Doing skills regularly helped save me at Kelvin Grove

[StuartT]

It is hard for me to imagine why you would ditch your gear in 15 ft of water with an hour or more left in your air supply. Is it difficult for you to remove the tank and work underwater while holding your tank? What type of practice did you engage in prior to this incident which prepared your for this emergency response?

Hindsight is always 20/20. In a perfect scenario I would have done just that. My main concern was getting safely to the surface and not getting further entangled. I have practiced removing and replacing gear at depth. I did think at one point during the incident that the gear was expendable and I didn't care if I didn't get it back.

 

[PolarBare]

Glad you came out of it safe. That line always freaks me out a bit when I see it.

 

[Jim-SAR]

Glad you're okay. Like others, I just can't see why you wouldn't attempt to free the entanglement before you resorted to an emergency ascent. You say doing skills regularly saved you, but the escalation of your actions to a CESA seems unwarranted. If you had the air, you should have tried to solve the issue before you took the most drastic action available.


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[DeepSeaDan]

Next time, go over the line instead of under it - the easiest way to solve a problem is to avoid one.

DSD

 

[mruseless]

I'm glad you are ok. While I also wonder why you didn't attempt to free yourself first, a bigger concern here is why you allowed your buddy to go and retrieve your gear solo. If there was so much entanglement risk that you had to abandon your gear and do a CESA, why would you accept your buddy's offer to go get your gear by herself?

 

[Diver Dan 28]

I got tangled in monofilament shortly after I certified. I was at maybe 40 feet and the more I moved the worse it seemed to get. Luckly the first piece of equipment I bought was a cheap Schrade Water Rat. Vis was about 8-12 feet in the lake. My buddy didn't look back as he finned away, I felt panic like never before. I felt like a bug in a spiders web. After regaining some control of my thoughts and calmed down I slowly grabbed my knife and cut my way out. We were trained to remove our bc in the class, however that didn't even cross my mind at that particular moment of my life. I got out and did the normal safty stop and surfaced. At least TEN MINUTES later my so called buddy surfaced. I asked him if he had lost something, he just gave me the huh?? look. I have never dove with that dip stick since.
Glad your ok and a good reminder about others ways to get out of a tight spot.

 

[PeterNBiddle]

At least TEN MINUTES later my so called buddy surfaced. I asked him if he had lost something, he just gave me the huh?? look. I have never dove with that dip stick since.

At least you found out he was a flake right away. Think of how bad it COULD have been.

 

[chillyinCanada]

Early on, night dive low viz deep soft mud bottom, I was suddenly unable to get off the bottom no matter what i tried. My buddy watched and waited, also too newbie to realize the problem. I had lots of air so felt no panic only some mild confusion. The more slight changes i attempted to make to my buoyancy, the more it felt like i was being pushed deeper into the muck.

A dm trainee came along, assessed the situation and cut my tank/first stage free of quite a bunch of monofilament. To this day, I've not been able to imagine how i would have extricated myself by gear removal.