Lessons Most frightening moments

Please register or login

Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.

Benefits of registering include

  • Ability to post and comment on topics and discussions.
  • A Free photo gallery to share your dive photos with the world.
  • You can make this box go away

Joining is quick and easy. Log in or Register now!

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.
 
Last edited:
I ascend to the surface, expecting him to be there. No diver, only a guy swimming towards to the tunnel.
What was the viz like and how deep were you when you lost him? It sounds almost like he was either trying to get away from you deliberately or you really didn't pay attention for a long time.
 
What was the viz like and how deep were you when you lost him? It sounds almost like he was either trying to get away from you deliberately or you really didn't pay attention for a long time.
I lost him at runtime 15.40 at ~14m. The dive profile shows the uncontrolled ascent. The incident description answers your questions.
 
I lost him at runtime 15.40 at ~14m. The dive profile shows the uncontrolled ascent. The incident description answers your questions.
I guess I'm not understanding the story. At 10m viz and you ascenting when you noticed he was gone... you should have seen him somewhere.

What I learned from this incident:
IMHO the lesson should be to never leave a student out of sight, especially on descent and ascent.
The 50 hours minimum and the telling the student it's a serious class is not going to prevent a situation like this in the future. Some people suck at 100 hours or more.

Before starting a cavern course, emphasise that you're not learning how to dive. You're learning procedures. You already know how to dive, you have excellent buoyancy control. Otherwise you have no business being in an overhead environment.
I disagree with this. A cavern class is still an entry level class. It's ok to teach the student basic technique... actually, IMHO, that very much should be part of the class. The expectation that every student who signs up for cavern should have 'exellent buoyancy' is not very realistic IMHO. Cavern diving in the Med is an overhead environment but barely.
 
It's hard not to cry here.....

His parents and loved ones called us "heroes". We met them and they were SO grateful..... so grateful.

Their son/husband/bother/cousin (etc) was still alive and after the accident his intelligence, personality and character were still fully intact. He *only* had some physical issues -- a reflex in his leg that was never there before.

I didn't feel like a hero. I felt like a failure.
Dude, let me tell you, I was scuba diving, minding my own business, checking out the coral and fish, you know, the usual. Then out of nowhere, I see this massive shadow creeping up on me. My heart starts pounding like crazy, and I'm thinking, "Oh heck, is that a shark?!"

I swear, time slowed down as this huge shark swims right up to me, showing off those teeth like it's auditioning for a horror movie. I could feel the fear taking over as I tried to remember every survival tip I'd ever heard.

Man, I'm not ashamed to admit it, I was freaking out! My brain was screaming, "Get me outta here!" I swear, I've never swum so fast in my life. It was like the shark and I were in a race, and I was determined not to come in second!

But hey, I made it out in one piece, just a little more terrified than I was before. Let me tell you, seeing a shark up close and personal is not something I ever want to experience again.

KC
 
Dude, let me tell you, I was scuba diving, minding my own business, checking out the coral and fish, you know, the usual. Then out of nowhere, I see this massive shadow creeping up on me. My heart starts pounding like crazy, and I'm thinking, "Oh heck, is that a shark?!"

I swear, time slowed down as this huge shark swims right up to me, showing off those teeth like it's auditioning for a horror movie. I could feel the fear taking over as I tried to remember every survival tip I'd ever heard.

Man, I'm not ashamed to admit it, I was freaking out! My brain was screaming, "Get me outta here!" I swear, I've never swum so fast in my life. It was like the shark and I were in a race, and I was determined not to come in second!

But hey, I made it out in one piece, just a little more terrified than I was before. Let me tell you, seeing a shark up close and personal is not something I ever want to experience again.

KC
I've seen lots of sharks. The only time I was concerned I could see the shark. I was off of a large pontoon dive boat in Florida Keys. We were entering the water, which had limited visibility and the crew decided to feed the Goliath Groupers under boat some hot dogs. I'm still on the surface waiting for my wife and one of the people on the boat sort of yelled, Dude, there's a Caribbean reef shark 6 feet behind you!" I stuck my head under to look and it was just murky. Feeding fish is sketchy on a good day, in low visibly, where a lot of sharks make mistakes just isn't cool at all.

Once my wife and I went looking for Tiger sharks in Hawaii. Saw one too. She was about 10 feet long and just swam by with zero interest in us.
 
But hey, I made it out in one piece, just a little more terrified than I was before. Let me tell you, seeing a shark up close and personal is not something I ever want to experience again.
I hear you. The first time can be intimidating.

In Florida we have a saying. How can you tell if a body of water has alligators? You taste it. If it’s salty it probably doesn’t have alligators. How can you tell if a body of water has sharks? Same way. If it’s salty, it definitely has sharks. If it’s not salty, it still might have sharks. Bull sharks mean the chances are not zero.

Unprovoked attacks on divers are pretty rare. Shark feeding, spearfishing, murky water, and some other factors increase those odds.
 
Interesting that I rarely heard an instructor mention using the octo if a sweep to get the primary fails.

In my OW course it was only mentioned after the dive, ironically because I had done exactly that.

As a bit of background, I'm a skydiver and our cutaway handle is right around the same spot that I was taught to place my octo. In skydiving, I was trained to try my primary deployment twice, and if that failed, to go to the reserve (other side of the chest but conceptually similar).

So in my OW course, I had some minor trim issues and we were sitting on the sand a few feet below the surface, but on a bit of a slope which compounded the trim issue. Spit out the reg and threw it over my shoulder, tried my sweep, couldn't find the regulator, and started falling forwards. Tried again, no joy. Not panicked, but rather annoyed, I looked to my octo, grabbed it, purged and breathed while I did another sweep and got the primary, then swapped back.

Didn't seem like that big of a deal at the time but the instructor did say to the class afterwards that he should have probably made it clear that this is the right move in that situation.

(edited to correct some early morning brain failure - octo is roughly where the cutaway handle is, not the reserve)
 
So in my OW course, I had some minor trim issues and we were sitting on the sand a few feet below the surface, but on a bit of a slope which compounded the trim issue. Spit out the reg and threw it over my shoulder, tried my sweep, couldn't find the regulator, and started falling forwards. Tried again, no joy. Not panicked, but rather annoyed, I looked to my octo, grabbed it, purged and breathed while I did another sweep and got the primary, then swapped back.

Didn't seem like that big of a deal at the time but the instructor did say to the class afterwards that he should have probably made it clear that this is the right move in that situation.
I saw that happen to my daughter (10 at the time) on one of her checkout dives. Another student accidentally kicked her and knocked her regulator from her mouth. I was right behind her, but wanted to see how she handled it, so I got closer, but let her do what she was going to do. The primary went into free flow and stayed out of her reach. She grabbed her octo, purged and resumed breathing. Having seen what I wanted, I helped her get her primary, stop the free flow, and she switched back. Once on the surface, she was a bit confused why her instructor and I were making a big deal out of it. She just thought that was what anyone would do in that situation.
 
I saw that happen to my daughter (10 at the time) on one of her checkout dives. Another student accidentally kicked her and knocked her regulator from her mouth. I was right behind her, but wanted to see how she handled it, so I got closer, but let her do what she was going to do. The primary went into free flow and stayed out of her reach. She grabbed her octo, purged and resumed breathing. Having seen what I wanted, I helped her get her primary, stop the free flow, and she switched back. Once on the surface, she was a bit confused why her instructor and I were making a big deal out of it. She just thought that was what anyone would do in that situation.

That's awesome to hear, good pressure player you've got there!
 
Some of those OW classes with everyone bunched up and people "Swimming with their arms", it is not that unusual to see a regulator hose get caught and the reg ripped out, and most of the time, the offender has no clue they were even involved. LOL
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/swift/

Back
Top Bottom