Accidents and Incidents:What mistakes have you made?

[MXGratefulDiver]

... and then there's the act of forgetting the simplest things at the worst possible time ...

Last August I travelled to Florida to begin my cave training. On the next to last day of an eight-day class I made the only mistake I've ever made underwater that had me momentarily thinking I might die there.

My buddy and I were being worked pretty hard by our instructor at Ginnie Springs ... in a place where the flow through the cave creates a lot of physical exertion. We'd reached the point in our training where he was throwing multiple failures at us ... to test not just our skills, but our ability to react calmly to the task-loading. And he was picking the worst places to do it. After handling a few of those, breathing pretty hard from exertion, he signaled my buddy to go OOA. I was in the lead, and had to turn around in a tight place, fighting the flow that wanted to push me out of the cave, put my buddy on my long hose and figure out how to maneuver him to get in front of me. Problem is that my mind was a couple steps ahead of my body, and when I put my necklaced reg in my mouth I neglected to purge it before inhaling rather forcefully ... because I was already breathing so hard. The result was that the small amount of water in the reg went down my windpipe and caused it to spasm shut ...

Here I am, a few hundred feet back in a cave, needing to breathe in the worst way ... and I can't. All I could do was toss my fist in the air, signaling my buddy to "hold", get negative enough to lay on the bottom, and try to relax until the spasm passed. My buddy later told me it took about a minute ... it felt a lot longer before the spasm allowed just a tiny trickle of air into my lungs. Oh that felt sweet ... but still not enough. It took a lot of conscious effort to stay relaxed and let the spasm pass. Finally I looked up ... into the concerned faces of my buddy and instructor, and signaled OK. I laid there another few breaths until I felt it was OK to get up and put in the effort needed to get out of the cave.

All the way out I chided myself for doing something I've spent the past few years teaching OW students not to do ... goes to show that even the most experienced divers can, under the "right" circumstances, make the simplest of errors. And sometimes those are the ones that will bite you the hardest ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[TSandM]

Gray, I think your point is a good one . . . I had to think for quite a while to come up with mistakes of any significant magnitude that I had made, simply because I try very hard to be conscientious, and I dive with buddies who help me with that. I have not so many events that are due to missing something, but instead a few that are either due to oversights not covered in my usual routine (failing to appreciate that different tanks of the same pressure and capacity can be quite different in their buoyancy characteristics) or that are due to a deliberate decision to continue with a dive, once suboptimal conditions are identified (negative scooter).

But I did remember another one that was simply a product of poor checking. We began a dive in Mexico where we were using stages. We went through our pre-dive checks -- I believe we even remembered to pre-breathe the stage regs. But after doing so, I of course charged the reg and turned the gas off (typical way to carry deco bottles). So when we went to descend, I pulled out the stage reg, stuck it in my mouth, started down, and at about 15 feet or so, I ran out of gas. What was interesting was my reaction . . . although my conscious mind knew immediately what the problem was, my first reaction was to swim for the surface (while, naturally, opening the valve). I've spent quite a bit of time thinking about that one.

 

[seaducer]

. . . although my conscious mind knew immediately what the problem was, my first reaction was to swim for the surface (while, naturally, opening the valve). I've spent quite a bit of time thinking about that one.

Precisely the reason I advise copious amounts of experience before solo diving or taking on a leadership role. We have eon's of time honing the instincts of a land animal, and our instincts and initial reactions are often the wrong ones to have underwater.

Repetition and muscle memory can make up for only so much, it is not until you really start subconsciously behaving like a marine creature that you are probably ever safe from yourself. I am unsure if any of us ever actually get there?

 

[Fish in a Barrel]

Once I was dragged to the surface by a fisherman who had lodged his hook around my heel strap of my fin (it was shallow and at night, so not a big deal).

This has to be my favorite one. I just keep thinking about that fisherman!

With my measly six dives, what I'm learning from this thread is to check, then double-check your gear, and stick to your dive plan.

 

[gcbryan]

Getting caught by a fisherman is not a mistake on the divers part (necessarily) but for those who think this can't happen to them...it happened to me once.

I was at a jetty where there is supposed to be no fishing. When I got in no one was around (other than my buddy). Once I got to the end of the jetty I felt my leg (wearing a drysuit) being pulled upward. Not so hard that I was going anywhere. Nylon line is hard to see. Once I realized that I wasn't just snagged on old line but that it was actually attached to a fisherman I had to hurry up and grab my knife and cut the line.

After the dive, this guy (fisherman) came up and apologized and it was obvious that he was also somewhat mentally challenged so not much I could say. He said that he thought he had caught the biggest ling cod of his life!

Bob, I remember reading about your incident in the cave last year...that one has and will definitely stick with me.

 

[inventor]

I was wearing a new 2XL 7mm hooded step-in shorty that I had recently bought online, over my 7/6 fullsuit. The 2XL size was right for my chest size and plenty large at the hips, but I didn't actually measure my "waist" size. I don't actually have a waist - I have a belly. When I put on the shorty, I looked great! It didn't feel too bad, either. But when I had to swim 50 yards or so on the surface, I got a little out of breath, and could not catch my breath again! I was exhausted by the time I got back to the boat, and needed help getting up the ladder. It took a while to understand why I could not catch my breath until I had removed the shorty. I finally realized that, although I could expand my chest normally, the tightness around my belly kept me from being able to breath with my diaphragm to catch my breath. Next dive, I just used the 7/6 fullsuit, a very stretchy one, and had no more breathing problems.

I ran into the same problem. Had an older used large wetsuit, that was tight. Went almost a year without diving, then this happened.

What is the dumbest thing you have ever seen a diver do? - Page 34 - Scuba Forum - Scuba Diving Forums and Discussion Board

 

[Mike Boswell]

My buddy and I went out for a day's diving in his 18 foot boat. After the last dive, the wind and current had come up and we couldn't get the anchor unstuck. So my buddy says "Grab the anchor line and I'll gun the boat into the current, and it'll probably come loose."

And to tell the truth, it always had.

This time, however, the current was strong and the waves were pretty big, and even though we had let out all 300 feet of nylon anchor rope, we were still stuck. So we naturally tried it again, using every ounce of push that Johnson 100 HP outboard had to give. This time I took a turn around the stern cleat for good measure. We hit the end of the rope and I held on for dear life, feet braced on the transom, and the boat stretched that line as tight as a piano string.

And then, the engine sort of stalled, and the boat started moving backwards, and the stern went into the water, and my buddy screamed "Let go of the rope!". But I was fixated on my task and wasn't hearing him.

You have to appreciate that a nylon rope is a bit like a rubber band. It stretches, and then it pulls back. And this particular rubber band was very big and very long, and had been stretched as far as a hundred horses could stretch it. And it was now pulling the boat ass-backwards down to her doom.

Finally, my buddy's words filtered through to my neocortex, and with water pouring over the stern into the boat, I let go. The rope sizzled though my hands and was gone, and the boat popped back up and level.

On the way back in, my buddy pontificated at great length and with growing enthusiasm on The Virtues of Instantly Obeying the Lawful Orders of the Captain of a Vessel at Sea.

 

[highdesert]

Oh yeah ... besides the splashing-with-the-air-turned-off thing, I forgot the flooding my light thing, then on the next trip dropping both the replacement and my backup light on the (very distant) bottom.

 

[MartianBeerPig]

on a boat dive, i put my cylinder on the boat and turned it on. went back to the dive shop, lugged a few spare cylinders down the beach. unbeknownst to me, our illustrious dive leader had checked and then turned the air off.

at the site, i geared up and, recalling that i'd turned the air on earlier, jumped in without re-checking. at about 12m, i realised what had happened and signalled my buddy (who had just decided to go a chase a pretty fish) to turn the air on.

lesson learned - make sure air is on just before you gear up.

not one of my better moments.

 

[chokdeekap]

Run out of air while shooting a zebra shark i know it was stupid it was to wards the end of the dive i just could not resist getting a few shots stung by jelly fish a few times, once really bad on the face and around the neck