"Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth."
Unknown Diver airlifted to hospital - Venice, Florida
- Thread starter DandyDon
- Start date
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johndiver999
Contributor
YES , some plans sound great like: "stop, breathe, think, act". Except of course for the situation being discussed. The problem was not identified until the ability to breathe was eliminated.
CT-Rich
Contributor
I cast my own weights and have picked up enough freebies that I wouldn’t think twice about dropping a weights.Lead is cheap - not any more....
Check your gear, and then check it again.
One of my most important maxims in diving is, don’t bring anything into the water you aren’t okay with leaving there. If you have to make a quick decision between your weight pouches or a camera or some other piece of kit and your life, make sure it is an easy decision. People have died chasing lost gear.
I am pretty easy going, on a lot of things, but am completely anal about checking my air before splashing. I think it is a mistake you will only make once. If you ever tried to draw from a regulator you expected work, and it doesn’t, you will never let it happen a second time.
The first time I used a vintage single stage DH regulator on full tank, I absolutely freaked out at how hard it was to breath. It took some getting used too.
Same here… Only happened once. As many mentioned earlier in the thread, no problem finning up back to the surface and opening the valve. Also have practiced many times to take my kit off and put it back on at depth…
Of note, panic is a crazy deal. Had a gal in a group a couple of years back that jumped off the boat and could not stay up on the surface. She was overweighted despite best advice “because she could not sink” because of layers of neoprene and anxiety and had this crazy BCD with I3 lever system. The lever was stuck in the deflate position because it was caught by a piece of here gear. She was going to drown for sure, dropping the weight or taking off her gear never occurred to her. Her husband was in the water next to her but also panicked and froze and wouldn’t help her. I like Mike Tyson’s quote mentioned earlier by @NothingClever
TrimixToo
Contributor
Guess I don't have enough dives. (A tautology if ever there was one!)
I'm wondering if she sunk to the bottom immediately because she was intentionally overweighted for meg teeth hunting? Could this ultimately be a medical issue? If you hit the water, sink and realize your air isn't on, what do you do? You try to reach your tank to turn it on - take off bc if necessary - head to your dive buddy for air while trying to get your air on. For her to stay on the bottom until her husband found her sounds like perhaps she wasn't conscious or was otherwise unable to respond to save herself. 
johndiver999
Contributor
Perhaps she was overweighted, but when you are sinking and heavy and have nothing to breathe, this is quite likely to cause you to panic and then you only have seconds to respond perfectly or you are just going to sink and die.I'm wondering if she sunk to the bottom immediately because she was intentionally overweighted for meg teeth hunting? Could this ultimately be a medical issue? If you hit the water, sink and realize your air isn't on, what do you do? You try to reach your tank to turn it on - take off bc if necessary - head to your dive buddy for air while trying to get your air on. For her to stay on the bottom until her husband found her sounds like perhaps she wasn't conscious or was otherwise unable to respond to save herself.
If there was a buddy (who was attentive and visibility was decent) he could have just chased her down and popped a regulator in her mouth, but that does not sound like that happened.
If (and these are big 'ifs') they were meg tooth diving it may have been difficult to find her after about 30 seconds. We did one day of meg tooth diving down there and at one point my husband caught up to me to hand me a little shell - I took it, looked at it and turned around to look at him again and I couldn't see him - and we were both going up the line to the boat!! The viz was terrible on those dives. Dark, murky and green.
Sad all around.
Robert H. Diver
Contributor
Wow, sad and completely avoidable.
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