Question Near incident. What should I have done?

[Hatul]

To the OP - you did nothing wrong. You made the best decision given your knowledge of the circumstances at the time. Be proud of your resourcefulness. You made a plan and followed it. Bravo to you!

Not to be too long winded, but the following recent experience of mine seems appropriate to share. For those of you who don't know me, I have a tad bit of experience UW. Of course the last scuba class I taught was 38 years ago so anything beyond buddy breathing techniques is a mystery to me. Oh yea, Lyndon Johnson was President when I was first taught to dive.

Fastforward to last November. I'm in Hawaii doing stuff (not a dive trip) and have a morning off so I book a local tourist 2-tank boat dive. There was me, a guy with about 25 dives under his belt and two ladies newly minted with c-cards. Young Divemaster Lady (she kept calling me grandpa) repeated over and over and over and over her three rules: 1. No one goes deeper than 60 feet; 2. No one stays down more than 45 minutes; and 3. No one, and I mean no one, gets more than 10 feet away from her the entire dive so she can "rescue us." Fine, whatever. I just want to get wet.

First dive we were swimming along a wall at 50 feet. All of a sudden Divemaster Lady heads over the wall and the other folks follow her. I hung back and watched the group head down to what I estimate was 120 feet and stay a minute or so then come back up. WTF?

We get back on the boat and Divemaster Lady yells, screams, berates and generally belittles me for not sticking 10 feet from her on the entire dive (Rule #3). My response to her in front of the others was not very gentlemanly. To sum it up. I told her that she is the one who broke her own Rule #1 and that I really didn't want to be near 4 potentially narc'd out divers who might have decided to do a death spiral into the abyss. She forbid me from making the 2nd dive so there, she got me, put me in my place she did.

Upon our return the dive shop/boat owner was at the dock to meet us because she had called him to "deal with me." What she didn't know was that I had a very nice phone conversation with the owner during the entirety of waiting out the 2nd dive. He and I had many friends in common and had even had the same NAUI ITC Instructor way back when. It was fun to watch Divemaster Lady's face when she was, then and there handed her final paycheck and told to turn over the keys to the shop. I had a number of Mai Tai's that night reminiscing about a great day in the diving world.

Yes I've been in a situation where the dive guide goes off into hot mindless, rant with Mexican blood gibberish, and no one gets anything out of this. Better to have a thoughtful discussion and review of the dive and the decisions made without looking for blame. What were the factors in making a decision and how can we improve in the future.

 

[Diversiontenerife]

I was recently on a red sea liveaboard with my partner and two friends. Me and my partner have AOW and 50/30 dives respectively, our two friends had just gotten their open water recently with no further dives outside training. Our friends decided to do their AOW at the beginning of the liveaboard.

On the second day, our friends were going to do their deep and wreck adventure dives on two dives on a wreck that sits at 20-30m depth. There was a lot of current that day, we were a group of 9 divers.

The instructor made it clear in the debrief that:

1. The two divers under instruction should follow him closely, me and my partner after, and the other 5 divers behind.
2. Due to the current, we were to descend and ascend on the anchor line, current would not be an issue once on the wreck itself.

We splashed in, and made our way through the wreck. The anchor line was on one end of the wreck, he guided us all towards the other end, which was relatively far, with two or three penetrations on the way.

There were other groups of divers on the wreck making staying in line a challenge, and the other 5 divers in our group weren't respecting the order (I think because they were taking pictures and didn't want the beginners in front of them to disrupt visibility).

Suddenly, I find myself and my partner in front of our friends in an open area of the wreck opposite side of the anchor line. When I signal to them to get back in front, one of them signals to me he has 60 bar left. We are at 25 meters and the rest of the group, including the instructor have turned around and penetrated the wreck through a different spot than the one we came, which is dark and narrow enough we'd have to enter it single file. I see the fins of one the divers in our group inside. At this precise moment, my partner signals she is having trouble with her mask leaking. I signal to my friends to wait one moment. She readjusts the mask and tries to clear it, which seemingly doesn't work. After a couple more attempts, through which she is getting nervous, it finally clears (she later told me water went up her nose hence the struggle).

I look back at the place where the group went, I see nothing. I illuminate with the flashlight, darkness at the end of a tunnel. I ask my friend how much air he has. 50 bar. It has been a minute since I last saw the last person of our group, and more since I last saw the instructor. My friend's face with low air reads like anxiety. There are other boats above and I don't trust them to be competent at deploying their DSMB without shooting to the surface.

I decided to abort the dive. I signal to the other 3 "abort, we go up as a group and do a safety stop together".

We start ascending, but the 4th diver (partner of the friend low on air) is still trying to look for the instructor to no avail, at this point there are no other divers there. I repeat the signals to abort and go up, she ends up complying. We start ascending slowly from 25m to 20m, where the top of the wreck ends, and there is indeed a lot of current. I start to prepare the DSMB to shoot it ASAP so the boat can see it drifting while we do the safety stop.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, I feel my leg being pulled down aggressively. The instructor has realised we were missing, come back for us, and seen us above him. He yanks all of us down. I signal to him my friend is now on 40bar. He is visibly angry.

He leads us all to the anchor through a different path that avoids the current but without penetrating. On the anchor line, my friend signals that he is out of air as soon as the safety stop starts. He ends up doing the safety stop on the instructor secondary, and surfaces with the needle below 10 bar.

On the boat, the instructor is furious telling me that who am I to make a decision like that, that it was super dangerous to try to ascend with the current like that, that we could have been lost at sea. I try to tell him there is no way I'm leading my friend down a dark hole at 25m depth with 50 bar, he tells me we should have just waited for him.

What was I supposed to do? I've been thinking this over and over and the only other reasonable alternative would have been for me to give him my secondary instead of ascending (I had 120 bar at this point) and wait for the instructor there, though this seems to go against the training I received

I Think the first question is, does everyone in this group have a wreck specialty (and not just your AOW with a wreck dive). Penetrating wrecks calls for more than just an advanced certification for several reasons, may of which you mentioned. Diving with an overhead environment that is tight as well as dark, requires more than one torch, lines etc. This sounds like this dive was way beyond everyone's dive level as well as the instructor throwing caution to the wind, as going against standards.


I think that you handle the situation correctly under the circumstances and that the instructor wasn't being very professional at all in the decisions that he was making (this is evident in penetrating a wreck several times while doing the AOW course- completely against standards)
You did well to want to surface with the little air you all had left. It could of been dangerous with the current, but I wouldn't have stayed down at 25m with little air and a crazy current to fight with on the way up.

 

[Jai Bar]

Diving with an overhead environment that is tight as well as dark, requires more than one torch, lines etc.

This specific wreck is so famous that some days is visited by hundreds of divers. All of them go through more or less the same path- autostrade actually. They always go in the same direction to avoid traffic jams. If each group would start laying lines it would become nof only a nightmare but also a real hazard. The autostrade is quite simple to follow, and the groups are led along the areas where the trucks, motorbikes are arranged in the main holds, which have a huge opening so it is not an completely an overhead environment, and nothing that requires a diver to squeeze and wiggle his way in tight passages. Autostrade it is. You take a torch, but no problem copleting the whole dive without any. Done a few times a full.moom night dives there without swtiching the lights at all throughout the dive, moonlight was sufficient most of dive at least in the main holds.

Similar practice is carried in wrecks like the Zenobia in Cyprus, or the Cedar Pride in Jordan and many more red sea wrecks. The ones visited by hordes of tourists are not the Andrea Doria or the Brittanic. The have good visibility and at least in the autostrades no silt.

It is just like visiting the Pyramid's main chambers: millions of tourists visit them every year, they don't need lines, headlamps, backups and so on. Sure, you can also do the Indiana Jones thing, crawling in booby-trapped pits infested with snakes, but this is not for the average tourist.

Most operations that I've been to require minimal experience of 50 dives to visit the Thistlegorm. Some, apparently, are not so strict on this.

 

[jadairiii]

If you went down on the anchor line, make all effort to ascend on that anchor line even if it means sharing air.

I agree it is always good practice to ascend the same way you descended (assuming that was the plan). But I would never suggest that a diver or a buddy team "make all effort to ascend on that anchor line even if it means sharing air" That is a recipe for disaster. I've helped or outright rescued too many divers that lived by that mantra. Add to that, I had a good friend die doing exactly that, while "sharing air" (I was not present).

There is nothing magical about the downline. If the team does not have the back gas to make it safely back to the downline and surface, then direct access to the surface is the best plan and the best place to "run out of air". To preach that overlooks that fact that the dive is already going south, one or both are low or out of air, they are fixated on getting to the downline, task loaded.....the dive will not get better.......it can only get worse.

 

[The Chairman]

There is nothing magical about the downline.

In a mondo current, it's as magic as it comes.

I've heard of too, too many divers who have done a free ascent get lost to the ocean doing one. Some have died. The Speigle Grove in Key Largo comes to mind. A diver in the middle of the ocean can be quite hard to spot. Hopefully, you've popped a cork to the surface and the captain/crew notice your buoy drifting away from the start of your ascent. They still have to wait to onboard all the other divers and then determine that you're missing before they can go chase you. What? You didn't bring an SMB? So, now they have no idea where the hell you are, downstream or stuck somewhere on the wreck.

So yeah, make every effort -within reason- to come up where you went down. If not there, come up on another line. This takes PLANNING and SITUATIONAL AWARENESS. It's definitely a lot safer than doing a free ascent in mondo current. Mind you, most of the time I had no current on the Grove. I didn't touch the line going up or down. It's when there's a lot of current that it becomes problematic. But when there was current, it could be brutal.

 

[Jai Bar]

too many divers who have done a free ascent get lost to the ocean doing one

Egypt has its fair share of current-swept divers, not always with happy ending:

4 Divers Lost In Red Sea! Pls Help!

Anyone with any information, please, contact help@webdive.ru The missing divers are: Dutch Michel van Assendelft, PADI Advanced Open Water Diver; Russian Dmitry Kapitonov, PADI Open Water Diver; Russian Elena Sundukova, PADI Instructor; and Egyptian Mahmoud Ahmed Hamdan, dive guide. (Photos...

scubaboard.com

Twelve divers missing in Red Sea

Just heard on the evening news on Swiss TV about what could become one of the most tragic scuba accidents ever. Apparently, twelve divers from the MY Oyster, ex-Moon Dancer (Peter Hughes), went missing yesterday while diving the Brothers Islands in the Red Sea. There is already a thread on...

scubaboard.com

Two missing divers rescued near Strait of Tiran - Egypt Independent

The Talaat Moustafa Group in Sharm el-Sheikh have rescued two divers lost at a diving site near the Strait of Tiran.

www.egyptindependent.com

 

[Trackdaddy]

So he was instructing, AND guiding a group on a dive with challenging elements? No bueno!

I agree with this comment. At the very least he should have had a DM with him to assist. Although I don't see how he can guid and instruct at the same tim.

 

[NAUI Wowie]

I wouldn't go that far. He did a trust-me dive. That's as much his fault as it was the leader's. Never splash if you can't finish the dive on your own. Your life and safety should not depend on the skills of another.

Eh, a ton of wreck dives if not most are Trust Me Dives. Especially in the Philippines asia etc. The only way to not make it a trust me dive is to have dove that site before. And know it. I mean im really not following your thought process here. I understand it but it doesnt seem practical or logical. Basically most dives would then be cancelled before you splash.

That being said I DEFINITELY would not have went up in a good current in open ocean to help save another diver. I could easily end up dead washed out to sea in that scenario. So to the O.P. id say dont risk your life to save another. Id have tried to go against current to find the anchor line. That or id tell the new diver to ascend. It wasnt his fault with only two dives after certification.

Thats a tough one but ill never risk open ocean lost at sea to help out. Save your life first then help when and where you can and I have helped new divers in fact two months ago in Moalboal Cebu PI. They had about 8 dives each post certification and they were sinking past 90 feet deep a guy and girlfriend holding hands at Pescador island. The dive leader for them a young female Filipina was just watching them sink doing nothing. I had to QUICKLY dive down to them as they were disappearing and inflate their bcds myself.

That was come to think of it a trust me scenario where they trusted the employee to help them but that woman was in no way going to go down to them to help out. I am pretty sure they might have both died.

After that we did a couple more dives and I helped them with their boyancy and staying horizontal and they improved drastically. Didnt need to hold hands any more lol.

 

[The Chairman]

The only way to not make it a trust me dive is to have dove that site before.

I have dove many a site for the first time without the need of a guide, both wrecks and reefs. Every diver should be able to complete a dive without assistance. They should know exits and dangers before they splash.

 

[darkdelta]

I was recently on a red sea liveaboard with my partner and two friends. Me and my partner have AOW and 50/30 dives respectively, our two friends had just gotten their open water recently with no further dives outside training. Our friends decided to do their AOW at the beginning of the liveaboard.

On the second day, our friends were going to do their deep and wreck adventure dives on two dives on a wreck that sits at 20-30m depth. There was a lot of current that day, we were a group of 9 divers.

The instructor made it clear in the debrief that:

1. The two divers under instruction should follow him closely, me and my partner after, and the other 5 divers behind.
2. Due to the current, we were to descend and ascend on the anchor line, current would not be an issue once on the wreck itself.

We splashed in, and made our way through the wreck. The anchor line was on one end of the wreck, he guided us all towards the other end, which was relatively far, with two or three penetrations on the way.

There were other groups of divers on the wreck making staying in line a challenge, and the other 5 divers in our group weren't respecting the order (I think because they were taking pictures and didn't want the beginners in front of them to disrupt visibility).

Suddenly, I find myself and my partner in front of our friends in an open area of the wreck opposite side of the anchor line. When I signal to them to get back in front, one of them signals to me he has 60 bar left. We are at 25 meters and the rest of the group, including the instructor have turned around and penetrated the wreck through a different spot than the one we came, which is dark and narrow enough we'd have to enter it single file. I see the fins of one the divers in our group inside. At this precise moment, my partner signals she is having trouble with her mask leaking. I signal to my friends to wait one moment. She readjusts the mask and tries to clear it, which seemingly doesn't work. After a couple more attempts, through which she is getting nervous, it finally clears (she later told me water went up her nose hence the struggle).

I look back at the place where the group went, I see nothing. I illuminate with the flashlight, darkness at the end of a tunnel. I ask my friend how much air he has. 50 bar. It has been a minute since I last saw the last person of our group, and more since I last saw the instructor. My friend's face with low air reads like anxiety. There are other boats above and I don't trust them to be competent at deploying their DSMB without shooting to the surface.

I decided to abort the dive. I signal to the other 3 "abort, we go up as a group and do a safety stop together".

We start ascending, but the 4th diver (partner of the friend low on air) is still trying to look for the instructor to no avail, at this point there are no other divers there. I repeat the signals to abort and go up, she ends up complying. We start ascending slowly from 25m to 20m, where the top of the wreck ends, and there is indeed a lot of current. I start to prepare the DSMB to shoot it ASAP so the boat can see it drifting while we do the safety stop.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, I feel my leg being pulled down aggressively. The instructor has realised we were missing, come back for us, and seen us above him. He yanks all of us down. I signal to him my friend is now on 40bar. He is visibly angry.

He leads us all to the anchor through a different path that avoids the current but without penetrating. On the anchor line, my friend signals that he is out of air as soon as the safety stop starts. He ends up doing the safety stop on the instructor secondary, and surfaces with the needle below 10 bar.

On the boat, the instructor is furious telling me that who am I to make a decision like that, that it was super dangerous to try to ascend with the current like that, that we could have been lost at sea. I try to tell him there is no way I'm leading my friend down a dark hole at 25m depth with 50 bar, he tells me we should have just waited for him.

What was I supposed to do? I've been thinking this over and over and the only other reasonable alternative would have been for me to give him my secondary instead of ascending (I had 120 bar at this point) and wait for the instructor there, though this seems to go against the training I received

Should've been one instructor doing skills. A separate DM/Dive guide for the rest of group.