Imaginary uncontrolled ascent

[Lizard Leg]

I guess I am posting this to discuss the possibilities of diver panic from purely diver induced reasons.

Went to St. Andrews last weekend for my sons 18^th birthday to get some diving in. Nice, easy shore dive, max depth 73'. When we arrived the water looked like swamp water. let's just say it was bad. Since we had driven so long to get there, we decided to try it out and call the dive if anything seemed to dangerous.

Water at the surface where we descended was blood red. Descended down a few feet and hit a halocline that blurred everything down to nothing. Below that a dark mess that obscured almost all light. Not looking good. at about the 15-20' range we dropped underneath it and wow - great vis, although at 60' and deeper it was a night dive - almost zero light.

We're cruising around at 73', watching the wildlife and having a great dive. This was my first dive carrying a dive flag as well. A dive Rite Safety reel attached to the flag, carried in my left hand. Had some issues keeping my son out of the line, but we discussed that during the SI and he never even came close to it on the second dive.

Back to the main topic - we started ascending slowly up the rock wall and at about 60' or so I guess, the flag seemed to catch a big wave and started going up. Nothing new, I figured I'd go up a little and then the wave would pass. It didn't stop and I started trying to get the line slack taken in and then suddenly I realized I wasn't stopping and was still ascending - gaining speed the entire time.

I let the reel free spool, went head down and started kicking like crazy for the bottom. I dropped my light to hang on its lanyard and reached for my rear dump. In a head down position, the light hanging off of the lanyard kept getting in the way of the pull - I couldn't reach it. The halocline/dark layer must have been deeper because all of a sudden I went from dark to light and I *almost* went into panic mode. I'm in an uncontrolled ascent, coming up in a **heavily** traveled boat channel and I'm either going to get smacked by a boat or I'm going to pop a lung. Breath in, breath out - crap - still seems as if I am going faster than my bubbles. Finally got the rear dump and dumped all air and stopped my ascent at @ 25'. All of this seemingly took place in less than 10 seconds.

Looking back on it, and after looking at my dive profile downloaded from the computer, it appears I was never in any real danger other than my perception of the event. The combination of the dark/light cline and what appeared to be an extremely rapid ascent, coupled with trying not to get tangled in the line and losing sight of my dive buddies all led me to *believe* I was on the express elevator and was about to launch out of the water.

I sucked down @ 800PSI of air, I never stopped breathing or held my breath and even though I had practiced grabbing that rear dump a 100 times, when it mattered I couldn't grab it and it severely freaked me out. Luckily we had a long SI, I calmed down and I was back in the water to for two more dives that day and 1 the next. My computer barely even screamed at me, and according to it, what seemed liked 10 seconds was actually more than a minute.

I have talked with my dive buddies and the others in my group and other than not dropping the reel, it seems as if I handled it well - but I was shaking for 30 minutes after we surfaced. I beat myself up un-mercilessly about the incident and feel I definitely learned something from it. I actually feel pretty ridiculous for letting it get to me, after I saw the dive profile.

The descent down to 30' or so, and the see saw up/down for 5-10' was equalizing, then the slow descent along the wall.

---------- Post Merged at 11:16 AM ---------- Previous Post was at 11:14 AM ----------

 

[Crush]

I am glad that you are OK.

Your computer calculates ascent rates rapidly - usually in by-the-second or more frequently. However it likely logs values (such as your depth) in 10 to 30 second increments - this is user defined in some computers. It is possible that you were in an uncontrolled ascent and your computer didn't log it.

As you know, uncontrolled ascents are dangerous. You did the right thing. If you ever end up diving a drysuit then going inverted (fins up) may not be a good idea - it would be situation-dependent.

Personally I can "feel" ascent with my ears - I can sense the air in my ears and sinuses expanding. Also, pay attention to all the particulate matter in the water - it can help you gauge your direction of travel. Try to pay attention to these as they are easy ways to monitor your depth and changes therein.

 

[Lizard Leg]

My ears were screaming at me and "crackling" the entire time. I truly beleive the lack of light,a nd then busting into and out of the cline so fast, led me to think I was much, much closer to the surface than I actually was and seemingly on the express elevator.

Dive profile logs every 30 seconds.

 

[knotical]

What a wonderful experience! You learned, and you were unharmed.

 

[TSandM]

Well-told story, with some good talking points.

The first one that leaps out at me is that you learned something about the way you are configuring or using your gear. Having the light on a lanyard the way you were doing it has now been shown to be a problem in an urgent situation, so maybe another way of carrying or securing the light needs to be found. (BTW, I appreciate this heads-up, because when I use a backup light, I clip it to the bungie on my compass, and I wonder if I would have the same problem.) On the other hand, I would strongly suspect that you could have reached your inflator hose, even with the light, and rather than persist with the butt dump, perhaps switching approaches would have been a better choice? Of course, you would then have lost the ability to kick down. And one can kick rather powerfully down, or at least I have seen someone swim UP more than 20 lbs.

The second thing for me would be to revisit the wisdom of dropping the reel. One of the things DRUMMED into me in my cave classes was that safety trumps equipment every time. If you NEEDED the reel to make a safe exit from where you were, that was one thing, but if it was a convenience or being used solely for the sake of rules, dropping it to focus your attention on your real safety issue was entirely appropriate, in my book at least. Another option in some cases might be to hand it off to your teammate, but if you are rapidly ascending past that person, that probably wasn't possible. At any rate, safety trumps equipment, and I think you did right.

This is also a very good example of why one should never attach a reel or spool to one's BC (which, since you were able to drop it, you clearly had not done).

Another interesting point from your story was the issue of the light misleading you about your depth. If you think about it, on the way down, your eyes are trying to equilibrate with dropping light levels. It takes time to do that, as anyone who has walked into a dark room knows. Therefore, during your descent, it's likely that the light level at any given depth is going to appear darker than it actually is, since your pupils are not appropriately dilated. On the other hand, coming up, you are going from much darker conditions to lighter, and therefore your pupils are more dilated than they would eventually be if you stayed at a given depth. The result is that the light at 60 feet, say, on descent, is going to appear less than the light at the same depth will appear on the way up. Light levels are useful to tell you whether you are moving up or down, but are not useful to tell you what your actual depth IS. (Crud thickness can vary, too, and its density can differ, so different places in the dive site may have somewhat different light levels, too.)

The final good point from this story was the gas consumption. Breathing under stress is tremendously wasteful of gas, and this is one of the reasons I'm such a strong believer in the "rock bottom", or minimum gas concept of dive planning. When you've got tons of spare gas, an incident like yours is an inconvenience. Had you run out of gas as a result of blowing through 800 psi, you could have converted a scare to an accident. More gas is good!

Anyway, it sounds as though you learned some good things from the experience, and shared them, which is fantastic.

 

[Lizard Leg]

I really burned through gas on this dive, mainly because of that, but had some other reasons as well - SAC for this dive was 1.25 - ouch!

 

[offroadr1]

on that same dive i found i needed a tad more weight. when we ascended about 20' and headed back to our entry, i was fine. then i hit about 1200psi and started getting light. at some point i remember going up while furiously trying to dump from the bottom valve and not having anyluck, then twisting myself around to use the shoulder valve. thats about the time tecxx grabbed me and drug me back down.i had trouble with my dump valve and seem to have that corrected now. also added 4lbs for my next dive that went much smoother.

 

[Lizard Leg]

In hind sight - going back to a horizontal or head up orientation and using a shoulder dump would have been a good choice - but I felt at the time that I was sky rocketing, even though I was head down and kicking for all I was worth - the thought of going head up and surfacing in the channel kept me from trying.

---------- Post Merged at 02:12 PM ---------- Previous Post was at 02:11 PM ----------

I was wearing a 3mm XXL suit, and was diving a LP98 - and had 16 lbs of lead - I never would have thought I'd go up that fast!

 

[TSandM]

Have you weight-checked that setup? With a negative tank and your leg, I'm really surprised you need 16 lbs of lead. That's more than I use with an aluminum tank and a 5 mil suit. If you are overweighted, you'll have a larger volume of air in your BC, which means a lot of expansion if you begin to go up.

 

[Lizard Leg]

I was 100% overweighted - no ifs and or buts about it. I dive 10 lbs with an AL80 and no suit in salt. Figured with the suit, 16. Didn't factor in the LP98 and was too heavy by at least 4-6 lbs. Weight check seemed to go okay, but this was my first time in salt with a wetsuit. First time diving EVER outside of a pool with a wetsuit. I much prefer rash guard and trunks

I like my waters warm and tropical - we did a dive at Morrison Springs that night - water temp 69.8. 3mm suit and I never once got chilly, other than the initial "Holy Crap! That's cold" moment when I face rolled in.