Lessons Most frightening moments

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After seeing how the post I wrote about the reverse block resonated with people, I would like to make another post today, namely about the most frightening moments I've ever had.

It's easy, particularly for novice divers, to think that people like myself, with decades of experience, thousands of dives and a deck of c-cards have everything under control and nothing bad ever happens.

I wrote about the reverse block because of that. I wanted to show that I am still human and I can still make mistakes. On the internet there is a strong tendency for (technical) divers and instructors with a lot of experience to project an image of themselves as always solving problems correctly, always making the best decisions, and in the case of instructors in particular, having a monopoly on good ideas that lead to perfect students diving perfectly.

None of that, of course, reflects reality at all.

So I will start. I urge experienced divers to share their own stories.

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First
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1985. I was certified as AOW and we were making a deep dive along a wall. The bottom, for all intents and purposes, at the bottom of the wall was unsurvivable. A diver who diving with a group slightly ahead of us got caught in a large ball of discarded fishing line that he didn't see. He started sinking. The incident started at 42 meters. My buddy and I had just started our dive and we saw this happening. Nobody in his group did. We went after him. This was the first time I had dived deeper than 42 meters. I couldn't tell how deep we were when we caught him because the (analogue) depth gauge I was using was pinned at its maximum depth. This was also my first deco dive or at least my first dive where I was "off the tables" and unable to to know how to ascend. I was, at that time, unaware of oxygen toxicity, gas management and ascent protocols. We returned (at a rapid pace) to 30ft. (10m) and waited there until our tanks were empty on the assumption that any damage done by our deep incursion would be fixed by that. Upon surfacing we didn't know if we were going to get the bends or not. I was, frankly, scared. It still gives me the heebiejeebies to think about this incident more than 30 years later. We did something there that was completely out of control (also the rescue) and we got off easy.

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Second
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2002, I think. I was working as a DM. We temporarily lost a diver during a dive. The situation was that we were on a platform at 25m and doing some exercises for the AOW (deep) dive. A group of divers (maybe 6) descending LANDED on us and kicked up so much silt in their attempts to slow down before impacting the bottom that the visibility went from 5m to black-out in a matter of seconds. I grabbed the two divers right in front of me and dragged them out of the silt cloud. One of them turned out to be our diver and the other one turned out to be one of the idiots who landed on us. We were missing a diver. We surfaced. Naturally our divers were told to surface if they became separated but this diver did not. He remained where he was and waited to be rescued. On the surface we decided that I would search for the missing diver because I had the most experience of everyone (including the instructor). At that point I was a DM but I was already technically trained. I had very limited time. I went back down and eventually found him but it was luck. He survived and my beard got grayer overnight. If I couldn't have found him in the next 5 min his death would have been on my conscience until I died. This was so frightening to me that I nearly abandoned all plans I had to become an instructor.

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Third
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The accident. My team saved the life of a diver who ran out of air during an AOW training dive (by another group, not mine) and was left for dead on the bottom at 18m. We acted quickly and professionally and got him into the hands of paramedics within about 10 min. As an aside, the fact that the Dutch paramedics were able to be on scene so quickly was no small part of this! He looked dead when we retrieved him. He lay in coma for several weeks after the incident. Doctors had basically written him off when -- unexpectedly to all -- he woke up and subsequently made a reasonable (albeit not full) recovery.

The impact on myself and on the members of my team was substantial, particularly because of what we viewed as our 'mistakes'. One diver (the DM) stopped diving. He started hyperventilating during the descent to find the "body" and after that he started to hyperventilate on EVERY dive. He stopped diving.

To me it changed EVERYTHING about how I view training and my role as an instructor. I didn't organize things on the surface as well as I could have, if I had had a second run at it. Yes, I had the EMS on site in 10 min. Police, paramedics, trauma doctor, helicopter, fire department with a boat, a private boat.... all of that I had..... but I was overwhelmed and not communicating as well as I could.

Someone tried to chase my (uncertified) OW students into the water to go search. He didn't know that they were uncertified and I ripped him a new one in a way that I regret, giving in to the emotion. An NOB (CMAS) instructor showed me by example how to control the dive site in a way I had never learned, I missed seeing a diver (the DM who caused the accident) displaying passive panic. It only became apparent to me when they had to take him away by ambulance when he collapsed.... it was MUCH more messy scene than I had ever imagined and I was not in control as well as I would expect from myself. At one point, once the EMS had control of the surface situation I grabbed another diver (a DM) and went searching myself. This was a mistake. I can't get over the mind set that drove me to ACT when I SHOULD have been coordinating! I'm like the guy who charges into a burning building because I can't fight the urge to DO SOMETHING! I HATE that about myself.

Since that time (it's been years) I've been replaying that event in my mind and thinking, "if I had only done XXXX then YYYY". It drives me CRAZY to think that if we were sharper we could have found him 30 seconds or a minute earlier and his recovery could have been better. The fact that he survived is utterly astounding. These things never end like that.... but I feel responsible for the fact that it took so long.

This was a formative moment in my diving. I considered stopping as well but eventually decided not not to. To this day I cannot -- and will not -- teach or participate in the Rescue course, even though I may be the one instructor in my circle who is most qualified to talk about the differences between theory and practice. It's just too intimidating.
 
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@bowlofpetunias

I’m so sorry to hear about that dive. However, if a close family member had stopped diving with her and even thought she would go that way, not much you could have done about it. If not with you, it would have happened with another diver from the sounds of it.

:(
 
This pales in comparison to the original post, but was nonetheless pretty nerve-wracking and a learning experience as a newer diver. I was diving Bonaire with my father, who was an instructor at the time but we were just on a fun family vacation, where he gifted me with a Galileo dive computer which I was thrilled about. I had been diving with the traditional gauge up to this point so this was really a luxury to me. It was probably our 5th day there, doing about 3-4 dives a day including the night dives, when I was in a hurry to get in the water and get down to a site everyone had been raving about. My father noticed, but I certainly did not until later, that I left my new dive computer in the box and ran off and jumped in the water with the rest of our dive trip crew to start descending.

My father is all about learning experiences so he didn't say anything, as he also knew how much air was in my tank and at about what rate I went through air, until we were well underway with the dive at which point he kept giving me the international sign of "how much air do you have". Well, my face when I looked down at my wrist was to him nothing short of "priceless", as he knew right then that I had learned to slow down and be careful about what I was doing. Luckily as I mentioned he knew about what my air was at and cut the dive short early as a precaution whereas I otherwise would have lost an entire dive to hastiness, but we did see some amazing things that day that I really would have kicked myself for missing out on.

It wasn't until many years later that I truly appreciated that he did that as I learned to slow down and take real care about getting ready to jump into the water. Being the first person in to descend means absolutely nothing and you should never even be in the water to begin with if you are not 100% ready. To this day I still check my equipment at least 3 times, it has become a nervous habit before a dive to me spawning from that experience.
 
I'll add my scariest self inflicted moment. (buddies and others in the water gave me a different kind of scare occasionally)

A few words of synopsis: Inadequate planning, lack of training, unexpected conditions and poor decisions making all added up to a bad situation I placed myself in. In hind sight: pivotal moment in my diving where I began dedicating funds to quality specialized instruction. It was when I realized being comfortable underwater and having good mentors in one environment doesn't translate to safely diving in unfamiliar situations. Being experienced underwater doesn't mean trained for all conditions.

First off, it's years ago and my worst experience in untrained cave diving.

Discovered an unlined passage of a cave, belly bottles / slung tanks tight passage. Had a ball of string with me. Laid it until I ran out of line. Decided to continue exploring a passage a little further. No obvious side chambers or forks.

Or so I thought.

I reach my 1/2 and turn the dive heading back out. To my horror I didn't realize the ceiling was heavily silting as result of my bubbles (and probably sloppy finning) and I was in less than 1ft viz. (Couldn't see my hand at 1/2 arms length.) No line. I'm now feeling my way along the wall by memory. Expecting a turn in the passage.

Not feeling it.

I continue to a dead end. Now retrace in 0 viz. Find the passage which was lower than I remembered. Viz improves. Enough particulate in the water to reassure me I'm retracing my path. Narrow section. Tanks off, continue to wiggle.

Jammed. Wedged in a restriction that I didn't remember being so tight. Continue. Stuck worse. Realize I've jammed myself into a dead end. Back out eventually.

Air a concern.

Discover another narrow passage. Looks familiar. Wiggle through. Back on track. Continue to my line.

Pull my line as I go. Bad co2 headache from forced conservative breathing expecting to run out of air before the exit. (dead calm and iron will counting to maintain a slow full breathing pattern that stretches each breath)

Exit uneventfully, continued swimming subsurface in open water. 14 breaths later the reg breathed heavy and I was out of air. Marveled at why I bothered to waste time removing the line as I went.

I hope the take away lessons learned are obvious. Any questions welcome. I realize I was nearly a statistic.

Humbly,
Cameron


That's an extreme story..... I hope i never have to encounter something like this while cave diving o_O.
It's nice how you kept your cool in such a bad situation.

How far/long where you removed from the entrance before calling the dive?
 
That's an extreme story..... I hope i never have to encounter something like this while cave diving o_O.
It's nice how you kept your cool in such a bad situation.

How far/long where you removed from the entrance before calling the dive?

Thankfully, given you are trained and follow your training you never will face that situation. It was ignorance and poor judgement on my part that put me in the situation.

Keeping my relative calm is about the only commendable part of the misadventure. Certain I'd be dead without it though.

Had around 150cf3 of gas along with me. Half was roughly an hour, not all linear, I did a few side passages dead ends on the way in.

Cameron
 
I went in to some cave in Palau to see turtle skeletons (tomb of doom?) and my Halcyon inflator got stuck open so I disconnected it ok.
It did make me inflator shy in caves and I prefer to dive with it disconnected.

My scariest moment was once on a night dive in Hawaii I was doing a long safety stop in poor viz and current and something went by my mask that had 4” wide gill slits and I had that fear sensation that curses through your spinal cord and makes you want to wet your pants. I just focused on listening to my breath and I surfaced but the whole time I was waiting to be bit in half —I have a vivid imagination and when something happens I have trouble controlling my mind.

Another time I was leading a drift dive over by Sea Caves off Koko crater with these two bonehead Marines just back from Iraq. The swell was pretty big and the boat couldn’t find us but we could barely see him on the swell. After about 40 minutes I started freaking out and telling them to get the SMB higher and they just laughed and laughed like idiots. I told them this was a “very serious situation” and they were being jerks but they just continued to act like this idiots and finally the boat found us about an hour later. I have never hated two “men” so much in my life. And now I am married to one of them and he still mocks me all the time. I really am convinced that he would be dead if it were not for me. I took him to Palau when he had about five dives and he was a terrible buddy and air hog. On the walls he would go down in every downdraft and I never thought I would see him again but miraculously he always made it back to the boat. He was the bravest WORST diver I had ever seen, totally oblivious and always running out of air and leaching off mine. I’m willing to fly with him because he has a lot of natural ability and I’ve never seen him choke but I have to watch things like the GAS CAP and that he remembers where the flaps are on take off.
 
This one time when I was diving, I farted in my wetsuit... I was freakin scared to death that everyone on the dive would hear or smell it, but luckily a huge moray eel got blamed. Good thing it was a dry fart. :)
 
My scariest moment was once on a night dive in Hawaii I was doing a long safety stop in poor viz and current and something went by my mask that had 4” wide gill slits and I had that fear sensation that curses through your spinal cord and makes you want to wet your pants. I just focused on listening to my breath and I surfaced but the whole time I was waiting to be bit in half —I have a vivid imagination and when something happens I have trouble controlling my mind.

See that's why I don't night dive.
 

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