Don't know who told you that but if equalizing properly and just swimming along relaxed I know 160 doesn't feel any different than 60. Except in the Great Lakes it's a helluva lot colder and clearer! And a good reg will not breathe any differently than it does on the surface. But sloping bottom or not just what degree of slope are we talking about and how much current was present are other factors. Also being new he nor anyone else would have any idea how bad narcosis would have effected him. THis is why these depths are recommended to be gone to gradually and with enough experience in other areas.
It's why I do not teach AOW to new students fresh out of OW training. Usually their buoyancy and trim have not been refined or worked with enough to make AOW anything more than a sightseeing tour which I do not believe in. I require a minumum of 10 dives post OW for my OW students to do AOW. I may require more from people I don't know or from other agencies whose OW standards are not as strict as ours and mine.
In any case I still have not gotten a clear picture of just how far away he was when the fishing vessel picked him up and exactly what condition he and his gear was in when they found him. Had a current, even a slight one, carried him away from the wall allowed him to drop without hitting it and then encountered an upwelling this could explain a great deal. But again he may not have known these things are possible even and this goes back to basic OW training. THere are so many things one can encounter under water in different areas and environments it is very difficult to cover all of them in a quickie course.
One of the things I do when discussing the dive environment in class is do an initial survey the week before of where my students plan on doing the bulk of their diving. While I love doing local stuff many do not. And so if they tell me they are going to Bonaire or the Virgin Islands or Florida and this where they'll be doing most of their diving I'll get on line and do some research about conditions, customs, and sites and add that to my lecture on planning and the dive environment. I still cover local and general conditions but it is my duty, I feel, to do this for them to make them as safe and enjoy the diving they wish to do as much as possible.
Are there any known places of upwellings in the area or could there be? I'd like to know for myself and my students.
