FlemmingParis
New
I would like to point out that I was a fare paying customer on this trip. I just happened to be there when the unconscious diver suddenly appeared.
Also, the article combining the incident of the luxury diving yacht reported having engine trouble with this accident is a journalistic fabrication. They have no relation to each other whatsoever. And the mentioning of the body of the diver floating around has no relation at all to what happened.
After the first dive we took a break of approx. one hour and twenty minutes and we went into the water at 12:17. There was a very strong current, so we were immediately separated into two groups.
The current was so strong that we had to hold on to the bottom and slowly "crawl" down. About 5 minutes into the dive, when I was at 14 meters depth, I felt someone pulling at my fins and an expensive camera landed right in front of me.
My first thought was that a diver had lost his camera but it was my octopus he was interested in. I grabbed hold of him so we could ascend together and I tried to calm him down. When we surfaced, he was strongly affected and very relieved.
We got onboard the dive boat and I had him to lie down first on one side and then on the other side and asked him to try to squeeze the breath when breathing out, to get the water out of the lungs, if there was any.
Once he recovered from the shock he had no problems. We started talking about how it could happen and had confirmed that his tank was completely empty. We wanted to examine whether it had been changed after the first dive and started looking for his other tanks. Suddenly two more divers appeared!
One was unconscious. We managed to get him out of the water and got his equipment off. On board at the time were two Filipinos: The captain and his helper, the guy I came up with and myself.
His airways were filled with water and he had no pulse. I tried to rescue breathe but for each breath, there was only a little water and foam coming out. His eyes had turned white. We tried to turn him on one side and we pressed on his chest, and the only thing that came out of him was a little water and foam.
Without pulse and with the prospect of at least two hours of CPR without an artificial airway to ventilate him, I decided to stop. If the oxygen equipment had included an artificial airway and if we had had a defibrillator and/or the prospect of transferring him by rescue helicopter to a hospital, I had thought differently.
He had over 100 BARs (more than half) in his tank but the mouthpiece was missing from his regulator. He was already breathing from his own octopus when he signaled out of air to the guy taking him up but took the offered octopus anyway.
My theory is, that when the regulator and mouthpiece separated, he may have inhaled salt water, and either he panicked or swallowed saltwater causing his laryngeal lid to close and possibly on the way up he then he had pneumothorax or if he was in a panic and hyper ventilated, he became unconscious when ascending.
The reason I haven’t been writing until now is that I wasn’t aware of the discussion of the accident at this site. As you can imagine, it is a thing that stays with you for a long time. I didn’t dive for a while after it happened but I am now back among the diving.
Also, the article combining the incident of the luxury diving yacht reported having engine trouble with this accident is a journalistic fabrication. They have no relation to each other whatsoever. And the mentioning of the body of the diver floating around has no relation at all to what happened.
After the first dive we took a break of approx. one hour and twenty minutes and we went into the water at 12:17. There was a very strong current, so we were immediately separated into two groups.
The current was so strong that we had to hold on to the bottom and slowly "crawl" down. About 5 minutes into the dive, when I was at 14 meters depth, I felt someone pulling at my fins and an expensive camera landed right in front of me.
My first thought was that a diver had lost his camera but it was my octopus he was interested in. I grabbed hold of him so we could ascend together and I tried to calm him down. When we surfaced, he was strongly affected and very relieved.
We got onboard the dive boat and I had him to lie down first on one side and then on the other side and asked him to try to squeeze the breath when breathing out, to get the water out of the lungs, if there was any.
Once he recovered from the shock he had no problems. We started talking about how it could happen and had confirmed that his tank was completely empty. We wanted to examine whether it had been changed after the first dive and started looking for his other tanks. Suddenly two more divers appeared!
One was unconscious. We managed to get him out of the water and got his equipment off. On board at the time were two Filipinos: The captain and his helper, the guy I came up with and myself.
His airways were filled with water and he had no pulse. I tried to rescue breathe but for each breath, there was only a little water and foam coming out. His eyes had turned white. We tried to turn him on one side and we pressed on his chest, and the only thing that came out of him was a little water and foam.
Without pulse and with the prospect of at least two hours of CPR without an artificial airway to ventilate him, I decided to stop. If the oxygen equipment had included an artificial airway and if we had had a defibrillator and/or the prospect of transferring him by rescue helicopter to a hospital, I had thought differently.
He had over 100 BARs (more than half) in his tank but the mouthpiece was missing from his regulator. He was already breathing from his own octopus when he signaled out of air to the guy taking him up but took the offered octopus anyway.
My theory is, that when the regulator and mouthpiece separated, he may have inhaled salt water, and either he panicked or swallowed saltwater causing his laryngeal lid to close and possibly on the way up he then he had pneumothorax or if he was in a panic and hyper ventilated, he became unconscious when ascending.
The reason I haven’t been writing until now is that I wasn’t aware of the discussion of the accident at this site. As you can imagine, it is a thing that stays with you for a long time. I didn’t dive for a while after it happened but I am now back among the diving.
