Out of air situations

[ligersandtions]

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.

Just FYI, Nitrox isn't giong to help you if you're having to cut your dive times short due to air consumption....where Nitrox comes in handy is if you are having to cut dives short because you're reaching NDL. Getting more experience will get you to the point where getting a Nitrox certification is worth the money, but at this point in your diving (based on your above comment), I would say that Nitrox will not benefit you all that much.



FWIW, the only "out of air" situation I've had is when I surfaced with >400 psi in my tank, put the tank in the trunk with some of the other gear, and apparently things shifted and the tank opened enough to bleed all the air out of the tank....so I was OOA and had to get a a VIP. But that's it at this point in my dive career....and I hope to keep it that way, while preparing for the worst.

 

[Thalassamania]

Answer to a similar question; three incidents described.

 

[DiverLS]

It was a long time ago, probably about 91 when we were diving off the Conception, looking for bugs. Well, near the end of the dive we found a hole with a bunch of legals in it and just started grabbing. I was on an AL80 and my ex twin steel 72's. I signalled him 500 and we started up. The problem, we had a mandatory 15 ft stop and my 500 didn't last that long. So I gave him the OOA and he handed me his octopus. Everything fine for awhile. We had not practiced OOA drills nor did we have any instruction in it. So after about 3 minutes he turns away to look at something and pulled the octopus out of my mouth. I tried grabbing at him until I had to bail. So he bailed too!

Yep - both computers violated and we had to spend the rest of the day on the boat. YUCK.

Now, since I'm rescue certified, I have the procedure down pat. That will NOT happen to me again.