First night dive.. error, task overload, abort

[Javik]

(Don't know where to post this.)

I am a relatively new diver, that went on a night dive with a group of people who are much more experienced, which I screwed up and had to bail out, inland diving up north in a quarry with very cold thermocline.

I had two lights, a 1000 lumen LED spotlight strapped to my left hand, and a dimmer 450 lumen LED flood strapped to my right hand, and a rented Zoop Suunto which I am not hugely familiar with yet.

The Zoop does not have a backlight as far as I can tell, but the face glows if the light is pointed at it. (Weirdly the Zoop manual says it has a backlight but doesn't say how to activate it, and the three buttons don't light it when pressed, so either my rental unit is broken, or it really doesn't have a backlight and this is a documentation error.)



All was fine at the start, putting gear on, got in the water, swimming at the back of the group with my buddy, slowly working down a slope to about 40-45 ft, cross down into the very cold thermocline and... my head is unusually cold, very cold ... what?

Oh crap, while preparing to enter the water, I did not pull the wetsuit hood up from around my neck, before putting on my mask, and didn't notice in the warmer water at the surface. And since it is dark, no one else noticed it either. My head is now freezing in this very cold water, and it is intense black, aside from the lights.

Okay, I need to take the mask off, and somehow not let go of it in the murk, and also pull my hood up, and then put the mask back on. But I want to ascend to warmer water to do this. I try to signal Up to my dive buddy.... but they don't seem to be acknowledging me, they're looking at me but not signalling anything back, and I'm at the back of the group looking at fins, so no one else notices this. I'm not getting any feedback, and I'm starting to panic.

And then also, the usual new diver buoyancy problems, I am already stressed from my face freezing and am bobbing and then descend to the bottom at 45 ft, and now I cannot equalize my ears, I need to go up to release pressure and do it.

I point at my blocked ear, and again signal Up, but again buddy doesn't seem to be acknowledging me, just looking back at me, so this time, I start going up on my own. I don't know what's going on there, but my head is freezing and I need to fix this now, and I don't see any acknowledgement of my need to ascend.



All right, now I have to ascend up to warmer water, in the dark in open water with no reference but the depth gauge / computer. I have to hold the BC hose up to vent it to control the ascent. I am in pitch black open water so I have to look at the computer to determine ascent rate, but my left hand is busy with the BC, and so now I need to hold the computer/SPG with my right hand, on its short hose?

And furthermore pointing one of the lights at the computer face to make it glow doesn't help much because when I point the light I have to watch what I am doing, so I am blinding myself / removing my ability to see in darkness so I can't see the faint glow of the dial, and the glow fades really quickly to the point that I can't read it.

And so now I discover just can't both determine the ascent rate AND control it, because I can't do the following 3 things all at once: hold up BC exhaust, look at depth gauge/computer, point a hand-light at it.

Due to all the stress I didn't stop in the warmer water but just went to the surface, slowly but more or less uncontrolled, no safety stop. Though fortunately this was after only about 30 minutes of swimming down an incline to 45 ft, so not too long.

Buddy did surface later, after doing their slow ascent and safety stop, and I explained about the hood, swam back to shore on the surface with them.



So.... apparently if I'm going to be doing diving in the dark, aside from making sure I'm wearing my hood properly, I need gauges and/or a computer that lights up, AND can stay illuminated continuously for the entire dive so I don't have to keep pushing buttons on it all the time and fiddling with it.

Based on my limited experience, having to point a light at it to make it glow seems to be an ineffective method for seeing the device in pitch black water, since I blind myself trying to point the light at the dial to make it glow and now I can't see it anyway, even if it is dimly glowing.

A generic analog depth gauge / SPG console is going to have the exact same problem in the dark, if it doesn't have some sort of battery and illumination rings around the gauge faces.

I don't know what other people do there, with the "point light to make it glow but also don't night-blind myself doing this" process.

 

[CuzzA]

Why not just pull the hood over your mask strap? Why would you need to remove your mask?

Was your buddy close enough you could grab him? Some divers may not like being touched, but if I need to get someone's attention and they are not looking or responding to me, I grab their bicep.

I wouldn't necessarily call your incident task loading. I'd call it a little inexperience mixed with unfamiliarity with new gear on an advanced dive. Diving a new computer at night for your first night dive increases the chance for something like this to happen.

I would have let go of the inflator temporarily and tried to see what the computer was telling me rather than just accept an uncontrolled ascent. Staying calm is important. If you start breathing rapidly or heavily the air in your lungs is going to start sending you up.

I'm glad to hear you are uninjured, but I think you should consider buying your own computer. I think it should be a wrist computer and one that meets all of your needs. Btw, most SPG's and analog depth gauges I've seen will illuminate when hit with a light.

 

[cliffoco]

Were you shining your light at your hand signals? I dive a lot of 0 vis dives and the shining at our signal Is standard procedure. Or were your buddies ignoreing your signals.

 

[CuzzA]

Were you shining your light at your hand signals? I dive a lot of 0 vis dives and the shining at our signal Is standard procedure. Or were your buddies ignoreing your signals.

Good point. Communication is a large part of a night diving course. At least it was when I did the night dive during AOW.

 

[Javik]

I have never tried pulling a hood over the mask strap before. I have an attached Scubapro snorkel which may get in the way of the hood, but I will see how it goes.

 

[Patoux01]

Couple of thoughts:

I dive the zoop. It's okay in clear water, but an utter piece of crap when it comes to night diving. There's no backlight, only "phosphorescent" on the zoop (zoop novo has a backlight however, but I'm not sure how it works, if it's permanently on, if it needs a button push or whatever). The trick is to place your torch against the computer every now and then, usually every ~5minutes so that you are able to always have some of that phosphorescent thingy working, allowing you to read it. Also having it on your wrist makes it much easier to read (as you might have noticed now).

Communication in night diving goes 2 ways:
- You use the torch to signal (circles, fast back-and-forth movement for "problem", etc)
- You use the torch to light up your hand signal. It may help to not have black gloves signing in front of a black suit btw.

You can (and quite some people do, as it has a few benefits) put the hood above the mask.

You can also estimate your ascent rate with floaty particles, bubbles, ears, etc. This is fairly tricky to do however in my opinion. An easier way of controlling an ascent speed is to shoot up the smb, once you're used to reeling in you'll be able to control your speed like that.


I'm not sure if I read it correctly, but I would not want one light per hand, for various reasons:
- If they're both on, blinding your buddy when handing your reg is not cool
- If they're both on, Sending light signals (see above) when fiddling with your gear is not cool
- either way, it makes your hand much less usable. When I have to work on fishing line (quite frequently as most of my dives are cleanup dives), my torch on goodman handle usually gets caught in it, I would not want to have 2 of these as it would be a mess.

 

[CuzzA]

I have never tried pulling a hood over the mask strap before. I have an attached Scubapro snorkel which may get in the way of the hood, but I will see how it goes.

While from personal experience I think a snorkel is important in the ocean and probably Great Lakes, I don't see it having much utility in a quarry or spring. I'd lose the snorkel for that kind of diving environment. I also use a simple rubber figure 8 snorkel keeper. It makes it very easy to remove the snorkel if need be, like this scenario or line entanglement. Just pull down on the snorkel and it's clear. Stuff it in your waist belt.

 

[AJ]

Well, as I see it you have learned valuabble lessons and learned al lot from this incident that luckily ended without casualties. Some questions/advices:
1. Did your buddys know you were inexperienced with night diving? If so, they should have paid more attention. Tell them what you expect of them.
2. Diving in a group is always a risk for inexperienced divers. The task load is greater for everyone. Night diving adds to this task load.
3. Know your equipment before venturing in to new territory. Being familiar with your equipment gives more sense of control.
4. Computer on your right wrist makes ascending a lot easier. You can control your buoancy with left, while checking ascend rate and using your torch with right.

Consider this a learning lesson, I did after being in the same situation

 

[Diver0001]

Well...

I'll try not to make this too long.

First of all, you appear to have skipped the buddy check. The hood would have shown up then, so the big take home message to yourself in all of this is that the buddy check isn't a "nice to have". My personal philosophy is to avoid problems instead of fixing them. By skipping the buddy check you put yourself into a situation of having to fix a problem and as you see the the problems can start to multiply.

Secondly, when you did get into "fix the problem" mode you were doing all of the right things. You signaled to your buddy that you had a problem and wanted to ascend and for the most part were working on a solution in task steps even if you were getting a bit stressed about it. That all sounds good to me. I would be curious to know if your buddy didn't respond because he/she didn't see what you were signing or if they didn't respond because for some other reason. With a light on your hand, when you're signing the light is bright and it may have made the sign hard to read.

What I generally do with signing in the dark is to sign with one hand and shine the light on that hand with the other hand. That way the light is held still and the hand making the sign is illuminated. In your case you had a backup light on the other hand so both hands had lights on them. What I would do with that is to leave the backup light turned off until you need it. When I have my backup light turned on during a dive I usually hang it from a clip so it's shining on the bottom below me. That makes me easier to see from behind for my buddy and the light isn't in the way for anything. Any way you do it, I would recommend only one light in the hand at a time.

As for reading the computer, you don't need a back-light and you don't need to "charge" the glow. Just shine the light at the computer and read the computer with the light shining on it. A light has a "hot spot" in the middle that is very bright so don't shine the hot spot at the computer; shine the aura outside of the hot spot (the edge of the beam) at the computer. Also don't shine it straight down because it will reflect the light back. Shine at the computer at an acute angle. I don't know if the zoop has a back-light. My computer does and the only time I use it is when I'm changing gasses and I need my light hand to push the buttons. If you do "point a light to make it glow" then don't look at it while you're doing that.

As for judging your ascent speed, it's not clear to me if you were able to ascend along the slope of the bottom or not but that's obviously the easiest way. In a similar situation where you are making a free ascent at night then look at the small bubbles in the water around you and keep your ascent speed slightly slower than the smallest bubbles you can see. Also, if you are ascending slowly you can stop your ascent as you go and check your depth. As you noticed, you have more tasks because it's dark but if you chain the tasks and work them off one at at time then your buoyancy control will remain stable.

So for example, if you are ascending, your task chain might look like this:

- sign to buddy
- get vertical for the ascent, check depth
- take inflator in hand, swim up a bit
- look at bubbles.
- vent inflator, check bubbles
- swim a bit, check bubbles
- stop and check depth
- resume ascending

etc etc. As you can see I'm chaining buoyancy related tasks into every other step because if your buoyancy control is good, then everything else you do after that is going to be easier. Just slow it down and do one thing at a time.

hope that helps.

R..

 

[RyanT]

Let's put a positive spin on this...You learned a lot from this dive! As you discovered, small problems can compound quickly. Although you didn't handle the problems well, you did handle them and prevented an accident. I always enjoy reflecting on problems that occurred during a dive, and developing solutions to fix them, because it makes me a better diver.

You've gotten some good feedback here already. Just to reiterate a couple of Diver0001's points, good communication, equipment familiarity, and buddy checks are essential. By good communication, I mean both in and out of the water. You and your buddy should always be on the same page at the start of the dive regarding: skill levels, expectations, and how you will communicate underwater. It sounds like you were pretty much left behind on the dive. It's unclear whether this was due to poor planning, a terrible buddy, or because the buddy just couldn't see your signs. You might not be able to fix a bad buddy, but any of the other problems could have been fixed with good predive communication.

My other suggestion is lose the snorkel. Some folks may disagree with me, but I think they are completely useless. As you discovered, on your mask they just get in the way. Without a snorkel, you could have just pulled your hood up over your mask strap and voila, problem solved! Likewise, I've never used one on the surface while diving. On the occasions I've needed to make a long surface swim, I just flip over on my back and swim with my face out of the water. This is a comfortable position even in big waves; you just have to look over your shoulder periodically.