needforspeed751
Registered
So I was diving with a small group in Saba about a while back and I encountered my first OOA situation, but it wasn't quite what I had expected.
It was a night dive and we were being transported to our dive site in a zodiac. Part way to the dive site my partner realized that his tank was leaking and he quickly changed it out and no one gave the matter further thought. We prepared to make our dive, checked our gear, and since everything appeared to be working perfectly we all got in the water. Soon as we were in some of the divers started complaining that they were being stung so we all quickly began our descent to get away from the offending jellyfish. We made our way down to about sixty feet to a wall that dropped off somewhere around 6000 ft or so. It was dark so as we swam along with the guide master I had my light trained on a hogfish as we continued to descend to 80 feet. Suddenly something large swam up to me and ripped my reg right out of my mouth. Needless to say I was shocked but I just grabbed my air2 and cleared it before realizing that my partner was in front of me telling me in no uncertain terms that he was out of air and wanted to surface. He was clearly rather panicked so I motioned to him to breath easy and grabbed his BC before motioning to the divemaster that we were heading up.
As it turned out we got to the surface and my buddy still had a tank full of air. He had only turned the valve about half way on however, and I suppose that the pressure at depth must have prevented him from taking a breath. The lesson I learned from this is to not take things for granted. Just because something works on the surface doesn't mean that it will continue to function properly at depth if there is soemthing slightly amiss at the surface. As such gear inspection should be as thorough as possible.
It was a night dive and we were being transported to our dive site in a zodiac. Part way to the dive site my partner realized that his tank was leaking and he quickly changed it out and no one gave the matter further thought. We prepared to make our dive, checked our gear, and since everything appeared to be working perfectly we all got in the water. Soon as we were in some of the divers started complaining that they were being stung so we all quickly began our descent to get away from the offending jellyfish. We made our way down to about sixty feet to a wall that dropped off somewhere around 6000 ft or so. It was dark so as we swam along with the guide master I had my light trained on a hogfish as we continued to descend to 80 feet. Suddenly something large swam up to me and ripped my reg right out of my mouth. Needless to say I was shocked but I just grabbed my air2 and cleared it before realizing that my partner was in front of me telling me in no uncertain terms that he was out of air and wanted to surface. He was clearly rather panicked so I motioned to him to breath easy and grabbed his BC before motioning to the divemaster that we were heading up.
As it turned out we got to the surface and my buddy still had a tank full of air. He had only turned the valve about half way on however, and I suppose that the pressure at depth must have prevented him from taking a breath. The lesson I learned from this is to not take things for granted. Just because something works on the surface doesn't mean that it will continue to function properly at depth if there is soemthing slightly amiss at the surface. As such gear inspection should be as thorough as possible.
