Crazzzzzyy Scuba Underwater Campfire Stories!

[reefseal]

been there.. Though not because of drinking the night before.

Warning!! This may get a bit graphic.. My apologies in advance for grossing anyone out.

Many moons ago on dive in Gulf off Tampa/Clearwater, had a similar experience. While surfacing from dive, I felt this surge that all of a sudden brought on a bout of nausea. (Very common as I have heard of others that have had this happen to them) I fought the urge to uke and was not successful in holding it in. It just shot out and didn't have time to pull reg out. Not pleasant doing the big spit in your reg at 40 feet. Fortunately, remained calm in ordeal. didn't inhale water (or puke) I just calmly took out reg, swished around water, purged, (fortunately a rental reg!) and put back in mouth fine. What was odd were all fish going after the kibbles and bits!

My dive master didn't see this but was torked when she got topside asking if anyone In group was feeding the fish with cheeze wiz. I guess some divers used to bring cans of stuff to feed fish underwater. Supposedly this is a big no no as fish don't have the enzymes to break down cheese product.

For this reason, I don't rent regs. I felt sorry for next guy that rented my reg!

 

[Scuba_Dave]

OK, about 5 years ago after getting certified I had my 2nd OW dive. It was at Loblolly Cove, and I paired off w/an experienced diver. I blew thru my air fairly quickly, viz was OK so I went to the surface & paced him as we swam back in - he was still looking for lobster. I still had enough air to go back down in case of problems
Swimming in on my back I thought another diver was swimming in to my right - I could make out the black object to my right in my side window of the mask - a BC I thought
It dawned on me that something was missing however. Ah!! A scuba tank should be in the middle of that dark object!! I turned to get a better look, and NO JOKE a 3' fin popped out of the water!! Approx 5' away!!! After I stopped screaming - no-one could hear me on shore - I decided to pop my reg back in & see what was going to eat me.
I dove under & there was an enormous fish - it's fin extending out of the water 2-3', and the rest of it extended down below my fins 2-3' - so ~10' tip to tip!!
It swam around me 3x as I kept turning to face it. It then swam off.
A mola mola - Ocean Sunfish - when I was back on shore a dive boat full had jumped in & were "petting" this monster!!
What an experience.....

 

[large_diver]

Career dive #10 (with the first 4 being BOW class dives) and first boat dive ever -- on the Poling. Cape Ann Divers small boat. "4-6 foot seas with an occasional 8", says the captain. Perfect conditions for an advanced class. What the hell was I thinking..?

Still amazed 5 years later that I made it from my seat into the water without doing a cartwheel on my head. Definitely nervous, but felt OK. Descent went off without a hitch. As with any dive on the Poling in a wetsuit, I remember it being dark and cold (especially when my max prior depth had been about 40 feet).

I was in a group of 4 -- 3 students and the instructor. About halfway through the dive, I paused to look at something on the deck. Vis was maybe 15 feet. Before pushing on, I stopped to check my pressure gauge and noticed I was at the turn pressure we had agreed upon. I swim over to the group and show them my pressure gauge. I get a blank look in return. I show them my gauge again, and I get an open palmed "WTF?" response. Only now do I realize that (1) this is a group of 2 divers; and (2) they are both carrying rather large, hard to miss camera rigs. They finally pointed me towards the anchor line....

I sheepishly finned back to the group (waiting for me about 30 feet away). Ascent went fine. Trip from the ladder back to my seat was done on all fours due to the seas. I was more than a little embarassed as the photographers got back on the boat -- I apologized profusely.

Live and learn.

-Chris

 

[Oceanseleven]

Ok, here we go. Bare with me, I've only logged about thirty dives but this was very ammusing to me at the time and still is.

This past Memorial Day Weekend I took a trip on a liveaboard to the Bahamas. I wasn't even certified yet I had only dove in a very small pool that was barely ten feet deep. Anyway I took to it like a fish to water and by the second day I was diving with reef sharks and diving down to 100'ft. Keep in mind my LDS instructor was with me the whole time ( Except the 100'ft part I wasn't suppose to go down that far ) Anyway on the second night we did our night dive on the same spot as the shark feed earlier that day. This was my first night dive and all my equipment was new and seemed to work well. Well down on the bottom at about 60'ft swimming through huge coral outcroppings my primary starts to flicker and then just completely implodes. Lights out. Not a big deal the moon was very bright out and there was enough light to see shadows all around and we had been down here earlier that day. So as my instructor in trying to switch his secondary with my primary all of a sudden out over the top of the coral comes this light kind of like when your driving up a hill at night and the car coming from the other side has their hi-beams on. Well he came over the top and lit up the entire floor like a baseball stadium. My instructor and I where actually blinded for a few seconds. It was so bright people on the boat said it looked like a James Cameron film, The Abyss or something. They could pick out every detail on us and the other divers. (This guy had an $8000 digital video camera setup and apparentely it had a very powerful light. ) Anyway as my instructor and I got our vision back and our lights figured out we were turning into an alley way between two coral heads and as we turned we came face to nose with an 8'ft reef shark who appeared to have been hanging there the whole time. I nearly blew through half my tank in about thirty seconds. The shark just casually looked us both in the face and quietly swam off into the darkness. Maybe not the most exciting story but keep in mind this is only my second DAY of diving. :icon10: