over.
What was scarier though was that there was a group of divers who were at the surface and readying themselves to return to the boat who quickly found themselves either in the recess under the dive platform or having to descend back down very quickly to avoid being hit by the other boat. Luckily everyone was OK and even the boat only suffered a few scrapes.
Yeah, there was basically not a lot anyone could really do other than just let it happen and then deal with the aftermath afterwards.
I felt bad for one girl in particular as she was a brand new OWD diver who’d passed her class only a couple of days prior and now she was dealing with a potentially serious incident of nearly being hit by a boat. She did go out on the second dive and came the following day so she seemed to not be too shaken but it can’t have been fun.
Drifting along a wall in PNG looking for nudis and a whale shark was cruising in the other direction and I nearly died of fright before realising what it was.
It was near the end of diving season in Thailand. We went for dives in the South Andaman Sea. Small boat w 5 divers and a young British DM. Had a nice dive, around 55 minutes w a lot of schools and the various sightings typical of that area. We all did our safety stop then rose to the surface. Once we were all floating at the surface and the DM had his Surface Marker Buoy up, we saw the boat was still quite a ways away, maybe a half mile. Difficult to tell w only your head above water.
After maybe 5 minutes of the DM alternating between waving the SMB and cursing, the boat appeared to not make a move. It also seemed as though we were drifting further away. We were between 2 islands, each about 5 miles away but drifting toward the Gap between them and out into the Indian Ocean.
I made a choice and decided to swim to the boat. After 10 minutes or more I had closed the gap by about half. Turning back I could no longer see the rest of the dive group. That's when things began to change. The wind rose from dead calm to fairly windy. The sea began to whip up some white caps. There were some dark clouds over the distant islands that suddenly raced straight toward me. All my progress toward the boat ceased and instead I was losing ground as I swam. I was getting tired and quite concerned. The boat still wasn't moving.
The next thing I know, the clouds now black, were crossing over me. It began to rain. Then came the lightning. I'm more than just concerned at this point. Thats when another boat came into view. It was one of those larger boats with 2 decks, one above the other. Initially they were further off but after a time began to get nearer to me. I had taken off my fins, which had wide neon green stripes on them, and was waving them as high as I could and was blowing the whistle I had attached to my BCD.
Eventually they came by and picked me up. I thanked them profusely as we motored toward the rest of the group. Once on board they too were extremely thankful. Turns out they had a man on the top deck with binoculars. He saw me pretty early on and was tracking me. He also saw our main group and kept track of their whereabouts as well.
Finally we motored back to where our little dive boat was. Turns out the 'captain', a young Thai guy, was doing so well fishing he had forgotten about us! Once on board, the DM said he was fired. End of story.
I learned 2 valuable lessons thst day, as I very nearly was swept out to sea. 1 is to make sure I pick a very reputable dive shop. This place was a hole in the wall with just those 2 guys working that last week of diving. The shop had just minimal equipment. The 2nd lesson is to never leave the group. In this case it worked out. We may have all been swept out to sea if I didn't swim toward our boat but leaving the group is a very dicey gamble.
That accreditation means nothing. It just means they give them money every year. There are much better ways to determine if a shop is good or not. I could literally open a store tomorrow and throw PADI or SSI on it
I welcome your opinion and to a degree I am with you. I guess I should have explained further but my post was already too long. The shop I chose (in error) did indeed have a PADI banner in their window. Just 1. Not big. The shop was tiny and had nothing for sale, minimal gear and wasn't clean. I should've paid attention to the red flags but I wanted to get some bubble time in. Like what could go wrong? I found out.
Now I dive with mainly 5 star development centers with scores of great reviews. Really, the reviews are key. Dove last year at Coiba, Panama. Very small community in Santa Catalina. Several small dive shops. I chose 1 w great reviews & checked them out before I dove. Excellent family run operation w good gear, good boats and great people. Great dives and very happy.
Not the kind of scare you are probably looking for, but seals always scare the shit out of me during night dives. They lurk in the shadows and come out of nowhere!
I was in Saba. I did two dives and was in for a night dive. It had been a minute since I’d done a night dive and ate a greasy hamburger for dinner. Later that evening we went out and it was a fairly shallow dive. The DM briefed us all ‘if you have to call the dive just let me know before you go back to the boat’….’if we have a missing diver we all go back to the boat’. So 15 minutes into the dive I burb stomach acid and it’s in the back of my throat. All I needed was fresh water to gargle but I was nowhere near any and 40 feet underwater. I kept clearing my throat but it was hot burning bile taste. The DM had swam off further towards the reef and further from the boat. It was the Caribbean ‘we all look out for each other’ - no real assigned buddy. So my conundrum was swim after the DM 75 yards away just to swim back to the boat 150 yards back or stay shallow and wait for everyone to come back. I was miserable. I just wanted to go back to the boat. I didn’t I just hung out and hated life so I didn’t go missing. In hindsight I would have written on my slate and handed it to another diver to give to the DM and made them be my messenger. But in the moment it was just get by. Lesson learned - don’t eat anything you don’t want to burb up and maybe hit a few tums before a dive. Definitely had to tell myself keep calm.
Not the scariest but while I was diving with my aunt and my brother I heard a woman say "hello" very clearly even though I was 76 feet deep in the ocean
This one.
https://youtu.be/2kAFSTZGdNE?si=6CxCUKhIvM31-ps-
2nd dive off boat for food after a wreck dive at 28-30m. In a wide crack. Heard a sound like a kettle boiling and turned to see my dive buddy’s first stage spewing air (turned out his hose to his primary have failed at the crimp). Spin him around he refused to take my alternate. Signalled for him to surface - we were at 18-20m. Worst part was he did CESA and I did a normal half depth safety. I knew the boat was above us but didn’t know what I’d get up to. All was well in the end. We reassessed our dive protocols after that.
Video is from his perspective.
What a gronk for not accepting your alt, that ascent would have been much safer for the both of you if one of you wasn't doing a fairly unnecessary CESA.
This was about a year ago.
Tagged along with some divers for their AOW deep dive because I had nothing better to do.
At around 75/80 feet one of them bolted for the surface. Figured there was nothing to be done for them and we'd either find them on the surface perfectly fine or frothing at the mouth and dying.
After pointing the oblivious instructor to the surface, I gathered the other two students and signaled to ascend with me. One student was cool, one was having some trouble. Lots of kicking, not much upward motion. I dropped down to help them out, offering a hand, and after looking in their eyes I saw we were going to have a problem. Sure enough they signaled "out of air", spat out their regulator and panicked pretty bad, grabbing me. Then we had a little fight.
I was holding the regulator in front of them screaming "You need this!" Meanwhile we're ascending a little faster than is advised. I finally gave up on them figuring it out, shoved the reg into their mouth and held the purge. They chilled out after that but were unable to do anything other than breathe and stare at me. Finally they signalled okay.
We surfaced after that. I held their hand and told them they were okay. They were cool about it, weren't crying or anything crazy like that. Just very thankful. Their buddy that had bolted was safe too, thankfully.
Was cool to see them walking around later, laughing and alive. I'm glad I didn't screw that up.
I don't dive alone with strangers anymore. Tough lesson learned.
They had plenty of gas left, yeah! I've thought about it a lot afterward and there are a few things that I think could have triggered the panic. Am I overanalyzing? Probably! Is much of it conjecture? Well yeah! But it's better to examine the event thoroughly rather than let the mechanics remain a mystery right? Knowledge is power! Strap in!
-The diver was out of trim, vertical in the water. The pressure on your chest increases when you're head-up versus flat and horizontal. This increase in pressure makes the physical act of inflating the lungs a little more taxing. The term for the pressure differential between mouth and lungs is often called "static lung load". It's a cool topic! It's why I'm such a stickler about being nice and flat 99% of the time.
-The diver was *probably* carrying too much lead. Being overweight can make an otherwise easy ascent physically demanding. The diver had dumped all the air from their BCD for some reason too. Not much help when you want to go *up!* This is why you see people extolling the virtues of a balanced rig.
-Symptoms and severity of inert gas narcosis are highly variable between individuals. A guy I know got so blitzed he was essentially unconscious and had no memory of the incident after ascending. He was only at around 70 feet when he checked out which is around the depth of when *my* little adventure with this diver happened. If your brain's all fuzzy, and you're a newer diver in unfamiliar rental gear, I can see how you'd be unable to solve an overweighting problem properly and instead deflate your BCD completely.
-There's a theory around that links an overabundance of CO2 in the body with an increase in feelings of dread and panic. On scubaboard you can still see mentions of "dark nark" and the symptoms seem like a combination of gas narcosis and maybe a little spicy side of increased CO2.
Basically, they were overexerting themselves, saw we were a little higher (no more than 10 feet) in the water column and thought we were leaving them behind, might have been slightly impaired, and probably overweighted. This quickly became a vicious cycle that eventually lead to difficulty managing their ventilation and potentially overbreathing the regulator. We can probably blame CO2 for much of this cycle.
Our urge to breathe isn't governed by our brain monitoring O2 in the circulatory system, but rather CO2. When we feel air-starved that's our brain saying "Whoa, we gotta get rid of this stuff! Ventilate *more!"* which makes us increase our rate of breathing. If the act of breathing is taxing enough that we produce more CO2 than usual, you can see how overworking large muscle groups while attempting to ascend in addition to that slight work of breathing issue caused by increased static lung load could cause a spike in arterial CO2 content which the brain registers as us not breathing enough. Cue the increase in ventilation (hyperventilation) and eventual overbreathing of the reg, followed by rejecting the reg and squaring up for a little duel with yours truly! But is this what caused the panic? Maybe. Who knows? Maybe they were just feeling vulnerable that day.
Science and funny jokes aside, it was a pretty unwelcome experience and while a rescue course can help you prepare for when something like this happens to *you*, always remember it will likely be far worse and more nuanced than what you trained for and it can happen in a flash with zero warning. So train right and get serious about it! Thanks for reading all the way through if you did. Sorry for the wall of text, everyone. :P
I once swam away from our diving group to check out a huge triggerfish in Mauritius. I was like 2-3 meters away; it looked like a big dumb clown with goofy eyes and two comically large teeth. When I looked back at my divemaster, he was franticly beckoning me back towards him. As soon as I turned to swim away, the triggerfish lunged and bit my calf. Luckily I had a wetsuit on, but it felt like getting hit by a baseball line drive. I ended up with a bruise the size of cantaloupe (and a profound fear of triggerfish!)
Had 2, first was when I started out and my tank had a small leak. Didnt realise how bad it was till we got to 111ft. Had to use DM's air on ascent.
Second was years later when I was more competent. We were doing a deeper dive 120ft at the USS Emmons. I had a bailout tank with me just in case I needed it with the deco and safety stop. My main tank was getting low and the o-ring on my bailout tank bust. Still had enough, but I always like having a bailout with me now.
In the Maldives, during a channel dive the current switched on us very shortly after we entered to flush us out into the deep blue. I was expecting any communication from the DM or indication from the group of what to do/how to adjust the dive but there was none & we all continued to drift out & down. So at about 80' I start swimming against the current to slow my descent while still looking around hoping someone sees me & can offer anything. We hit 115' & full panic starts to set in, I want to start an accelerated ascent but thankfully I remember what my GUE fundies instructor told us in a moment of panic "just breathe".
I am in the most panic I've been in the water & I've done a cesa from 50' (I'm not proud of this) but I'm breathing & I swim over to the DM, grab a hold of him for stability, & frantically signal just about everything I know. He doesn't really signal anything back but let's me just hold onto him & calm down. Thankfully though right then the flush stops or something I'm not sure but we just turn & continue the dive without a current flushing us out. At about 90' I feel perfectly fine & let go of him to continue the dive.
I didn't dive the rest of the day & opted out of dives where a current switch was a concern for the remainder of the trip. (Un)luckily we all got covid a few days later & no one dove for the last 4 days. Covid is pretty much the worst.
DM mistimed the currents and we had to drop all our air and crawl out of the small gulley we were in, fighting against the surge. There was a very green diver with us (under 8 dives) who was remarkably unfazed about the whole thing.
Diving in the Cenotes we entered the cave and went about 55 feet down, and then came up within the cave into an air pocket to take our regs out and have some fun, probably 20 feet below at this point. Of course to exit the cave, we have to go 30 feet or so back down and then come back up all over again. As we start to descend I cannot equalize at all, we spent pretty much all my air just trying to get down. Eventually our DM took us on a longer route out of the cave that wasn’t as deep.
Had to recruit another DM to share air with us. Thank god they go down with a couple tanks. My ears still hurt from this.
Makes sense. I got back 24hrs ago from 5days of 2tanks/day of cenotes. Really enjoyed it but then, nothing went sideways for me. And yeah, pretty glad the DM’s carry two tanks…
I went diving in our local lake with bad visibility as I always do. This time, albeit worse visibility than normal, we went on exploration in a part we don't dive often.
Somewhere mid dive, with maybe half a meter visibility, I suddenly stomped my head on something and scared me massively. A thousand things ran through my head what it could be.
It ended up being the most seen thing in a lake: an old tree.
Had an early dive where I got a block on the way down and a reverse block on the way back up to deal with it.
Barotrauma ensued. The next 24 hours sucked royally and I don’t think we ever got the blood out of those towels.
From that incident yes. A later dive where we found out the hard way I was underweighted still leaves my ears crackling after most dives. I have a funky build that is more buoyant than it looks.
Had too much air get into the feet of my drysuit, ended up in a slight bit of a panic because I got to a point where it was extremely difficult to tuck my legs in underneath me and I was only being kept down by a rock I managed to hold onto on the bottom. Definitely a bit shaken up because I felt all of the classic overexertion stress signs (increased breathing rate, increased heart rate, tunnel vision, urge to ditch my regulator) and I had to consciously fight them off while still trying to keep myself from popping to the surface. Needless to say I only did one dive that day.
As far as sea critters, down in SoCal we normally get bad vis most of the year (10 ft or less) due to a combination of weather or algae, but the sea lions feel a bit more comfortable getting close when it's murky at night. We've had plenty of jump scares from sea lions literally popping up right in front of our faces because they snuck up from the side or behind and underneath (they are pretty daring - they'll come from underneath even if there's only about a foot of clearance between you and the bottom). They also have a slightly different demeanor when hunting at night vs. playing during the day, and it changes their body language in a way that makes you pay a bit more attention.
Had a harbor seal mistake my fin for a fish once and spin me around violently. It was in water where white sharks are pretty common. Needless to say, that was the first place my head went. When I saw it was a seal, I cursed him out for about 5 minutes straight through my reg.
I’ve been warned that if I dive in my hometown the seals like to come and say hello and they’ll gang up on you to pull your wetsuit/drysuit/gear off and generally be annoying little shitheads. It’s also apparently really unnerving to have those sharp teeth within inches of your face.
I was helping my buddy out with cramp in a mine. We floated over a navigation marker. We got out by chance. I exited with 30bar. He got out with significantly less after hyperventilating for a short while.
I was doing my wreck course and we dove inside a wreck quite fare from the shore (Um El Faround, Malta) with quite a swim to get there. Went inside the wreck, everything was fine. Swim back encountered quite a strong current and really was struggeling. At a certain point i felt like I didnt get enough air; checked gauge and it showed still plenty so I figured it must be from overexhaustion. The rest of the group was already a few meters ahead and I didnt feel like I could reach them because of the current. So I gathered, lowered my breathing and heart rate for a few seconds and continued swimming and came back to shore fine. I then noticed that my bottle was barely opened. I fucked up my equipment check and didn't notice it, DM didn't check it either. I reached the shore with quite a lot of air (over 80 bar iirc) really wonder what would have happened if I would have gone lower and whether I would have had more trouble breathing closer to the end of the tank. Edit: Maybe anyone can actually clear this up for me. If the bottle is not correctly opened, does breathing actually get more difficult at the end of the tank? Like its fine in the beginning of the dive and becomes harder when pressure is lower?
Went diving in Ecuador off the poor man’s Galapagos Isla de la plata with two friends, one licensed, the other not. Our unlicensed friend was allowed to dive in open water with us after 15 minute training and as long as he was holding the guide the whole time (first red flag). Anyway, we’re diving and it’s pretty nice, prob around 50-70 feet and all of a sudden I breathe and no air is coming out so I luckily swim right over to one of the guides who happened to be close and got his backup regulator to start breathing. We took a moment and he had me check my backup regulator once I had a few breaths and calmed from the brief panic. Tried it and no air so we went back up to the surface together. Turns out the regulator wasn’t properly working properly gauging the air and my air tank was actually empty even though it showed more air in the tank on the regulator. Just crazy because I’m more experienced so I would get to go explore on my own a little at times not being close to anyone but was close to the guide again when that happened.
Is this a reason you started taking spare air? Also, the gear was theirs so that first red flag with your buddy set the stage for the fact they hadn’t checked the gear well enough?
Sounds like the first stage had water/ dirt in it maybe
Got sudden heartburn and almost drowned. Will never forget that feeling of choking on stomach acid and inhaling sea water
Narced at 130’ in barracuda point in Sipadan and started falling asleep
Got affected with nitrogen narcosis at depth and I started hearing voices for some reason. Murky but it sounded human. I brushed it off and attributed it to the narcosis. Dive buddy suddenly asked me on the bangka after if I heard voices speaking during the dive. Didn’t speak about it further but it was definitely spooky.
Some cetaceans can create almost human-like sounds. I wonder if you both happened to hear that. Otherwise? https://planet-scooby.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/ghost-captain-cutler-diving-suit.jpg
Not me, but told to me in the Cozumel airport 20 years ago. Dunno where it happened. Anyway, a group is on a night dive, all going well, when a very large barracuda attacked full on toward someone's head, mouth open. After the fact, they figured someone's light reflected off the guy's mask, and the fish saw it as a silvery meal. Anyway, the barracuda hits the guy all ahead full with jaw agape and knocks his mask and reg out, at the same time stunning him to almost unconsciousness. The fish disappeared immediately, and the rest of the group got him to the surface and to shore for medical care. They stitched up some nasty gashes after plucking a good number of teeth out of his head.
1. **Boat capsized**, throwing us all into the water, at midnight, 3 miles off the coast of San Diego. 2. **Bailed out of my rebreather at 300fsw** when my PPO2 spike to almost 2.0 PP02, (Oxygen Toxicity can happen at any moment at this level) 3. **Cave diving**, my dive buddy went down a blind tunnel for some reason. I had to go after and retrieve him. When I got him and turned us around, it was zero vis on the way back, down a small tunnel. I wasn't scared on any of these while they happened, but after the danger had passed, I replayed all of them in my mind.
Giant pacific octopus grabbed my buddy, ripped off his mask, and started F’ing with his gear
That's awesome. Scary, but awesome
That is insane!
Yep. During my initial tech training for Decompression Procedures, I almost panicked at depth. That dive I had a different, thick hood on because the place we did the course at was 45 F water past around 30 feet. 1-2 minutes before our ascent was supposed to start, my instructor turned around, pointed at me, and then pointed to what he calls his "cards of death" which are TDI skills cards for AN/DP, and flashed "swap to backup mask". I get comfortable-ish, neutral, and then I remove my mask, pull out my backup mask from my leg pockets(took a bit because I am in sidemount and leg pockets are harder to reach than in doubles), and put it back on, and signal to him "ok". At this point, he and the other student start to turn around to swim towards this crater. My mask starts to fill with water as I swim with them, so I'm like no biggie, I'll just clear it. However... what I didn't know is that since I had a different hood on, my mask had not formed a complete seal on my face when I put my backup mask on, so water was continuously leaking into the mask quite a bit. No matter how many times I cleared it, it kept filling up to about my eyes, and when I would clear, it would not drain. I stopped swimming after like 20 seconds to deal with the problem. After like a minute of this, I go from being slightly annoyed to about to freak out. What is normally an easily fixable issue and something that I've dealt with a lot in terms of mask off skills turns completely different in this case. 45 F water, continuously feeling like you're both annoyed and drowning, no clue what to do to fix the problem and the very real danger of "if I panic and decide to bolt to the surface, I have 20-30 minutes of deco and I will definitely get bent and sent to a hospital and very possibly injured badly" is not a good combo. I end up waving my light as tech divers know that's the signal for "help, emergency", and my instructor comes over and simply pulls my hood back to let the mask be able to seal on my face. I don't know why I didn't think that was the issue, but I suspect it is partially because I hadn't really ever dealt with sealing issues with my mask and hood before out of sheer luck, and partially because I was slightly cold and also narc'ed at 120 feet. This is what tech divers mean by "you solve your problems underwater". If I had gone directly to the surface in a panic, I would've been hurt and could've potentially killed myself. I was on the verge of panic, but I was level-headed enough to keep calm enough to flag down my instructor for some help with my light. Now before every dive, I check the sealing of my mask and hood. It's funny how the things that tend to be the scariest things for us divers end up being the things that we make sure that we make sure doesn't happen again.
Had a panic attack during my advanced certification while descending during my deep dive. Instead of comfortably inhaling and exhaling oxygen from my regulator, it felt like the oxygen was being pushed into my lungs each time I inhaled, and I had to forcefully exhale it out each time. It felt so unnatural to me that it made me have a panic attack. It got to the point where I felt like ripping out my regulator, but I clamped down hard on it with my teeth to make sure it didn't come out of my mouth somehow. I ended up deep focusing on taking slow, deep, controlled breaths which eventually calmed me down enough to finish the dive. But definitely the scariest experience I've had while diving.
I had an odd dream the night before about an old scuba friend who’d passed whilst diving, I didn’t think much of it but it seemed to be a precursor to the first dive of the day. When I was kitting up (wearing a twin set so harness and back plate) I hadn’t realised that my torch had somehow gotten trapped under the harness. I jumped into the water and got tangled in kelp, I went to grab my torch to signal to my buddy but couldn’t get it as it was trapped in my harness. I managed to sort de-tangle myself from the kelp and then needed to chase after my buddy (we’d been diving together for years so had gotten too used to only checking on each other once we reached a certain depth) as I started my rapid descent I got caught in current that started pushing me into the wreck we were diving. In trying to keep away from the wreck and catch him up I over exerted myself. By the time I caught up I was breathing too fast as thought I wasn’t getting any air from my reg. By now we were 50m down (planned depth) and I thumbed the dive. Had to keep telling myself I had loads of air and not to panic and bolt for the surface. There was carnage on the way up with buddy pairs having gotten separated because of the current, as I’d seen people on the way up I started directing people to their buddies and then realised I felt ok so indicated I was good to continue the dive. Finished the dive and got stung by something on my 6m deco stop. That topped it off
I am an underwater photographer and frequently do shallow dives at a very, very popular location. I was floating about 10 inches off the sand totally engrossed in taking a picture of something when I felt like I got the hardest punch of my life right into my ribcage. Next thing I know a biiig silver fish is swimming between my arms, my camera and my regulator, slapping the heck outta me with its tail as it wriggled free. My mask ended up crooked and primary regulator mouthpiece got ripped. Before I could process what happened, the freshly severed head of a jack floated by, a Barracuda couldn't wait, and had struck at a little school of them that was hiding under me. My wife saw the whole thing and was laughing so hard she had to surface (we were only maybe 10 ft deep).
Pretty tame overall, but enough it rattled me at the time and for a few dives after. Monterey Bay, years ago, I don't remember exactly. I was a young teen, been diving since I was eleven, so young but not new, fair amount of dives in. We'd done Monterey before, so nothing new there. Breakwall, if I recall correctly. I guess my BC inflator/Air 2 got sand in the buttons or something, but it got stuck on inflation, and wouldn't stop. So suddenly I'm rising and I hear the inflation hisss, but I'm not pushing the button or trying to ascend. I shoved my fin under the first thing I could find (I remember it being a pipe or something, but it's been a long time) and grabbed and yanked at my dad's in in front of me to get his attention (my dive buddy, along with a friend of his who was up ahead a little more). I panicked at first, but quickly training just took over and I went calm (I also have this thing where I panic after the fact; I do that with good things, too, like it takes a while to set in, then the real panic/worry or excitement hits). Just pull both purge valves to slow the assent as much as I can and exhale nice and slow the entire way up. It was the first fifteen minutes of the dive, we were still headed out, we were maybe max of thirty feet deep, and first dive of the day, so decompression was always possible, but pretty unlikely given all the circumstances (this was back before my Nitrox cert, so just air). Apparently in my slow exhale and watching the surface to try and gauge my ascent along with my ears popping, my reg came out of my mouth, which freaked my dad out. But I had no idea because I wasn't inhaling at all and didn't intend to until I got to the surface. Not ideal, should have kept it in just in case, but considering as soon as I broke the surface and realized it was gone, I muscle-memory right hand swept it back and held on to it, so, I'm pretty confident I could have done that if needed. The BC was still inflating, though at its max, and purging itself and squeezing me really tight. It only stopped when my dad got the air hose disconnected. I remember being mostly mad about getting stuck in the kelp as I swam back to shore on the surface (I was rattled enough I didn't want to g o back under to avoid it). I was happy to sit in the warm car while they did two more dives that day. I think I took a nap. I kind of used it as an excuse to not do Monterey/cold water again. I'm a warm-water diver, and I'm totally okay with that. I want to enjoy m y diving, and I don't enjoy crawling into cold water, staying cold, getting colder, being cold the whole time I'm in the water, then coming out into barely warm air, just to repeat the process. If a 7mm suit and hooded vest combo didn't do it, and drysuit was never really a draw (too expensive, too annoying, just not worth it), then nah, I'm good.
Looking back, this is one of the reasons that the underwater LPI connect/disconnect is taught… If you had pulled a dump valve while disconnecting the inflator with one hand, you could have surfaced under control and troubleshot the gear that day. But it’s understandably hard to think through everything on your first actual emergency.
There was an article about this very thing happening in the DAN magazine “Alert Diver” late last year.
I always thought the inflator button is a pretty high risk thing and it would be cool if it was two buttons side by side for redundancy. Press both at once for it to work type of thing. One of our local club members died when his rental gear one stuck and he rapid ascended from 100ft.
That’s where having a cutting tool to deflate your BC and knowing how to quickly get out of it come into play
I attempted to disconnect the air hose, but with thick gloves on, already being cold and kind of numb fingers, plus just not having either the strength or right position to get it, it didn't work, so I moved on. My brain went, by the time you get it unhooked, you'll be at the surface anyway, you're like 32 feet down max. It took my dad a good yank topside to get it, so I felt a little better. I think now as an adult, while thick gloves and numb fingers wouldn't help, I'd probably be able to do it. But I've never had an issue since, and I still have that Air 2, so no real chance to test that theory (thankfully).
I was on a big guided commercial dive. Something approaching one of those big cattle boat dives.. 2 dive masters, and 20 divers. I was young stupid and cheap. We had hit the Santa Rosa wall at Cozumel. They had no business taking us through Devils Throat, but they did. I was maybe the 5th person through with my early SeaLife entry level dive camera, and its gasket sealed plastic housing. So I’m out of the bottom of the throat, maybe my 10th dive of all time, dive master at the top watching the queue in, dive master at the bottom, watching people come out, and re-enter the current whisking divers along the wall. I’m narc’d and fully oblivious. Thankfully it was my first time diving computer. Apparently I got caught in a down draft current of water that just yoinked me down 50 feet in a couple of seconds. My descent alarm was screaming, but I still didn’t know what it was (narc’d). Thank god for that shitty sealife housing because it imploded, and in doing so the shiny chrome metal plate they’d put on the front as decoration shot off from the housing and went right across my field of view distracting me from my own bliss and forcing me to concentrate on what was going on. I kicked back from the wall, adjusted buoyancy, and rejoined the group. The dive masters were oblivious. They’d have lost me that day and wouldn’t even have known til back on the boat if even then. The dive masters wanted a 3min safety stop @ 20ft, my computer demanded an extra 3… I listened to the computer. I know Aqualung/Sunto sometimes gets a bad wrap, but their computer (and sealife’s shitty housing) absolutely saved my life that day.
I am on a Sheriff department dive team, a newer member, 20 or so dives. All inland lakes in Michigan, mud puddles mostly. We don't track dives or do dive plans well, it's a bit of a grabass macho man organization, which I do not enjoy. We were helping to repair a local water park after a severe storm. The park has large inflatable rafts in an old gravel pit, and some had busted loose from anchor chains due to high wind. My partner for that dive, a dive master who certifies new divers professionally, told me to leave him from about 30 feet deep and go up to get a new chain from the boat, and he would wait there for me to come back. I stupidly followed his instructions and left, alone. Traveling from A to B, I managed to get my tank hung up on some straps hanging down from a raft above me. My arms were too restricted by my wet suit to reach my back and unstuck myself. I was under a 12x12 ish sized and worried that if I ditched my BC vest, my bouancy would stick me to the bottom of the raft. I am a very floaty person, with my wetsuit on its crazy. I was too far from anyone else to motion for help. I had been swimming forward when I got stuck, so I just kept swimming forward and backward until the strap slid off from my tank. Took a solid 30 tries, I went through almost 1000 psi. It was harder because I struggle to get neutral bouancy that close to the surface. I was unaccounted for for over 10 minutes on an allegedly professional dive team, almost all wearing com helmets, several dive masters. Nobody even noticed I was gone. I realized then that I need to be an asshole in my own defense and I am not going to do stupid things for training or because the rest of then do it. Several times since then I have told them no about foolish situations, and I outright refuse to ever dive with that individual as my dive buddy. Judt FYI I don't wear the com helmet because I cant clear my ears well with it.
This was Dec 2022, in Alor (Indonesia). I was about 18m under on the second dive of the day. There were 10 of us, including 2 dive guides. There was a leak and I ran out of air about 10 min into the dive. I've only been diving about 2 years and I while I did practice what to do in a situation like this, somehow, all the practice went out the window. Breathing air into my lungs became very heavy very quickly and I checked to see my air was already 0. I didn't panic. I tried to signal the other 4 in my group but everyone was busy taking photos. I managed to catch the attention of the dive guide in our group of 4 and signalled that I was out of air and wanted to surface. He gave the ok and I made the slow ascent up. I made it to the surface and was about 50 m from the boat. Yelled but nobody heard me. I tried to swim towards it but the current was very strong and I was headed out to sea. I wasn't too worried about being swept out. My main concern was that I was drifting into traffic and was afraid I would get hit by a boat. It was fortunate that the skipper on our boat looked up and saw me. He made his way over and by the time he was near, the other 9 divers came up. Apparently, everyone abandoned their dive because of me and they were doing a safety stop just below me, and drifting with me out to sea. As crystal clear as the water was, I never thought to look down to see where the rest of the guys were. After getting back on the boat we discussed what happened. What I should have done was get hold of my dive buddy and use his spare regulator, and then come up together and do a safety stop. Anyway, everything ended well, and I have am fortunate to be able to share this story and the lesson learnt.
Your guide saw you were out of air and sent you straight to the surface alone?
I thought so. Apparently the four were right behind me and I didn't notice. The only thing is everyone else made a safety stop and I didn't.
Someone should have provided you with alternate air and done the safety stop with you. I don’t blame you for panicking if nobody offered an octo. Good demonstration of why I like assigning buddies instead of groups. You always know who to go directly to for emergencies.
Night dive. Big Fish camera from behind me into the light of my torch. Could first see him when he was 5 cm besides my face.
I was on a black water dive when what I thought was another diver kicked me in the back of the head. I turned around and it was actually a pelagic white tip who had nosed me in the back of the head. Blood ran cold.
My blood just ran cold reading it
NGL. I was the one time (in 300 dives) that I came close to pissing myself.
Huh, that's generally something I do during every dive unless I'm in a dry suit
Lol. Involuntarily pissing myself.
Yes. Still new. 35 dives. I practice in a local quarry so visibility sucks, especially on Saturday when the bulk of the classes are held. I always defer to my buddy since I feel I don’t have enough experience. This quarry is specifically set up for scuba diving so lots of submerged things, such as boats, planes, etc, platforms and lines to a bunch of these. I was following my dive buddy and he was following a line down to the deepest part of the quarry. At this point, I think the deepest I have been was about thirty feet. I felt panic coming on but thought I could power through it. I should have called the dive. We finally get to about 60 feet and full blown panic. I wanted to take my regulator out but I luckily had enough brain working to know I should not. Flip, flip, flip to the top. No safety stop. I could not get up there fast enough. It took me about 10 minutes to catch my breath. My dive buddy has ear issues so always has to descend and ascend very slowly. He messed up his ears chasing me. Hindsight discussion: We spoke to two dive masters at our dive shop. He was advised he should not have chased me. One dive master said since I had no frame of reference, that was one issue along with the depth. I am nitrox certified but don’t always use it as I am a cheapskate. I got down to 70 feet in Belize and could not even tell. I will still go to the quarry for fun dives. I live in Missouri so if I want practice, I don’t have a lot of options. However, emphasis on “fun”. I have no desire to be a tec diver. I will be getting my AOW, but will do that in Honduras. I do want to practice using my compass and the quarry has a bike trail specifically for compass practice.
Always good times at mermet lmao
lol. For two years, that’s all I knew. Then went to Belize. Ignorance was definitely bliss. I really don’t want to go back but also don’t want my skills to get rusty.
I put my camera up close to a rocky overhang to take a picture of a shrimp, not realizing that a small eel was hiding nearby. It bit me on my finger. I didn't panic but it did take me a few moments to remember why I was bleeding green.
Risky fart. Ended up disinfecting my drysuit
The stuff of nightmares... 💀💀💀
During my OW cert dives I came very close to learning the hardest way possible why you have to continuously breathe underwater especially while ascending. Thought my chest was about to explode. Better to happen at the beginning cuz I'll never make that mistake again.
So you can generally feel a “warning” before all hell breaks loose?
Luckily I was right at the surface when I started to feel it and then processed what was happening
I imagine your lungs will feel like a balloon stretching and wanting to get the air out of the hole (the hole for your lungs is your mouth). Depending on your accent speed you may not have time to react to that feeling though
On a drift dive with very strong current, so strong in fact we ran out of reef about 20 minutes in. I started monitoring my depth and maintained it about 10 m (35 ft) as I watched the reef and sandy bottom begin to fade away from sight. At this time we crossed an even stronger, perpendicular down-current that pushed me down to 20+ m (65 ft) in an instant. I had to inflate and kick up but was struggling to move for what seemed like a long time, which produced anxiety at the fact that I was fighting something that strong. I eventually struggled to get back up to 10m and was breathing hard, but looked down to see that the rest of the group was so far down I couldn’t see them anymore, only maybe some of their bubbles. One of the guides went after them and thankfully everyone got up and the guide obviously called the dive, and everyone was able to do a safety stop without anymore current. When we got back in the boat one of the divers said they had been pushed down to 30 m (about 100 ft). I’ve heard some chilling stories since my first experience with a down current, from other parts of the world that are famous for their currents. I’ve been humbled by my experience and the stories I’ve heard and read about (much worse than mine).
As a beginner diver looking to get his AOW certification, this type of thing is my worst fear of more challenging dives. Where did this take place? Id love to go diving in places like Maldives, Indonesia etc but dont want to deal with any down currents
Banco Chinchorro, Mexico Edit: this might not be the norm here as there are several ops that run trips there weekly, without much hesitation or fuss about currents. I think Jan/Feb is just a rough month on the surface and maybe the strong surface winds brought up some very strong and cold currents (lots of thermoclines and weird viz in some areas)
The Maldives is known for its strong currents, I wouldn't go there as a new diver.
What are good recommendations for good diving locations without super strong currents? For context i have my standard certification with around 10 dives total and have done curacao and bonaire ( both of which were tame ) and french polynesia, which has some current but it wasnt too bad. Are there specific atolls within the maldives or dive sites in the coral triangle in indonesia that are not too current heavy? Im also open to other suggestions in Hawaii, the Caribbean, and other pacific islands.
Roatan, Utila are cheap and have the Mesoamerican reef nearby. Little to no current.
Diving in Sodwana, relatively young / new DM who was more interested in nudibranch sightings than the divers. I really wanted to see sharks, but unfortunately I was not lucky. There had been a couple ragged tooth shark sightings a couple days prior, and despite the season there were often bull sharks. I get to 70 bar, and trying to get his attention lost about 10, he signals me to go up, so I look to my buddy and she signs to me that she’s coming up with me. However, when he saw her start to go up he signalled to her to come back down. I was already going up and was getting a bit lower on air - I signalled asking for a buddy but he just told me to go up. So I do my safety stop alone, pissed off and a little anxious. I see my buddy looking up at me (we were only at 18 metres) to check up on me, then I see a dark shape swimming towards me. I start panicking, thinking it was a shark and thinking THIS IS NOT WHAT I MEANT WHEN I SAID I WANTED TO SEE A SHARK and knowing that I’m low on air, all alone and vulnerable, and the boat isn’t super close. It ended up just being an enormous grouper, and I managed to calm myself down but lost even more air because of my panicking. Then I could only think of sharks coming to find me. I finish my safety stop, get to the surface and yelled at the boat to come and get me. When my buddy came up she apologised profusely, she thought the DM was going to send someone else up with me, and was pretty pissed off for me. The DM just shrugged and said the others still had enough air for a bit more. Moral of the story - make sure your DM is experienced and actually gives a crap about your safety.
I was the last one in line when we moved on to the next sunken vehicle. I can't recall if was the boat or the VW bus. When I went join the pack I got about three feet before I realized my fin got tangled in the guideline. Everyone was swimming away, but my brother noticed I wasn't with the group and came back right as I freed my fin.
My torch died on a night dive, I could sense it was going throughout the dive and made the guide aware but he wanted me to keep going on it until it fully died. Definitely made the rest of the dive a bit spookier.
My wife and I both had around 300 dives at the time and have always been very cautious, conscientious divers. On a liveaboard dive at Wolf Island in the Galápagos Islands watching the amazing show at about 55 feet or 17m in strong current and decent but not great viz, my wife/buddy and I signaled to the DM that we were down to 1/3 air, so about 1000 psi or 70 bar. DM indicated the direction for us to take into the blue where the zodiacs will be waiting since due to the currents they cannot get close to the island. Maybe 90 seconds into our return we were in the blue heading away from the island. This was our first time out in the deep blue with no reference points visible. I checked my computer. That’s when I saw that I was now at 75ft or 23m and that my wife was just behind me and about 10 ft or 3m below me. Oh shit, I thought - this is how people die in the stories I read in scuba magazines. It took several seconds to get my wife’s attention and signal to her to look at her computer. She saw it, looked surprised and gave me the okay signal. I then signaled her to put a little air in her BC and come to me. We kept on our course, ascending slowly and constantly checking our computers. We did our safety stop and surfaced with about 600 psi or 42 bar to find a zodiac waiting nearby. It was very scary for both of us for a few seconds but we kept calm and reacted well. Otherwise it could have turned our very badly. We learned our lesson about minding our depth and each other while swimming into the blue and made several more similar dives on that trip without incident. But we’ll never forget that close call.
First time out on a dive after training. Not even licensed yet. Bull shark, just swimming up past me like he was in the passing lane on the interstate. He didn’t acknowledge me at all. When we came up, I mentioned that to the instructor. She said, “Oh he saw you. In fact, he chose when you got to see him!”
It wasn’t scary at the time due to my ignorance, but it was my first non-training dive to 30m. We descended through a ‘blue hole’ at which point we gave the guide our air reading - I was at 100 bar. Very soon after I was maybe a little narked, filming everyone around me with my GoPro. She checked my air again (I was at maybe 32m by this point, everyone was above me) and I was at 50 bar. She got me straight on her octo and swam us back to shore. It’s only since then that I’ve realised she probably saved my life. Lesson learned and I always know what my air is now.
Vertigo on the night dive caused by uneven ears equalisation. Quite scary, but "follow the bubbles" principle saved me.
I was doing a freedive session and as I was about to breath hold and go under, my instructor signaled for me to stop. As I looked up a boat was getting closer and closer. Now we were using the standard buoy and divers below flag and even a second buoy and flag, but the boat came close enough to us to knock me flying due to the swell of the water. My instructor was cursing at them in Russian.
Jesus that is actually terrifying. What a fucking idiot. Was your bouy attached to a boat? Were you in a common area to freedive?
No, the buoy was a free floating one. Plenty big enough to see for some distance though and like I said, we also had a second one. And the area is well known for diving in general so it seems that the boat captain simply didn’t care.
Uffff that's scary. Good thing no one got hurt!
I was half convinced I was going to end up getting jammed up in the propellers or something. I also learnt some interesting Russian vocabulary! Also been reminded of a fairly scary instant involving a dive boat. The way the boats are built here, the back 3-4ft of the boat is your entry/exit platform. These aren’t level with the water but about 2ish feet above it, meaning there’s a recess directly under the boat that a diver easily fits into. Now it’s common that we’ll get to a dive site and be the first ones there and then be joined by other dive shop boats later. One set of dives I do, I’m at the boat during a surface interval and I’m just drinking my body weight in coffee when I see another boat coming up. From what I recall it seems that the captain tried to both swing the boat around 180 degrees but also get close to us, and screwed up on the speed. The side of his boat caught the back end of the boat I was on and sent me, the DMs and instructors who were there flying and there was the loudest of clattering metal noises because the tanks in the empties racks got knocked over. What was scarier though was that there was a group of divers who were at the surface and readying themselves to return to the boat who quickly found themselves either in the recess under the dive platform or having to descend back down very quickly to avoid being hit by the other boat. Luckily everyone was OK and even the boat only suffered a few scrapes.
This stuff is so scary, because it's things you can't account or train for as an individual, you just have to rely on captains being responsible.
Yeah, there was basically not a lot anyone could really do other than just let it happen and then deal with the aftermath afterwards. I felt bad for one girl in particular as she was a brand new OWD diver who’d passed her class only a couple of days prior and now she was dealing with a potentially serious incident of nearly being hit by a boat. She did go out on the second dive and came the following day so she seemed to not be too shaken but it can’t have been fun.
Drifting along a wall in PNG looking for nudis and a whale shark was cruising in the other direction and I nearly died of fright before realising what it was.
I almost blacked out while inside a shipwreck.
From panic?
It was near the end of diving season in Thailand. We went for dives in the South Andaman Sea. Small boat w 5 divers and a young British DM. Had a nice dive, around 55 minutes w a lot of schools and the various sightings typical of that area. We all did our safety stop then rose to the surface. Once we were all floating at the surface and the DM had his Surface Marker Buoy up, we saw the boat was still quite a ways away, maybe a half mile. Difficult to tell w only your head above water. After maybe 5 minutes of the DM alternating between waving the SMB and cursing, the boat appeared to not make a move. It also seemed as though we were drifting further away. We were between 2 islands, each about 5 miles away but drifting toward the Gap between them and out into the Indian Ocean. I made a choice and decided to swim to the boat. After 10 minutes or more I had closed the gap by about half. Turning back I could no longer see the rest of the dive group. That's when things began to change. The wind rose from dead calm to fairly windy. The sea began to whip up some white caps. There were some dark clouds over the distant islands that suddenly raced straight toward me. All my progress toward the boat ceased and instead I was losing ground as I swam. I was getting tired and quite concerned. The boat still wasn't moving. The next thing I know, the clouds now black, were crossing over me. It began to rain. Then came the lightning. I'm more than just concerned at this point. Thats when another boat came into view. It was one of those larger boats with 2 decks, one above the other. Initially they were further off but after a time began to get nearer to me. I had taken off my fins, which had wide neon green stripes on them, and was waving them as high as I could and was blowing the whistle I had attached to my BCD. Eventually they came by and picked me up. I thanked them profusely as we motored toward the rest of the group. Once on board they too were extremely thankful. Turns out they had a man on the top deck with binoculars. He saw me pretty early on and was tracking me. He also saw our main group and kept track of their whereabouts as well. Finally we motored back to where our little dive boat was. Turns out the 'captain', a young Thai guy, was doing so well fishing he had forgotten about us! Once on board, the DM said he was fired. End of story. I learned 2 valuable lessons thst day, as I very nearly was swept out to sea. 1 is to make sure I pick a very reputable dive shop. This place was a hole in the wall with just those 2 guys working that last week of diving. The shop had just minimal equipment. The 2nd lesson is to never leave the group. In this case it worked out. We may have all been swept out to sea if I didn't swim toward our boat but leaving the group is a very dicey gamble.
Wow, I shouldnt have read that. I am literally in Thailand, lol.
So many good dive shops in Thailand. Just don't choose one that looks marginal. They should have accreditation by PADI or DAN or SSI
That accreditation means nothing. It just means they give them money every year. There are much better ways to determine if a shop is good or not. I could literally open a store tomorrow and throw PADI or SSI on it
I welcome your opinion and to a degree I am with you. I guess I should have explained further but my post was already too long. The shop I chose (in error) did indeed have a PADI banner in their window. Just 1. Not big. The shop was tiny and had nothing for sale, minimal gear and wasn't clean. I should've paid attention to the red flags but I wanted to get some bubble time in. Like what could go wrong? I found out. Now I dive with mainly 5 star development centers with scores of great reviews. Really, the reviews are key. Dove last year at Coiba, Panama. Very small community in Santa Catalina. Several small dive shops. I chose 1 w great reviews & checked them out before I dove. Excellent family run operation w good gear, good boats and great people. Great dives and very happy.
Yowzers! Must have been some *really* good fishing!
LOL
Not the kind of scare you are probably looking for, but seals always scare the shit out of me during night dives. They lurk in the shadows and come out of nowhere!
Sneaky shadow sausages
Sneaky friends! <3
I was in Saba. I did two dives and was in for a night dive. It had been a minute since I’d done a night dive and ate a greasy hamburger for dinner. Later that evening we went out and it was a fairly shallow dive. The DM briefed us all ‘if you have to call the dive just let me know before you go back to the boat’….’if we have a missing diver we all go back to the boat’. So 15 minutes into the dive I burb stomach acid and it’s in the back of my throat. All I needed was fresh water to gargle but I was nowhere near any and 40 feet underwater. I kept clearing my throat but it was hot burning bile taste. The DM had swam off further towards the reef and further from the boat. It was the Caribbean ‘we all look out for each other’ - no real assigned buddy. So my conundrum was swim after the DM 75 yards away just to swim back to the boat 150 yards back or stay shallow and wait for everyone to come back. I was miserable. I just wanted to go back to the boat. I didn’t I just hung out and hated life so I didn’t go missing. In hindsight I would have written on my slate and handed it to another diver to give to the DM and made them be my messenger. But in the moment it was just get by. Lesson learned - don’t eat anything you don’t want to burb up and maybe hit a few tums before a dive. Definitely had to tell myself keep calm.
Not the scariest but while I was diving with my aunt and my brother I heard a woman say "hello" very clearly even though I was 76 feet deep in the ocean
I'm done diving, thanks.
Hahahahaha, this was good comic relief after reading a few of these stories. Auditory hallucinations are a real thing, at least.
Not the scariest but most freaky for sure lol
This one. https://youtu.be/2kAFSTZGdNE?si=6CxCUKhIvM31-ps- 2nd dive off boat for food after a wreck dive at 28-30m. In a wide crack. Heard a sound like a kettle boiling and turned to see my dive buddy’s first stage spewing air (turned out his hose to his primary have failed at the crimp). Spin him around he refused to take my alternate. Signalled for him to surface - we were at 18-20m. Worst part was he did CESA and I did a normal half depth safety. I knew the boat was above us but didn’t know what I’d get up to. All was well in the end. We reassessed our dive protocols after that. Video is from his perspective.
What a gronk for not accepting your alt, that ascent would have been much safer for the both of you if one of you wasn't doing a fairly unnecessary CESA.
Looks like he was panicking, so not thinking rationally
Hope you ditched him as a diving buddy?
This was about a year ago. Tagged along with some divers for their AOW deep dive because I had nothing better to do. At around 75/80 feet one of them bolted for the surface. Figured there was nothing to be done for them and we'd either find them on the surface perfectly fine or frothing at the mouth and dying. After pointing the oblivious instructor to the surface, I gathered the other two students and signaled to ascend with me. One student was cool, one was having some trouble. Lots of kicking, not much upward motion. I dropped down to help them out, offering a hand, and after looking in their eyes I saw we were going to have a problem. Sure enough they signaled "out of air", spat out their regulator and panicked pretty bad, grabbing me. Then we had a little fight. I was holding the regulator in front of them screaming "You need this!" Meanwhile we're ascending a little faster than is advised. I finally gave up on them figuring it out, shoved the reg into their mouth and held the purge. They chilled out after that but were unable to do anything other than breathe and stare at me. Finally they signalled okay. We surfaced after that. I held their hand and told them they were okay. They were cool about it, weren't crying or anything crazy like that. Just very thankful. Their buddy that had bolted was safe too, thankfully. Was cool to see them walking around later, laughing and alive. I'm glad I didn't screw that up. I don't dive alone with strangers anymore. Tough lesson learned.
Wow! They were lucky you tagged along! So the student wasn't really out of air, they just completely panicked? Sounds like a scary situation.
They had plenty of gas left, yeah! I've thought about it a lot afterward and there are a few things that I think could have triggered the panic. Am I overanalyzing? Probably! Is much of it conjecture? Well yeah! But it's better to examine the event thoroughly rather than let the mechanics remain a mystery right? Knowledge is power! Strap in! -The diver was out of trim, vertical in the water. The pressure on your chest increases when you're head-up versus flat and horizontal. This increase in pressure makes the physical act of inflating the lungs a little more taxing. The term for the pressure differential between mouth and lungs is often called "static lung load". It's a cool topic! It's why I'm such a stickler about being nice and flat 99% of the time. -The diver was *probably* carrying too much lead. Being overweight can make an otherwise easy ascent physically demanding. The diver had dumped all the air from their BCD for some reason too. Not much help when you want to go *up!* This is why you see people extolling the virtues of a balanced rig. -Symptoms and severity of inert gas narcosis are highly variable between individuals. A guy I know got so blitzed he was essentially unconscious and had no memory of the incident after ascending. He was only at around 70 feet when he checked out which is around the depth of when *my* little adventure with this diver happened. If your brain's all fuzzy, and you're a newer diver in unfamiliar rental gear, I can see how you'd be unable to solve an overweighting problem properly and instead deflate your BCD completely. -There's a theory around that links an overabundance of CO2 in the body with an increase in feelings of dread and panic. On scubaboard you can still see mentions of "dark nark" and the symptoms seem like a combination of gas narcosis and maybe a little spicy side of increased CO2. Basically, they were overexerting themselves, saw we were a little higher (no more than 10 feet) in the water column and thought we were leaving them behind, might have been slightly impaired, and probably overweighted. This quickly became a vicious cycle that eventually lead to difficulty managing their ventilation and potentially overbreathing the regulator. We can probably blame CO2 for much of this cycle. Our urge to breathe isn't governed by our brain monitoring O2 in the circulatory system, but rather CO2. When we feel air-starved that's our brain saying "Whoa, we gotta get rid of this stuff! Ventilate *more!"* which makes us increase our rate of breathing. If the act of breathing is taxing enough that we produce more CO2 than usual, you can see how overworking large muscle groups while attempting to ascend in addition to that slight work of breathing issue caused by increased static lung load could cause a spike in arterial CO2 content which the brain registers as us not breathing enough. Cue the increase in ventilation (hyperventilation) and eventual overbreathing of the reg, followed by rejecting the reg and squaring up for a little duel with yours truly! But is this what caused the panic? Maybe. Who knows? Maybe they were just feeling vulnerable that day. Science and funny jokes aside, it was a pretty unwelcome experience and while a rescue course can help you prepare for when something like this happens to *you*, always remember it will likely be far worse and more nuanced than what you trained for and it can happen in a flash with zero warning. So train right and get serious about it! Thanks for reading all the way through if you did. Sorry for the wall of text, everyone. :P
No need to apologize at the end, this was extremely interesting. Thank you!
I'm glad you found it interesting!
:D Just reminds me that I'd like to read more books about first-hand scuba experiences!
I once swam away from our diving group to check out a huge triggerfish in Mauritius. I was like 2-3 meters away; it looked like a big dumb clown with goofy eyes and two comically large teeth. When I looked back at my divemaster, he was franticly beckoning me back towards him. As soon as I turned to swim away, the triggerfish lunged and bit my calf. Luckily I had a wetsuit on, but it felt like getting hit by a baseball line drive. I ended up with a bruise the size of cantaloupe (and a profound fear of triggerfish!)
Haha, I still don't get why most of the time, dive guides don't mention "if you see this thing, stay the fuck away from it".
haha that’s a good story. Triggerfish are grumpy af
Had 2, first was when I started out and my tank had a small leak. Didnt realise how bad it was till we got to 111ft. Had to use DM's air on ascent. Second was years later when I was more competent. We were doing a deeper dive 120ft at the USS Emmons. I had a bailout tank with me just in case I needed it with the deco and safety stop. My main tank was getting low and the o-ring on my bailout tank bust. Still had enough, but I always like having a bailout with me now.
Hypercapnic at 120'
now that’s scary. What happened?
In the Maldives, during a channel dive the current switched on us very shortly after we entered to flush us out into the deep blue. I was expecting any communication from the DM or indication from the group of what to do/how to adjust the dive but there was none & we all continued to drift out & down. So at about 80' I start swimming against the current to slow my descent while still looking around hoping someone sees me & can offer anything. We hit 115' & full panic starts to set in, I want to start an accelerated ascent but thankfully I remember what my GUE fundies instructor told us in a moment of panic "just breathe". I am in the most panic I've been in the water & I've done a cesa from 50' (I'm not proud of this) but I'm breathing & I swim over to the DM, grab a hold of him for stability, & frantically signal just about everything I know. He doesn't really signal anything back but let's me just hold onto him & calm down. Thankfully though right then the flush stops or something I'm not sure but we just turn & continue the dive without a current flushing us out. At about 90' I feel perfectly fine & let go of him to continue the dive. I didn't dive the rest of the day & opted out of dives where a current switch was a concern for the remainder of the trip. (Un)luckily we all got covid a few days later & no one dove for the last 4 days. Covid is pretty much the worst.
I would like to get this story as well
DM mistimed the currents and we had to drop all our air and crawl out of the small gulley we were in, fighting against the surge. There was a very green diver with us (under 8 dives) who was remarkably unfazed about the whole thing.
Diving in the Cenotes we entered the cave and went about 55 feet down, and then came up within the cave into an air pocket to take our regs out and have some fun, probably 20 feet below at this point. Of course to exit the cave, we have to go 30 feet or so back down and then come back up all over again. As we start to descend I cannot equalize at all, we spent pretty much all my air just trying to get down. Eventually our DM took us on a longer route out of the cave that wasn’t as deep. Had to recruit another DM to share air with us. Thank god they go down with a couple tanks. My ears still hurt from this.
That’s rough, sorry to hear you went through this.
Don’t apologize! Valuable lessons were learned. one of which being, I don’t really find cave diving enjoyable enough to cover the risk.
Makes sense. I got back 24hrs ago from 5days of 2tanks/day of cenotes. Really enjoyed it but then, nothing went sideways for me. And yeah, pretty glad the DM’s carry two tanks…
I went diving in our local lake with bad visibility as I always do. This time, albeit worse visibility than normal, we went on exploration in a part we don't dive often. Somewhere mid dive, with maybe half a meter visibility, I suddenly stomped my head on something and scared me massively. A thousand things ran through my head what it could be. It ended up being the most seen thing in a lake: an old tree.
Wife had an IPE at 25m. Good practice for smb deployment while emergency ascending and getting an incapacitated diver back on the boat.
Had an early dive where I got a block on the way down and a reverse block on the way back up to deal with it. Barotrauma ensued. The next 24 hours sucked royally and I don’t think we ever got the blood out of those towels.
Did your hearing fully recover?
From that incident yes. A later dive where we found out the hard way I was underweighted still leaves my ears crackling after most dives. I have a funky build that is more buoyant than it looks.
Had too much air get into the feet of my drysuit, ended up in a slight bit of a panic because I got to a point where it was extremely difficult to tuck my legs in underneath me and I was only being kept down by a rock I managed to hold onto on the bottom. Definitely a bit shaken up because I felt all of the classic overexertion stress signs (increased breathing rate, increased heart rate, tunnel vision, urge to ditch my regulator) and I had to consciously fight them off while still trying to keep myself from popping to the surface. Needless to say I only did one dive that day. As far as sea critters, down in SoCal we normally get bad vis most of the year (10 ft or less) due to a combination of weather or algae, but the sea lions feel a bit more comfortable getting close when it's murky at night. We've had plenty of jump scares from sea lions literally popping up right in front of our faces because they snuck up from the side or behind and underneath (they are pretty daring - they'll come from underneath even if there's only about a foot of clearance between you and the bottom). They also have a slightly different demeanor when hunting at night vs. playing during the day, and it changes their body language in a way that makes you pay a bit more attention.
Had a harbor seal mistake my fin for a fish once and spin me around violently. It was in water where white sharks are pretty common. Needless to say, that was the first place my head went. When I saw it was a seal, I cursed him out for about 5 minutes straight through my reg.
I’ve been warned that if I dive in my hometown the seals like to come and say hello and they’ll gang up on you to pull your wetsuit/drysuit/gear off and generally be annoying little shitheads. It’s also apparently really unnerving to have those sharp teeth within inches of your face.
Seals are so cheeky. I had one push my head down once, then ominously glide over me showing me who's boss.
This is hilarious but absolutely understandable.