Dealing with Downcurrents

[ggunn]

This is a great thread. I'd like to add another story to it:

Thread 'Whirlpool Down Current – Cozumel Jan 9, 2024'

Mar 22, 2025

I'd like to share my experience with an unusual down current I encountered in Cozumel, Mexico on January 9, 2024.

Unlike many of the stories I've read in these threads, the down current we encountered was not waterfall shaped, but a whirlpool pulling down into the blue, meaning there was no clear direction to swim that would bring us to safety other than up. In reading through other down current posts here I sometimes see people leaving single sentence suggestions on "what you're supposed to do, period". My hope with this thread is to help convey the idea that there is no...

• bradStyle
• Replies: 8
• Forum: Basic Scuba

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Maybe I am misreading, but if the downcurrent were cylindrical in shape it seems to me that any direction you would swim would be out of it.

 

[NDL_Diver]

Maybe I am misreading, but if the downcurrent were cylindrical in shape it seems to me that any direction you would swim would be out of it.

I wish I could find the video, but I saw a video of diver stuck in a whirlpool. They could not get out and were spun around on a circle. Every time they tried to pull out of the center they were sucked back in the middle. They spun around (pretty quickly) for like a minute (I was dizzy watching him/her spin) while the buddies were a few feet away helpless unaffected by current. Finally the diver broke free (or the current subsided a bit). It was scarry to watch.

 

[bradStyle]

Maybe I am misreading, but if the downcurrent were cylindrical in shape it seems to me that any direction you would swim would be out of it.

When it's cylindrical, every direction you try to swim pushes you right back in and down.

 

[ggunn]

When it's cylindrical, every direction you try to swim pushes you right back in and down.

If you say so, I guess, but I don't see it. Why could one not swim directly away from the center of the vortex?

 

[NDL_Diver]

If you say so, I guess, but I don't see it. Why could one not swim directly away from the center of the vortex?

Not the video I was referring but similar

 

[ggunn]

Not the video I was referring but similar

In 30 years diving Cozumel I have never seen anything like that. Had it not been for the divers' bubbles would it have even been visible?