Near misses, some of what I have learned

[MATTKINZ]

We learn about scuba by diving. I have found things underwater usually go bad in a relatively short time. One can be in a relaxing dive and then things happen fast.
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One time at 65 fsw, I was breathing just fine, then the next breath was just water only. I thought the reg had flooded and breathed out to clear it and tried to breathe again but again only got water.

I then switched to secondary reg. I had mounted on right chest. Because this was one meant to be mounted on left side the mouthpiece was on "upside down", luckily I was by dive buddy and got a reg from buddy.

Once I had figured out the octo problem, I looped hose around head to put mouthpiece in correct position, Then, I looked at my primary reg and found the mouthpiece had pulled off of the reg and I had only a mouthpiece without reg. in my mouth, no wonder all I got was a mouthful of water.

Lesson learned , be near buddy, ensure eqpt. is positioned correctly and parts are well secured. Have a redundant air source.

Many times, you won't have a buddy right next to you. I now have a spare air and know I have some extra air. Actually,, I intend to move up to pony bottle but haven't done it yet.
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Another thing is to have integrated weights into BC. I have used this type for some time. ONe time when snarled in line on a wreck, I went to slip off bc to unsnarl and cut line and replace BC, I slippped it off and my wetsuit floated me to where I had to hold onto the BC until I could slip it on again. I learned not to slip a wt. integrated BC off unless absolutely necessary. Had I lost grip, I could have bobbed to surface like a cork. Problem was addressed by twisting about while leaving BC on my body.

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Underwater orienteering is a good way to get into trouble too. A reef looks different on going out than it does coming back. I learned (not on a coral reef) to look for something artificial like a beer can on the bottom to place on a pinnacle of the reef in a n unnatural position so I recognize the area by the boat anchor on the way back.

Since vis can be bad, I now carry a reel to swim from the anchor to look for the wreck or the reef.
If you don't find the wreck, you always can find the anchor of the boat again. If you find the wreck and anchor is not visible from the wreck, leaving a well set anchor with the line and reel placed on a prominent feature of the wreck will ensure you find the way back to anchor and to the boat.

Many a time, I have seen people "lose " the anchor and have to free ascend. This is usually not a problem but sometimes a surface current can make for a difficult swim ,or even impossible swim to the boat. I have had some exhausting swims in my years of diving.

Also, you may "recognize" one area of the wreck but may actually be on the opposite side of the wreck and waste valuable time searching the wrong patch of sand looking for the anchor. The reel makes a huge difference.

sometimes others seem to look at me funny as I may be festooned with equipment, but a reel and a smb, and my spare air are equipment I almost always take now. mk

 

[IceBergSlim]

Words fail me.

 

[acqua_girl]

I learned not to slip a wt. integrated BC off unless absolutely necessary.

That's why I usually have part of my weight on a weight belt.
Fortunately, never had to go through the same situation you did.

 

[cos]

How about a buddy tether? it would solve the out of air issue and if you dumped your bc accidentially or to get untangled, you would be attached to your buddy and s/he could help with popping to the surface.

Who cares what other people think about the way you look its better to have the equipment than not have it.

A couple of big knives will also help with the entanglment issues and they can also be used to defend oneself.

Haven't heard about the beer can on the reef trick. You learn something new every day.

 

[TSandM]

Matt, thank you for sharing your experiences. Despite the responses you have gotten, you have posted some good issues and some good ideas here.

Equipment CAN fail, and sometimes through no fault of the diver. Having the mouthpiece come off your primary regulator would be an unpleasant surprise. The fact that your secondary regulator wasn't where you could immediately access and use it, is something that should make you think a little bit about your gear configuration. My secondary regulator is hanging under my chin on a flexible necklace, so I can pop it in my mouth at any time. I like that setup. A Spare Air, in my opinion, is a poor answer (read the many threads about that!)

Your experience with entanglement and integrated weights is a real one, and people should read it and reflect. If one is diving somewhere where minimal exposure protection is needed, being separated from one's gear may not be a big deal. But in places where a lot of ballast is needed because of heavy exposure protection, having all your weight in your rig may seem convenient, but is a problem when you need to separate yourself from your gear.

Taking a reel down on a dive off an anchored boat in limited visibility is never overkill, in my book! I did a dive two years ago off an anchored boat in Los Angeles, where we dove a wreck that turned out to be some distance from the anchor. I didn't think about it on the way there, because we found the wreck easily, but coming back was very stressful. Running line from the anchor would have made our lives much easier.

Marking your path is not an unreasonable strategy, either; I tend to try to pick very memorable characteristics of the site, rather than move something, but sometimes that may not be very possible, if the site is very homogenous.

If people would read, rather than react, they would see there is some very good stuff to talk about in your post. Thank you for making it!

 

[tstormdiver]

Let's see.... The mouth piece problem may or may not have been discovered by a thorough equipment check before the dive. Sometimes things just fail during a dive, but there are usually tell tale signs there's a problem (in this case, maybe a missing zip tie) or signs of excessive wear. Sometimes it doesn't manifest itself in any way. Last I heard when tangled, twisting & turning usually just gets you MORE tangled up. If after an attempt or 2 to free yourself, if your buddy is nearby, get them to assist you if not then is the time to remove the BC to untangle it yourself. I will admit, I've never been tangled, except for when my technical instructor decided to tangle my lift bag reel line around my manifold to see how I handled it. I tried a couple of times to untangle it & when I did not succeed, as it was tangled out of my reach, I calmly swam to my buddy & asked him to help me out. Removing the BC, even with all the weight in the integrated weight system, shouldn't be a big deal. Yes, You will have to hang on & even if you lose your grip, you'd be surprised how well you teeth will hold that regulator when it has to. I just used the regulator hose to hand- over- hand pull myself back to the BC. I know, I had this happen to me when trying to do a BC removal (with all the weights in the integrated system) in a pool during my Dive Con course. If nothing else, everyone got a good laugh from it. Not pretty, but it worked- in an emergency, prettiness doesn't count. As for finding the anchor or mooring line a reel may or may not help. What if the anchor breaks free taking the reel with it or snapping the line? I would think that decent compass & natural navigational skills would also be handy in this situation. We had a situation where someone left a marker for others to follow from a reef to the anchor & when they left, they took the marker with them, thinking everyone was already back at the boat, they weren't & several wound up getting caught in a current & wound up having to be picked up by the boat's dinghy. Navigational skills can be a big boon.

 

[IceBergSlim]

If people would read, rather than react, they would see there is some very good stuff to talk about in your post. Thank you for making it!

Forgive me for taking issue with a post lacking in even the most basic rules of spelling, sentence structure or grammar.

When I read the post I assumed he was not a native speaker of the language. After checking I was astonished to see that he was.

 

[dumpsterDiver]

Matt, thank you for sharing your experiences. Despite the responses you have gotten, you have posted some good issues and some good ideas here.!

I guess we were a little hard on the Beav..... How about a more thoughtful response: I think the lessson from the entanglement incident should be that the weights need to be distributed so that the diver can function reasonably well without relying on the lead in the BC. It should not require an excessive amount of effort (or hanging from a regulator mouthpiece) to remove the bc unit and free it. This is the primary reason why I would not consider using a weight integrated BC as my only source of ballast when diving in cold water.

Second comment: I've heard of dozens of incidents of mouth piece falling off of second stages. It is obvious to me that a zip tie is not a completely reliable means of attachment. I use safety wire (and sometimes a zip tie as a back up). Having a mouth piece completely fall off can cause major aspiration of water and set off a potentially fatal chain of events.

 

[tstormdiver]

Dumpsterdiver, I understand what you're saying & don't necessarily disagree. My episode in the pool was what taught me to distribute the weights (guess I should have mentioned that, my bad). As for the zip ties, Yes, I also agree that it is not a 100% guarantee that the mouth piece will stay intact. Some times things just happen, I know that & have seen it & have had it happen to myself also. However like I said also, a thorough inspection of the equipment can catch a majority of problems before the dive. I wasn't trying to be so much critical of the OP, as to try to give ideas to possibly help prevent future problems. I agree with TS& M it is in our sharing of our incidents, accidents (God forbid), problems, fun, ideas & such that we help each other to grow. I personally encourage anyone to share what they've learned.

 

[TSandM]

It's actually a very good question, what to do when you go down the anchor line to a featureless bottom and the wreck is not in sight. It is always a better idea to tie off to something other than the anchor line, but it may not be possible. Is it better to try to execute a search with no central reference, or to tie off to the anchor line, so you can at least get home? Carrying a reel on those sorts of dives can be very helpful. If I'm running a reel and the reel begins to run me, I'm going to drop it, recognizing that anchors CAN get pulled, either by accident or on purpose, and I'm not going to be happy if I get dragged to the surface by my reel because I won't let go of it.

IcebergSlim, I prefer well written posts as well, but I think people who share their errors so that the rest of us can learn from them should be encouraged, and not sniped at because of their grammar.