Lessons Most frightening moments

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.

-------
First
-------
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.

-----------
Second
-----------
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.

-----------
Third
-----------
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.

 

[Fibonacci]

It's not about sharks per se. It's about not seeing what's there in general.

Fair enough... but you could hear a pin drop at the Thomas Peschak presentation when he answered the question about how he attracted the sharks in for his award-winning night images. A single bright white light attracted a multitude of curious sharks...
I imagined all those divers with a thought bubble to buy red filters for their UW lights asap!

 

[Mrs. B]

It's not about sharks per se. It's about not seeing what's there in general.

Dusk is good because you can see more than you would think and the most surprising thing is the reef comes alive and starts making noises!
I can’t remembwr what it is, maybe corals opening? It’s like popcorn popping

 

[Mrs. B]

Fair enough... but you could hear a pin drop at the Thomas Peschak presentation when he answered the question about how he attracted the sharks in for his award-winning night images. A single bright white light attracted a multitude of curious sharks...
I imagined all those divers with a thought bubble to buy red filters for their UW lights asap!

We had car headlights on batteries for the manta dives and I never saw any sharks fwiw. The best time to see Tigers is about 5 or 6 in the morning.

 

[Preach]

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

An hour is a long way out in a stress situation.
It's good to read about experiences like this, it makes people think about the procedures they have learned and why to always use them.
Thank you for sharing.

 

[KevinNM]

It's not about sharks per se. It's about not seeing what's there in general.

The shops in Kona do night dives a few miles off the coast, in 10,000 feet of water. You see all sorts of cool stuff, mostly very small, coming to the surface at night from the depths. I never saw this but apparently occasional a dolphin with cruise by. It’s also apparently terrifying, as they come out of nowhere moving like a bat out of hell. They know exactly where the divers are, but the divers don’t expect him.

 

[KatieMac]

The shops in Kona do night dives a few miles off the coast, in 10,000 feet of water. You see all sorts of cool stuff, mostly very small, coming to the surface at night from the depths. I never saw this but apparently occasional a dolphin with cruise by. It’s also apparently terrifying, as they come out of nowhere moving like a bat out of hell. They know exactly where the divers are, but the divers don’t expect him.

See ... terrifying! I like seeing what's around me.

 

[Clayton122]

So I dont have a ton of dives under my belt. I am rapidly closing in on 50 though. I am only AOW certified up to this point.

My local dive shop that I dive through organized a trip to Bonne Terre mines. They have had many trips here, but this was my first.

For those who have never dove there, they have a very strict "trail" system. You cannot dive the trails out of sequence. for example, you cannot dive trail 5 until you do trail 1,2,3 and 4. You cannot dive trail 2 until you have done 1. So on and so forth.

When I took this trip, I was only around 20 dives or so. It was explained by the DM that these dives would all be "open" water, with no obstructions, and only a few minor swim throughs. No big deal. So we do dive 1 on trail 1. It was exactly as advertised, and a wonderful dive.

So we exit for our SI, and the DM comes over to explain that the other dive group reported that trail 2 was totally silted out, and not divable ( the area had received massive rains in the previous couple days )

The DM goes on to explain he wants to take us down a trail mixed with parts of trails 3-5. At the start of this briefing, he explains that we will have to swim down an obstructed stairwell ( remember this is an underground mine ) and then through a "small swimthrough" that will exit into new cave section. We all gave our consent for this without really understanding what we were agreeing to.

The swim down the stairs was much longer and far more laborious than the DM led us to believe. The stairwell was narrow, and long. We were trying to cram 10 divers down this narrow stairwell. And the small swim through was not so small. it was a pretty long hallway. So we are about 15 minutes into this dive, and a lot of us have already huffed a good chunk of air just getting down these stairs, and im starting to panic a little bit at this point. Because we are just now getting into the long "small swim through. I am thinking to myself at this point, that I am most certainly NOT qualified to be here. But the end of the tunnel is in sight, and Ill soon be out of obstruction.

So we get to the end of the "short swim through" and it opens into new cave. Which, of course, is also entirely obstructed overhead with no way out.

At this point, I start to hyperventilate. And not just small shallow uncontrolled breaths, but massive intakes of air. And I am NOT getting enough air out of my reg at all. So I start to panic even more. Then, just for a small brief moment that I almost pulled my reg out of my mouth.

As soon as I had that thought, I was almost certain I was going to drown. And no one in my group has noticed this yet. I can feel myself getting light headed, and heading to the blackout point from hyperventaliting. A death sentence as far as I can see.

Through sheer force of will, I forced my body to just stop moving, I closed my eyes, and just sat inert in the water for a minute or so while others explored the cave. I spent the time focusing on my breathing to calm it down. I spent some time remembering my training, and understood that I can trust my equipment and the redundancy built in to it.

Once I was able to get my breathing under control, the rest of the dive was incredibly cool. In fact one of the coolest dives I have ever had. It was also all almost entirely obstructed overhead. I shouldnt have been there, nor should most of my group. We simply didnt have the training nor equipment for this dive. I made it out and to the surface with 200 PSI left. No one was over 500.

 

[Rollin Bonz]

So I dont have a ton of dives under my belt. I am rapidly closing in on 50 though. I am only AOW certified up to this point.

My local dive shop that I dive through organized a trip to Bonne Terre mines. They have had many trips here, but this was my first.

For those who have never dove there, they have a very strict "trail" system. You cannot dive the trails out of sequence. for example, you cannot dive trail 5 until you do trail 1,2,3 and 4. You cannot dive trail 2 until you have done 1. So on and so forth.

When I took this trip, I was only around 20 dives or so. It was explained by the DM that these dives would all be "open" water, with no obstructions, and only a few minor swim throughs. No big deal. So we do dive 1 on trail 1. It was exactly as advertised, and a wonderful dive.

So we exit for our SI, and the DM comes over to explain that the other dive group reported that trail 2 was totally silted out, and not divable ( the area had received massive rains in the previous couple days )

The DM goes on to explain he wants to take us down a trail mixed with parts of trails 3-5. At the start of this briefing, he explains that we will have to swim down an obstructed stairwell ( remember this is an underground mine ) and then through a "small swimthrough" that will exit into new cave section. We all gave our consent for this without really understanding what we were agreeing to.

The swim down the stairs was much longer and far more laborious than the DM led us to believe. The stairwell was narrow, and long. We were trying to cram 10 divers down this narrow stairwell. And the small swim through was not so small. it was a pretty long hallway. So we are about 15 minutes into this dive, and a lot of us have already huffed a good chunk of air just getting down these stairs, and im starting to panic a little bit at this point. Because we are just now getting into the long "small swim through. I am thinking to myself at this point, that I am most certainly NOT qualified to be here. But the end of the tunnel is in sight, and Ill soon be out of obstruction.

So we get to the end of the "short swim through" and it opens into new cave. Which, of course, is also entirely obstructed overhead with no way out.

At this point, I start to hyperventilate. And not just small shallow uncontrolled breaths, but massive intakes of air. And I am NOT getting enough air out of my reg at all. So I start to panic even more. Then, just for a small brief moment that I almost pulled my reg out of my mouth.

As soon as I had that thought, I was almost certain I was going to drown. And no one in my group has noticed this yet. I can feel myself getting light headed, and heading to the blackout point from hyperventaliting. A death sentence as far as I can see.

Through sheer force of will, I forced my body to just stop moving, I closed my eyes, and just sat inert in the water for a minute or so while others explored the cave. I spent the time focusing on my breathing to calm it down. I spent some time remembering my training, and understood that I can trust my equipment and the redundancy built in to it.

Once I was able to get my breathing under control, the rest of the dive was incredibly cool. In fact one of the coolest dives I have ever had. It was also all almost entirely obstructed overhead. I shouldnt have been there, nor should most of my group. We simply didnt have the training nor equipment for this dive. I made it out and to the surface with 200 PSI left. No one was over 500.

I've been eyeing Bonne Terre for a trip. This is NOT the type of diving one is led to expect by perusing their web site, and seems completely inappropriate for divers not cave trained (ME!). Anyone know if this is "typical" there? Surely not...

 

[Clayton122]

I've been eyeing Bonne Terre for a trip. This is NOT the type of diving one is led to expect by perusing their web site, and seems completely inappropriate for divers not cave trained (ME!). Anyone know if this is "typical" there? Surely not...

I will say this is NOT typical of their usual care. I believe the only reason they allowed this was due to their very positive history with my dive shop from previous trips. We also ALL agreed to this dive. It just wasnt explained very well what we were getting into.

All in all, I was very impressed with the Bonne Terre mines and the saftey they go through. I didnt make this post to defame them in any way. It was just one of those wierd circumstances. I would also add, that while being the scariest of the two dives, and my hyper ventilation issue, dive 2 was WAY WAY cooler than dive 1.

Also odds are that you wouldnt be in a situation where the trails were silted out. This is apparently very rare. But they had received almost 2 feet of water over the week previous.

I would certainly go back and dive with them again. So again. Please do not take my post as a defamation of Bonne Terre. This was a one off situation.

 

[NAUI Wowie]

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.

-------
First
-------
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.

-----------
Second
-----------
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.

-----------
Third
-----------
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.

R..

Wow, eventually a good many of us will have to take the rescue class as part of further certifications. I think I speak for everyone here in saying I want YOU to be the one to teach that class to me. I would think many take that class and ho hum oh it was hard or it was a pain or I just did it to become a master diver or dive master.
Your knowledge would make it evident why all divers should have rescue knowledge. You never know who will be in those situations and they should know the reasons for what they are doing.

You have alot of real experience that can help others.