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.

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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.

 

[Graeme Fraser]

Most frightening moment?

When my wife found the receipt for my latest dive computer!

 

[Storker]

People should understand the maths. The jaywalking example is good for that. Understanding the incident maths IS basic diving. It drives buddy checks, having a buddy and a load of basic technique.

While I agree with you, I also agree with @chillyinCanada that in this particular case, the generalization of the jaywalking example wasn't there and it wasn't obvious that the general principle applied to any safety-related question (including diving practices).

But it's an easy trap to fall into. "60% of diving fatality victims did a proper buddy check, so buddy checks don't promote safety". Sounds convincing, no? Until you learn that 80% of all divers do a proper buddy check. So, if buddy checks didn't improve safety, 80% of the victims would have done a proper buddy check (all numbers pulled out of my posterior, just as an illustration. I have no idea what the real numbers are).

It's like testing for cancer, coronavirus, or any other sickness. Let's say the test is 98% accurate (1% false positives, 1% false negatives). The true incidence rate is 1%, and we test 10000 persons. So out of 100 sick persons, 99 test positive and 1 tests negative. Out of 9900 healthy persons, 99 test positive and 9801 test negative. If you test positive, there's a 50/50 chance that the test is wrong. If you test negative, there's a whopping 0.01% chance that the test is wrong.

Dependent probabilities. It isn't obvious, and you have to do the math.

 

[WeRtheOcean]

So many stories here. I don't usually read so many pages of one post, but these are good. I will tell my story, but only after responding to these few choice quotes.

The shop, however, wants to sell rescue courses, which is not the same as teaching people how to execute a rescue.

And it seems to be the way everything in life is going, and everyone except those in the particular business can easily see how much of a problem it is. But what do I know? I'm old enough to remember when the whole point of paying for cable TV was not to have to see the commercials on broadcast TV. Now, it seems, everybody is selling something -- and the commercials on the TV service you already pay for are fully one-quarter of air time.

just unfortunate that you had a situation like that arise.

Or, maybe fortunate. As a wise mountaineer once noted: "Good decisions come from experience. Unfortunately, experience comes from bad decisions." We all need the occasional small but scary mishap so that we can hopefully learn to avoid that big, deadly mishap.

Everything I get out of training is bottom line is you are your own keeper, that and your buddy to a certain extent, the dive master ain't gonna feed your family when you're gone.... I see accidents, deadly ones, where the diver was waiting on a guide to tell him what to do - I will always dive another day, I don't care how far I've traveled or who the dive master is, I'm learning to always be equipped for myself and one other.

At what point did people stop learning self-reliance, I wonder? I was a Boy Scout. My Boy Scout Handbook and Fieldbook were both full of valuable self-reliance knowledge, including how to conduct safe rescues. I never imagined that the world would turn out to be a place where such knowledge is rare.

Anyway, now my story:

I was at Playa Caletón, Dominican Republic. I had seen ads for boat tours to the Cave of the Swallows, and I wondered if I could get there on my own. First I tried by land, but eventually came up against a chain link fence. No access. So, back to Playa Caletón, put on my snorkel gear, and see if I can get there by water. Problem: fins didn't fit in my luggage, so I didn't have them with me. I swam out from the beach and around the first headland. There was a lot of cool marine life along the submerged part of the cliff -- urchins, bluehead wrasses, and many more. There was also stronger current and wave action than I anticipated, and avoiding being dashed against the cliff took a lot of effort, equivalent to running. As I began to feel fatigued, I looked frantically for any ledge or small stretch of sand where I could catch my breath, but there were none -- just a solid wall of fossilized coral stretching out beyond the next headland. Obviously not safe with the wave action. I ditched any plan to try to reach the Cave of the Swallows, since 1) I didn't actually know how much further it was, and 2) my strength would not hold out much longer. I really had to push myself to keep swimming long enough to get back to Playa Caletón, and the huffing and puffing that comes with that kind of exertion was starting to make my head hurt. I was worried whether I could make it, but I did.

First lesson learned is: fins do matter.
Second lesson: assess the current and wave conditions while still in easy reach of the beach, before going around the headland.
Third lesson: do not assume that there will be a sandy resting spot in every cove. I had been counting on those, knowing that it was further than I could swim at one go.

Snorkeling does not carry the risks of nitrogen narcosis or the bends, or going OOA, but it, too, has its dangers for the unwary or the foolish.

 

[WeRtheOcean]

People that teach themselves to dive (cultures like Hawaii) the divers rely more on fitness and swimming ability and knowledge about local conditions.

That can refer back to my above comment, about the Boy Scouts. I remember the illustration in one of the two books I referenced: a line of Boy Scouts, belly crawling while holding each other's ankles in a human chain, to rescue a victim who fell through the ice. Now, remember, Boy Scouts are KIDS! Kids can learn this stuff!

 

[Manatee Diver]

I suppose that I can tell my scariest moment now, as I think the statue of limitations passed.

First weekend with my cave new instructor after my cave first instructor passed. Back before COVID. We did an out of air drill, I was out of air, after the drill ended I handed back the reg, and for some reason I screwed around during my switch to the point that I needed air before I fully cleared the reg. So I sucked enough water that panic set in. So back 400 feet or so in the cave, I had to resist the urge to panic while holding on to my reg while I coughed out the water.

I wasn't "OMG I am going to die" but it was damn close, and all I could signal was ok and hold on a moment (which I tried to convey with one finger).

 

[RayfromTX]

I suppose that I can tell my scariest moment now, as I think the statue of limitations passed.

First weekend with my cave new instructor after my cave first instructor passed. Back before COVID. We did an out of air drill, I was out of air, after the drill ended I handed back the reg, and for some reason I screwed around during my switch to the point that I needed air before I fully cleared the reg. So I sucked enough water that panic set in. So back 400 feet or so in the cave, I had to resist the urge to panic while holding on to my reg while I coughed out the water.

I wasn't "OMG I am going to die" but it was damn close, and all I could signal was ok and hold on a moment (which I tried to convey with one finger).

We do a good job of cheating nature so we can have our fun, but we really are never that far from being air breathing critters with water where it shouldn't be. Kudos for sharing your story.

 

[VikingDives]

Most of my scary moments weren't to do with me, but students. As a DM, I was working with an instructor, another DM and 10 or 12 open water students. We'd split the class into halves of 5 or 6 for dives 1-3. This instructor was an "I'll overweight you and get it done" type. It wasn't unusual to chase students to the surface or to depth on any given dive, because they were over-weighted.

On this particular weekend, there were probably a hundred divers in the water (for those of you who dive Blue Hole in Santa Rosa... I've never seen more before or since). The normal excellent vis has been mucked up to the point were we could see 10 feet/3 meters. The instructor informs us that he want to take both groups in for dive 4. I don't remember if we protested the risk to him, we may not have because he never took DM feedback on anything. He was always right.

We hit the water and descend. I was at the back of the group and could only see ~3 students of ours. Students with marginal buoyancy control to begin with... I chased a couple and looked around to see that one of the students I'd been watching wasn't there anymore. I couldn't signal anyone else, and as I was trying to figure out the count, we came to a stop at the platform. The instructor signals to me that we're missing one student and I began to search. As I did, I looked at my spg and realized I had ~500 PSI. My air consumption is pretty good, so I knew I could hit the bottom, do a quick search as I spiraled up and hit the surface without running out of gas, but I'd probably be damn near there.

I descended and began a circular ascent trying to find our student keeping a firm eye on my spg. When I got to the surface, I found her, clinging to a buoy. My friend's wife (an ow diver) told me later she'd been there for about 10 minutes.

There's a lot of take-aways from that dive for me. All of them helped me not do those things when I started teaching.

My second one was as an AI, just before I went to my IE. I was teaching an OW class in the pool (my first "real" class). As most instructors will know, the first few classes are more stressful on the instructor... I'm trying to figure out what I'm doing, how to do it, and give a good class. To top it off, my instructor was having ear issues and was supervising from the surface.

I started to do a demo of out of air with one of the DMs, taking my time blowing bubbles etc. By the time I got to putting her reg in my mouth, I was out of breath. I tried to hit the purge button, nothing. Tried again, nothing. By this time, my brain is saying, "it's really time to inhale, what are you doing?" So I just take a wet breath without exhaling/purging, and to say it was like breathing through a straw would be excessive. There was almost no air coming out at all. It was force of will that allowed me to get a breath from that reg. and finish the demo.

I later found out that the DMs significant other had adjusted the reg. so that it "would stop free flowing." It was a Mares octo, so the purge button wasn't centered on the reg, it was on the side.

Takeaways: I should have known my buddies equipment. Don't let your boyfriend service your regs. You can always restart a demo, I was so fixated on finishing that switching back to my own air didn't ever cross my mind. Don't get task overloaded or target fixated.

The last one was DM'ing a deep dive. We started an ascent and I had about 800 PSI, at about 60 feet, I got a pretty painful reverse block, everyone else was at their safety stop, so I was alone in the water. It took me a long time to make it to the surface, and at about 50 feet I was starting to do calculations to see if I had enough gas to make it to the stage bottle I'd left at 15 feet, or if I'd have to do an ascent/emergency ascent and deal with the results.

Takeaways: Pony bottles are your friend as a diver/DM. You can solve any problem with enough gas.

 

[Jay Adams]

We were ending a dive and my buddy had turned and headed for shore, I got wrapped up in my dive flag, the easiest place to untangle myself was on the bottom , I was in 30 ft. I took off my bcd to unwrap the line and pushed the regulator right out of my mouth on an exhale. I remembered my training and found the top of my first stage, from there I just followed the top hose. pushed the purge button on the reg and inhaled a litttle water and air. I was never so frightened.

 

[jejton]

Scariest moments thus far (short diving career so plenty of time to develop more) - when I had to take a dump (as in a bowel movement) while diving. Wetsuit or no wetsuit, simply not happening unless I am solo and far away from any human eyes. Second, a couple years back, when my wife found out I had occasionally been diving with a dive buddy whom she does not personally know, and happens to be a single female. My wife is not a diver and has zero interaction with my dive world. WHoops! Thats what I get for not changing my phone passcode.

 

[CT-Rich]

Scariest moments thus far (short diving career so plenty of time to develop more) - when I had to take a dump (as in a bowel movement) while diving. Wetsuit or no wetsuit, simply not happening unless I am solo and far away from any human eyes. Second, a couple years back, when my wife found out I had occasionally been diving with a dive buddy whom she does not personally know, and happens to be a single female. My wife is not a diver and has zero interaction with my dive world. WHoops! Thats what I get for not changing my phone passcode.

That is called a Warhammer maneuver. The poop, not the side piece.