Diver in a down current - best action to take?

[beaverdivers]

If a diver experiences a down current, what is the best course of action(s)?

 

[diverzach]

I have roughly 5,000 less dives than you, but inflating your BC and finning up would hopefully work. When you start to ascend, you could then start deflating so you don't rocket to the surface.

 

[soltari675]

Down currents usually happen against a wall. Swim away from the wall, parallel to the bottom. Pretty much like they have you do for rip tides. The current size isn't that big. And swimming horizontal will get you out of it faster. No offense meant to diverzach, but swimming directly against a current that strong will exhaust you fast and you won't win...

 

[MMM]

I have only encountered them in Cozumel and in my experience there, they are not wide. You can swim out of them (keeping your body at about a 45 degree angle, heading up and out). The problem with adding air is that you can head to the surface very quickly, especially if you suddenly find yourself out of the down current. A few years ago 2 other divers and I got caught in one at a safety stop and were pulled to about 30-40 feet or so from 15 feet in the blink of an eye. I swam out of it; they added air and rocketed to the surface. The DM was about 15 or 20 feet away and was totally unaffected. His advice to me was "it's like a toilet flushing...at some point it is going to spit you out and the biggest thing is not to panic."

I would only add air to my BC if I was being pulled to great depths, was breathing a gas mixture that would put me at great risk at that depth and all other efforts were failing.

 

[gcarter]

Very related, but slightly to the side of the intent of the question, for those who have experienced this, what about equalizing? How do you manage this with the rapid depth change, and how distracting is it from the task of exiting the current?

 

[DandyDon]

I have roughly 5,000 less dives than you, but inflating your BC and finning up would hopefully work. When you start to ascend, you could then start deflating so you don't rocket to the surface.

They had a lot of downwellings in Cozumel a couple of weeks back, lots of talk - and the ones who did that are the ones who had the most problems. It's like a rip current: swim out of it - away from the wall, towards the wall (not my preference), or just along the wall. Buddy awareness and staying together is important of course.

 

[Rich Keller]

Down currents usually happen against a wall. Swim away from the wall, parallel to the bottom. Pretty much like they have you do for rip tides. The current size isn't that big. And swimming horizontal will get you out of it faster. No offense meant to diverzach, but swimming directly against a current that strong will exhaust you fast and you won't win...

+1 Swim at a 90 degree angle to the current toward open water until you are out.

 

[danvolker]

In over 30 years, I had never experienced a down current that I considered any issue to beat.....On a video shoot in the Bahamas I was on, I was filming a Triton sub --right on top of him, when he begain descending like a brick. No one had been on top of a sub like this before, so thare was no expectation of anything happening out of the norm...the dive for us was just supposed to be a 120 foot max depth dive, and we were on air.....

When the sub began dropping, initially I was only marginally aware I was dropping too....Then, as I had to equalize a couple of times, my concentration left me camera viewfinder, and went to my computer depth indication....160 and falling fast.....First I swam upward hard with my big freedive fins, and I was still sinking....at 180 I hit my inflator, fully inflated, and swam hard, and by 205 feet, I beat the downcurrent, and pierced the top of the cell of water falling with the sub....then of course, I had to begin dumping some air out of the wing at around 150 feet, as I did not want a rocket ascent to continue. So I stopped ascent at 150, and then did a nice gradual swim up to my buddies waiting for me at about 140....

See the video where I am shooting the sub, it starts to fall, then you see Jeremy's video of me on top of the sub, then my video at near 200 foot depth, where you can see the bottom at around 350 feet, below the sub....
anders1a-short_YouTube_h264_1080p - YouTube

And this short clip, that shows the bottom perspective much better, plus a view of the bottom from the sub..
anders1a-short-part2_YouTube_h264_1080p - YouTube


When we do this again in June, it will be apparent that if you get pulled down, you just swim horizontally away from the sub, but you would still need full inflation, as you would still be getting "pulled" toward the sub. Also, I will probably use doubles for the next go around, and mix...and also have the vastly greater lift of doubles wings

 

[Doc]

If a diver experiences a down current, what is the best course of action(s)?

Step One: To recognize that they are in one.

Not as easy or obvious as one might think. It is insidious at best.

 

[shmuggy]

The two most important things are: not to panic and never dive without a buddy. Usually the down current will spit you out as mentioned earlier but you may have to do other things too- like swim away from the wall, lessen your weight, inflate your BC (slowly- do not rocket up), assess how effectively you can fin up.