Diver Panic (Video)

[Kairoos]

Saw this posted on Reddit and wasn't sure if it was posted here at some point. I've watched this a few times trying to figure out what exactly happened. Video says they were at about 50fsw.

Possibly inexperienced and panics when she loses her reg, and then panics further when she knocks off her mask.

 

[Dhboner]

She has no business being under water in scuba gear...that kind of panic can get others killed as well a the panicking diver.

 

[uncfnp]

A couple of things caught my eye beyond the obvious. In the few glimpses we get before the panic she looks distracted or uncomfortable, not looking at the group/excessive hand movement. When the lead (?) diver checks each diver for readiness to ascend she is not even looking at him and I never see her signal ok. Yet the others start to ascend. Her buddy does stay with her but I think is still caught unprepared for her flight. And she does the gear rejection, removes her mask, but interestingly it is not the often quoted "mask on forehead."

 

[boulderjohn]

So I will offer a guess as to what happened in this video that led to the panic. My guess is based on something I saw once myself.

Let's start by looking at what we see.

We see divers in cold water gear at the end of a dive--they are giving the thumb to begin the final ascent. Everyone seems to be fine, swimming calmly with neutral buoyancy. Suddenly we see one of the divers is significantly deeper than the rest, deeper by far than she was only a few seconds ago, and she is struggling to ascend, struggling, in fact, to stop her descent. Unable to do so, she panics.

Some years ago I had a student I had never met in in an AOW class. She had newly moved into our area, and this was her first time wearing a 7mm wet suit and hood. At the end of our first dive, I signaled the ascent, and she immediately raised her inflator hose, dumped all her air, and started to plummet into the depths. I caught her as quickly as I could.

When we got to the surface, I said, "Let me guess. Your OW instructor taught you that when it was time to ascend, you are supposed to dump all your air and swim up, right?" She said, "Yes, isn't that right?"

Many warm water instructors with students wearing 3mm suits with minimum compression at depth, teach that silliness.

 

[dumpsterDiver]

Wow that is terrifying. Why not talk about what should have been done?

I agree that she started the ascent too heavy, however the other people also looked too heavy to begin the ascent as well. There looked like a lot of kicking going on.

Before the ascent, you could see that she was not good. Someone should have noticed that and got in her face for the ascent. She was looking down, swimming with her hands and it looked to me like her buddy, who she approached with was not attentive at all. He was exhibiting perfect trim and propulsion and had his hands forward and clasped "like a pro". Too bad he was utterly useless in the situation.

It is possible that she might not even have understood that everyone was ascending, since she seemed to be looking down when the signal was given and then when she looked up, everyone was already off the bottom - possibly giving her the added stressor of feeling abandoned on the bottom.

If I were the guy filming, I would have put one hand behind her head, the other would be holding the regulator to her lips and I would be purging the crap out of it. She would have been unable to move her mouth away from the air source, regardless of whether she wanted to or not.

Then I would have been dragging her to the surface by her head, one hand on the back of the head and the other on the reg and her chin. I would have been kicking like hell and hopefully be screaming sheeeeeet at the same time.

Once they reached the surface, the rescuer should have been on her inflator - immediately. No way you want to risk her airway or her sinking.

Anyone else do something different?

 

[markmud]

She has no business being under water in scuba gear...that kind of panic can get others killed as well a the panicking diver.

+1

John wrote:
"When we got to the surface, I said, "Let me guess. Your OW instructor taught you that when it was time to ascend, you are supposed to dump all your air and swim up, right?" She said, "Yes, isn't that right?"

A person who reflexively dumps his/her BC and can't figure out the causal relationship between air in their BC and buoyancy should not be diving. No matter what her instructor taught her!

And then to attempt to solve the problem by ripping off her mask and ditching her reg. Wow!

I keep telling myself, no more insta-buddies!

markm

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

That's a pretty frightening video, and not one I'd show OW students in their first classroom session.

I understand why they say never to use your BCD as an elevator, but if you are a bit heavy, nothing wrong with a little burst to give you a little bit of a lift, followed by dumping that air and more as you ascend to the surface in a slow, controlled manner.

 

[Babbolz]

Nice video Kairoos thanks for posting.
I have to say that although i am being taught in warm waters with a 3mm shorty nobody has ever told me to dump all my air out before ascending! Is this in any way valid?

 

[uncfnp]

Its a hard bottom. At one point you even see one of the other divers on their knees briefly. She is not descending but the others are ascending, at least that is how I see it. And as I said, she never looked comfortable. She may well have been overweighted and it may have contributed to the chain of events that led to the panic but I don't see it as the cause.

 

[CuzzA]

I'm not sure how the majority of ascents are taught through all agencies, but after open water I felt like I was ill equipped to perform a proper ascent.

They beat embolism and popping to the surface like a cork to death, so you're so overly conscious and emphasizing dumping air that during my first post OW dive I found myself negative and fighting a little to get up because I dumped too much air (not all). I stopped, thought about what they hell I was doing, regained neutral buoyancy, gave a couple kicks up and waited a little while to dump. I ended up with a nice co2 headache from my earlier kicking efforts, but once I made the correction that made all the difference. Now my ascents are like floating on a cloud. Wait to dump.

I think John is right, this is a training issue. However, she obviously wasn't prepared to be diving given her reaction to a minor issue.

What is the reason why people ditch the mask and even more shocking, their reg? I don't understand how someone's mind could resort to getting rid of the one thing that will keep them alive.