Moose016
Contributor
Hi, my name is Jamie and I'm new to the board. I just got back from diving the cooper river this weekend and wanted to share a warning and tip about diving there, usually danger is not the first thing that comes to mind when I think of SCUBA, but after hearing of at least 2 deaths at sites I have personally dove in the past couple months, within weeks of myself being there and my experience this weekend I thought I would post this for anyone going to the cooper river, sorry if I ramble on, I'm just throwing everything out there.
When I first dove the river, I was afraid of the gators, but after
this http://www.wistv.com/Global/story.asp?S=1461387&nav=0RaPIF5A happenned and I knew the conditions from previous dives, boats became my new fear. On my first dive since the accident I asked the captain about it and he said there were several mistakes made on that dive in his opinion. First, he was too far up the river, where there are too many gators to begin with. Second, if they were going to dive that part of the river they should not do it on labor day when all the drunks are out in their speedboats and if they had to dive that weekend in that part of the river, not that time of day.
So that lowered my fear thinking, this part of the river now should be clear, well when we arrived at the first site, there was already a boat there and I noticed them trying to waive us away because there were divers in the water and they were coming up, but I don't think he liked them being there or was mad because they were an out of town boat, but he did not move away from them or clear out so the divers could come up nearly the way I would have expected or the way I would have. Anyways there are some other things that I think could be done more safely as well from the charter standpoint but onto my major point. When you surface from the river bottom which is pitch black, light slowly begins to appear, but you cannot see anything meaningful until you hit the surface and when I popped up I saw a boat coming at me as far as I could tell full speed from about 25 yards away dead center (the crease of the hull was lined right with my head and the bow was way up, there was no way they saw me), I only had time to react and get down, I didn't know how far down I needed to go, or if there were any boats following it, but I didn't want to under estimate it. I went down for about 30 seconds and slowly came up listening for any engines (never heard the first boat) when I hit the surface for the second time my boat came at me pretty quick I thought (figuring he saw the whole thing) and I saw the captain on the phone thinking he was reporting the boat to the river patrol or something, no he was just talking to a friend of his, he threw me the ladder and made no mention of it, he was behind the boat.
Sorry, so to wrap up this short novel, from now on I think I will be stopping my ascent a few feet from the surface and blowing up a safety sausage or soemthing to signal my surface, or purging my secondary reg for 15 seconds, something to signal I'm coming up before my head breaches, or slowly do the last few feet with arm fully extended flashlight in hand. With one person dead and had I come up facing the other direction, I don't know if I culd have gotten down far enough, quick enough, I don't think there's much chance the boat saw me.
Sorry if I caused more suicides from boredom than accidents this may prevent, but just soemthing to think about, wanted to give you all the information, and typing this beats studying for finals.
thanks, look forward to being on the board.
When I first dove the river, I was afraid of the gators, but after
this http://www.wistv.com/Global/story.asp?S=1461387&nav=0RaPIF5A happenned and I knew the conditions from previous dives, boats became my new fear. On my first dive since the accident I asked the captain about it and he said there were several mistakes made on that dive in his opinion. First, he was too far up the river, where there are too many gators to begin with. Second, if they were going to dive that part of the river they should not do it on labor day when all the drunks are out in their speedboats and if they had to dive that weekend in that part of the river, not that time of day.
So that lowered my fear thinking, this part of the river now should be clear, well when we arrived at the first site, there was already a boat there and I noticed them trying to waive us away because there were divers in the water and they were coming up, but I don't think he liked them being there or was mad because they were an out of town boat, but he did not move away from them or clear out so the divers could come up nearly the way I would have expected or the way I would have. Anyways there are some other things that I think could be done more safely as well from the charter standpoint but onto my major point. When you surface from the river bottom which is pitch black, light slowly begins to appear, but you cannot see anything meaningful until you hit the surface and when I popped up I saw a boat coming at me as far as I could tell full speed from about 25 yards away dead center (the crease of the hull was lined right with my head and the bow was way up, there was no way they saw me), I only had time to react and get down, I didn't know how far down I needed to go, or if there were any boats following it, but I didn't want to under estimate it. I went down for about 30 seconds and slowly came up listening for any engines (never heard the first boat) when I hit the surface for the second time my boat came at me pretty quick I thought (figuring he saw the whole thing) and I saw the captain on the phone thinking he was reporting the boat to the river patrol or something, no he was just talking to a friend of his, he threw me the ladder and made no mention of it, he was behind the boat.
Sorry, so to wrap up this short novel, from now on I think I will be stopping my ascent a few feet from the surface and blowing up a safety sausage or soemthing to signal my surface, or purging my secondary reg for 15 seconds, something to signal I'm coming up before my head breaches, or slowly do the last few feet with arm fully extended flashlight in hand. With one person dead and had I come up facing the other direction, I don't know if I culd have gotten down far enough, quick enough, I don't think there's much chance the boat saw me.
Sorry if I caused more suicides from boredom than accidents this may prevent, but just soemthing to think about, wanted to give you all the information, and typing this beats studying for finals.
thanks, look forward to being on the board.
