Out of air situations

[slackercruster]

Have you or your buddy or another in your dive party ever been in an out of air situation?

How did it happen?

How did it end?

 

[TSandM]

I had a freeflow that emptied my tank before I got to the surface. It didn't matter, because I was already sharing gas with my buddy (that was initiated when the freeflow began, on the bottom).

I've also accidentally turned off all my gas while doing valve drills. In that case, I just turned the gas back ON (and felt sheepish).

 

[Diver0001]

I've never run out of air but I completely lost track of my regulator during a rescue exercise when I was playing the victim. The rescuer knocked the reg out of my mouth and didn't notice. At the time my octopus was also floating behind my back.

The rescuer then took both my arms and slung me over his back (let's just say, he did this exercise again...) and he was holding on to my arms during the ascent. We started off at about 10 metres under water.

About 1/2 way the surface I realized that this ascent was going to take a lot longer than usual ... and I couldn't get my arms free. The harder I struggled, the harder he held on.... He thought I was playing for panic so he just "played along".

I figured I had one chance of getting away from him, so I let my body go completely limp and as soon as his grip loosened I ripped away from him, grabbed the reg out of his mouth, took a couple of breaths and handed it back to him. After that we finished the ascent while buddy breathing.

Main mistakes were mine. That was in 1985/6. I've learned a lot since then.

R..

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

Have you or your buddy or another in your dive party ever been in an out of air situation?

How did it happen?

How did it end?

Twice when Cheng and I were new divers, and once much more recently. Both of the former times it was her that ran out. Both times it was due to her following my lead, and me leading out of ignorance. And both times it was because we were doing a deep dive we had no business doing ... and her on a steel 72 cylinder. At the time I was diving an AL100.

The first time we were doing a wall dive. We went down to about 90 feet (on a wall that went down to well over 200 feet). After a very brief time she signaled me that she was down to 500 psi and we started up the wall. At about 60 feet she looked at me and calmly slashed her hand across her throat. I pulled out my octopus and handed it to her and we proceeded up the wall. At 15 feet I gave her the "level off here" signal and she shook her head "no" and gave me back a thumb. Thinking she was just anxious over having to share air ... and knowing I had plenty ... I shook my head "no" and gave her another "level off here" signal. She gave me an even more insistant thumb up ... and "the look". Remembering what my instructor had said about the thumbs-up not being an optional signal, I signaled OK and we skipped our safety stop and headed to the surface.

Once on the surface she spit out the reg and started puking. Since she had no air in her tank to inflate her BCD, I held her up while she finished puking and manually inflated her BCD for her. By then the boat came by to pick us up. We got her on the boat, she puked again. Then she told me my octopus was leaking and she had been swallowing sea water while trying to breathe off of it. Turns out the mouthpiece had a pretty big crack right next to the zip tie that was holding it in place.

Learned some lessons from that dive ...

• If you're new to deep diving, check your air more often than you think you have to ... you'll go through your air a lot faster than you think you will.
• Check the mouthpiece on your octopus from time to time (now I just breathe off of my backup with my face in the water before each dive)
• Don't hesitate when someone gives a thumbs-up signal ... because the problem might not be what you think it is.

Unfortunately, I didn't learn the most important lesson ... which is why, a couple weeks later, she ran out of air again. This was a night dive, and we were going down to see Olive, a giant pacific octopus guarding her eggs in a den at about 105 fsw. This was a shore dive, following a guide rope down a slope to where the den was. And this time we started back when she got to 1000 psi ... which wasn't nearly enough gas for the return trip. At about 40 fsw she gave me the OOA signal and I put her on my octopus. We grabbed ahold of each other and started our ascent. Being a night dive, and relatively inexperienced divers, we had no clue how fast we were ascending ... and within about 15 seconds we were on the surface. Realizing that we'd just done a dive to over 100 feet, and came up way too fast, I insisted we go back down immediately and do a safety stop. And so we dropped back down, followed the slope up to 15 feet, and sat there for about a minute ... until my tank also ran out of air. At that point we both bolted for the surface, manually inflated our BCDs, and swam to shore.

The drive home that night wasn't pleasant ... and it was at that point that I started to figure that something important had been left out of our training. Over the next few months, I started learning about gas management ... and started to realize how insufficient our dive planning had been.

We sold the 72's, picked up some 95's for Cheng to dive, and started planning our dives more conservatively.

The final time we went OOA was on our trip to Indonesia last year. We were on the Komodo leg of the trip ... on a liveaboard ... at the tail end of a long, deep wall dive ... doing our safety stop on a shallow shelf ... when out of the blue a manta ray swam past. Now, I'm going to admit that in moments like that all semblance of buddy skills go out the window and it's every diver for themself as we all kicked furiously trying to catch up with that manta ray for a picture. It never occurred to me (or anyone else in our group) how fast we'd get separated. After snapping off several pictures I turned back toward where I thought Cheng would be and she wasn't there. I could see her way back in the distance (vis was in excess of 100 feet, and she was right at the limit of it). So I turned and kicked quickly back to where she was. As I approached, she got this strange look and quickly turned away from me and started kicking back the other way ... as that same manta ray swooped over me from behind and made another pass in the other direction. A moment later, Cheng swam back to me ... and almost as soon as we reconnected, she gave me the OOA signal. I put her on my primary, popped my necklaced backup in my mouth, and gave her the thumb (we were in about 12 feet of water and had, already, probably 10 minutes above 20 feet). As we hit the surface, we both took the last breath out of my tank. This time we both manually inflated while the boat came to pick us up. There was no incident ... but we both realized that in those moments we had gotten so caught up in getting the "special picture" that we'd broken all the rules we are so rigid about following. It was a sobering experience, and a reminder that even the very experienced are human ... and capable of doing dumb things (a valuable lesson to remind oneself from time to time).

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[String]

Have you or your buddy or another in your dive party ever been in an out of air situation?

How did it happen?

How did it end?

I have. Uncontrolled freeflow trying to purge reg to send up a DSMB in cold water.
How did it end? I just switched to my redundant backup, signalled to the others i was going up, turned main tank off, ascended, did a safety stop and got lunch 20 mins earlier than the others.

Have witnessed a few others, in this country nearly always to do with freeflows. In group diving abroad, warm water holiday resorts it seems to be nearly always to do with stupidity (ie not reading a gauge).

 

[Rick Inman]

Three sets of buddy pairs (I was in one) headed down to the train cars at 110'. One of the divers from one team signaled to his buddy that he was heading back to shore, and the other guy stayed with the rest of us (the separation was contrary to what was agreed upon at the dive briefing). These guys were visiting from out of town and new to our group. So now this guy was with no one, just kind of hanging with the rest of us.

Later in the dive at 50' as we were slowly making our way back toward shore, my buddy did a practice OOG on me. It went smoothly, and after a couple of minutes he handed me back my long hose and I stowed it. A moment later, the now-solo guy swam up and signaled OOG. He did it so calmly and slowly that I though he was just mimicking our drill. I handed him my long hose, we exchanged OK's and we slowly continued toward shore. When, after a few minutes, he didn't hand my back my reg, I looked at his SPG, and sure enough it was pegged on zero!

I had lot's of gas, so we took out time looking at stuff and enjoying the swim back to shore.

It was like a non-event.

 

[Diveral]

Many times! Most were many years ago!

Many, Many, Many moons ago I was a rescue diver, trainers assistant, and DM candidate. I was also a college student, distance runner, bicyclist, or in the military, IOW in fantastic shape and could make an 80 last almost forever. Very often I was either assisting with dive classes or acting as a safety diver when diving off of charter boats or with a dive club. I usually got paired with the most ethuiastic hoover in the group.

In these situations OOA was usually a common occurence with my dive buddy and we'd make the ascent off of my tank. If it wasn't my buddy there were usually several key people in the group identified as "if you run low on air or get into trouble look for one of these people" type of dives.

Now I'm an out-of-shape, overweight, middle-aged desk jockey and usually one of the first to run out of air. So if my buddy went OOA we'd now be in serious trouble.

My last OOA was me. We were doing a deep dive on the Papoose(Hutton) off of Cape Lookout NC in 2006. Was doing a wonderful dive in almost perfect conditions. It was an easy and extremely interesting dive, one of my best dives ever. I deliberately pushed a turn when I knew better. I started the dive off deep 120+ feet and when we pushed the turn we were on the keel which was around 65-75 feet.

So I thought I'd stay high up on the wreck and should have plenty of air to make it back to the anchor line and complete my ascent. Only problem is the current changed direction and picked up towards the end of the dive. We swam into a stiff current back to the anchor line. I had to drop down to 90' on the side of the wreck to make progress and burned through the remaining air in my tank faster than I planned. Had to blow off my deep stop and ascend at 60'/min. Ended up hanging off of the boats octopus for a extended 5min safety stop.

AL

 

[Ber Rabbit]

Hubby and I were on vacation in Nassau a few years ago. The tank holders on the boat we were on would not hold my tank when the bc was in my favorite position so I had to loosen and lower the strap for the ride out. This situation was stressing me out because I was afraid I would forget to tighten my BC once we were getting ready to get in. My tank o-ring also had an issue and I had a slow leak in the first stage so I turned my air off (or so I thought) but didn't purge the regs. That was another thing I never do, once my gear is set up my air is on and it stays on. We get to the site and I was so relieved that I remembered to re-tighten my BC strap that I completely forgot about what I had done with my air. Turns out I had the the tank on about 1/4 turn rather than all the way off so I was breathing off of it on the surface. I'm really anal about approaching the water with my regulator in my mouth so I had probably been breathing off of it for a couple minutes before we got in.

We giant stride in and start our descent, all of a sudden I get the "this is the last breath you're getting off this baby" sensation as I inhale. I instinctively check my depth on my computer--not my pressure on my console and see I'm over 20 feet deep. I realize what has happened, my tank isn't all the way open and the pressure at depth has shut down my regs ability to deliver air. I start cursing myself, complete with hand gestures. My husband looks at me like I'm insane and patiently waits for a signal that tells him what the problem is and what I would like to do about it. On the surface after the dive he said he was thinking, "If she needs air she'll ask for it sooner or later." I remained at depth and continued making random cursing hand signals at myself and cursing into the non-working regulator as I reached back to turn my air on. Finally I signalled hubby to check my valve and make sure it was all the way on and we continued our dive now that the doofus he was buddied with had her act together.
Ber :lilbunny:

 

[fisheater]

I ended up leading a three person buddy team at the Casino Point Dive Park on Catalina.

I'd just met the other two divers, an instructor from the Philipines and his cousin from Los Angeles who'd only dove before in the Philipines on vacation. The Angelino was HUGE and wore a 6XL dry suit. (I didn't know that they made them either.) The instructor was very slightly built. Both were in DIR-style BP/Wings, so they looked like they knew what they were doing - asides from both using drysuits for the first time.

On our second dive, we ducked under the kelp line and surface swam out to the farthest boundary buoy (near the harbor). The plan was to drop there to the bottom and swim towards the lighthouse, in the expectation that we'd find the Sue Jac and then explore the reef back to the stairs.

We did all that, but never found the Sue Jac. I lead, went slow and periodically rolled over to see the other divers, who were always shoulder to shoulder and doing well.

As we neared the exit stairs, I rolled again and saw that they were air sharing and swimming along looking at the sights. I'd hoped that it was a drill, but they calmly signalled that the Angelino was OOA. I asked if they wanted to ascend then and they relented.

At the surface, the instructor just shrugged and said "he's a big boy and uses lots of air, so we usually end up sharing towards the ends of our dives."

Sounds to me like he needs (and could easily carry) some serious doubles.

 

[Road Guy]

last week we were in key Largo, on a 80' reef dive, I was doing my safety stop and after it was finished drew the last bit of air out of the tank at about 5' from the surface. Wasnt a "huge" deal but was enough of an eye opener( and motivated me to get me signed up for a Nitrox class next month) We didnt waste much time deep because I knew I would burn through air much faster than her.

I was just glad we were close to the boat because the current was strong and it would have been a long swim with a snorkel on the surface if I had to travel very far on the surface.