Panicked Diver Stories

[Jonathan]

but the most memorable one was a January dive in 3 celsius.

My buddy was in a rented dry suit a little large for her. We were swimming out at about 2m looking for some depth when her fin and dry suit boot came detached and she ends up upside down air in her feet flapping about....

Her feet are actually above water but she's not getting this and getting more and more paniced. I tried to make calming signals and ask her to surface the rest of her body but it's not getting through - I am doing this from the surface looking down. So eventually I lean down and just inflated her BCD and up she popped!

She was so embarrassed butI eventually got her to laugh about it - this was about dive number 10 for her and last time I met her she still jokes about it 3 years later! She is now in the Tech track..

Jonathan

 

[idahodivers]

I'll post my own mini-panic from this past weekend that I am still kicking myself over. 20' fresh water controlled ascent, go to put a small puff of air in my BC (I was a little overweighted), nothing, no air going into the BC but my reg is just fine. Get to the surface but only by kicking, still can't inflate my BC but can breathe through the regulator. We were only about 30' from shore. So, SCUBA 101, I should have a) manually inflated my BC then b) checked the low pressure inflator hose. Do I do a) or b)??? Nope, instead I panic, put my reg in, kick to shore as fast as I can only to discover that my low pressure inflator came loose. Luckily we were able to go back out and continue the dive, but I still can't get over how the brain shuts down when something goes wrong, this one was so simple that it could have been solved underwater, or by manually inflating on the surface and solved on the surface. Welp, there you go, confessional of my own panic story. Hopefully I've learned from it.....

 

[DrSteve]

Cuddabait - I'm sure your buddy did react from the guy in that situation. But in their defense I had a free flow in the surf during entry for a shore dive. In less than 1 minute I had lost 1200 psi. I think I would panick too.

 

[Cudabait]

DrSteve,

Good point, Steve. Nothing critical about anyone is intended here. These things can happen to anyone who dives. We can all gain from each others experiences. I experienced a HP blowout about 20 years ago. They are a memorable experience!!! And you are absolutely correct, when you have one you gotta get alternate air, quick, or freeflow breathe to the surface....'cause if you've already used a lot of your air, time is critical.

 

[hantzu701]

1st dive after getting PADI certified. Not terribly proud to admit that I got into this situation.

The dive plan is to go down to 30 ft and do underwater navigation to an uw platform at 20 ft where we would do buoyancy drills. My buddy drops down to 30' and keeps going. By the time I catch up with him, he's hit bottom at 53' - really, really hard. Vis is crap from the mushroom that he's kicked up. Next thing I know he flashes past me going for the surface. Air bubbles everywhere. I ascend and find him freaking out on the surface.

We were both freaked out, but managed to have a laugh about it. After a short surface interval, we went over the uw platform and used the reference line to descend. I haven't gone on a dive with him since.

I'm not clear what happened, but it's pretty clear that he lost his air and paniced. In his defense, neither him or I have been below 30' or made an OW descent without the benefit of a reference line. Vis was also crap and dropped to 2 ft below the 2nd thermocline. When he hit bottom, he probably couldn't see me, although I could see his air bubbles.

We also paired up after the OW cert, so I wasn't familiar with his OW skills. If I had, I probably would have held on to him during his descent or changed the dive plan. The experience did show me 1) how quickly something can go wrong underwater, and 2) how easy it is for divers to overestimate their skills.

My (ex)buddy has gone on and is training for his DM. He's been gungho about moving quickly through the classes. But, I've hung back expressly because of this experience. It's impressed me that no amount of classtime is going to make up for time in the water and how rudimentary PADI training really is.

 

[wheezy]

I've been in a panic situation before... unfortunately it was ME who was panicing.

NOW... before I tell the story, keep in mind I already know WHY this happened and it was MY OWN FAULT.

So, EASTER time is so wonderful and my LDS has my favorite event of the year. The underwater Easter Egg hunt. Well, this past year my buddy flaked out on my the morning of and I had paid my money and wasn't going to back out because I didn't have my buddy.

So I manage to hook up with one of the other local guys (who's a DM and a really good diver to boot) We even do a pre dive meet about our plan. Everything seems great. Well, I had to rent a tank for that dive (a Medium Prssure AL80 3300psi )

So first mistake, I forgot to take into consideration that my normal tank is 2500PSI tank. Now, add in the fact that I'm so cauget up trying to find stupid easter eggs that I'm not checking my air as often as I should. Another factor, I was using my Vytec and definately wasn't checking my backup gauges.

So I realize that I'm getting low (actually much lower than I thought because of the HP tank) SO I signal hey, I'm low let's head back... well the new buddy signals no I"m not going, go ahead.

Fine, no biggy as this is my local dive spot that I frequently dive alone. Well about as SOON as I leave this guy I realize the tank situation, and see the flashing icon on the Vytec saying that I'm at 0 PSI????? YIKES... still breathing at this point, but the panic started right there. Within two breaths I could feel the resistance starting.

Definately a little worried at this point, realizing I have NO choice but to go up. So I start to go up trying to keep it safe. Well then it hit, the NO AIR AT ALL dead pull off the reg...

I did indeed panic as I was still at about 40ft and had been down for almost an hour. And I know I'm NOT making a safety stop.

Well, I did make it obviously. No DCS, No embolism, and a VERY SERIOUS LESSON LEARNED.

I have not dived solo since or dived without a buddy that I know and trust.:wacko:

 

[DrSteve]

Huntzu (sp?) I'll give you that. I have a buddy who I will admit is a good and safe diver, but most of her diving has been done in tropical conditions (she's logged I guess close to 100 dives). We live in the mid Atlantic...She might be a Master Diver in the tropics, but she's the same skill level as me in the mid-Atlantic and I'm only on 30 dives. The card doesn't mean anything unless you know how it was earned!

 

[CD_in_Chitown]

And I've had a couple OOA, LOA emergencies, but the most animated and frightening panic I ever saw happened to my G/F during our OW class several years ago. As we're driving out to the quarry for our first OW day, SCUBA tanks laying in the back of my car. When we turned onto the road in front of the dive shop the tanks shifted, catching a valve from one of the tanks on the seat turning it just enough that it popped like an o-ring and began to emit 3000 psi air into the interior of the car. I thought I was going to have a G/F shaped sun roof she bounced off the roof so hard, then commenced to screaming something fierce.

Not exactly what you're looking for, but for the comic value I've never seen better. Luckily I've never seen her panic underwater.

Chris

 

[seakdivers]

I recently posted my panic story that happened over Labor Day weekend - here's basically a copy & paste of the post:

My family went camping on an island in Hoonah Sound, which is about 3-4 hours away by boat. **sidenote - a family of 4 - a dad & his 3 sons, just had a mishap on 9/13 in this same spot. The weather quickly changed as it does in the sound, and their skiff overturned. The dad & one son made it, but the other two brothers didn't.

Anyway, the weekend we were there, three of us decided to take a dive across the bay at a barely exposed set of rocks. It was a beautiful dive, but of course when we came up, the tide had come in, and the rocks were submerged quite a bit, and as luck would have it, a squall had kicked up. So here we were, bobbing up & down in a pretty nasty swell, and nobody from the big boat could see us. We bobbed around for about 10 minutes, and then we saw them coming for us......except they were in the WorkSkiff, which has really high sides on it. They pulled up to us, and we all did something really stupid. We pulled our bcds off so that we could pass them up to the people in the boat, however, by the time my boyfriend and I struggled out of ours in the swell, the boat had drifted quite a ways away. My sister was the closest to the boat when they first pulled up, so she was already getting on board, and they didn't notice how far away from us they were.
The waves were getting pretty intense, and even though I had a really good hold, my bcd got wrenched from my hands by a nasty wave. I was in a drysuit, but of course I was wearing a weight belt. For about 10 minutes I had been kicking like crazy trying to keep my head above the swells. I know the right thing to do would have been to ditch my weights, but I tell you what - after taking a few crashing waves over my head and inhaling lungfull after lungfull of water, I totally panicked... I'm not kidding you - I was fully freaked out. I couldn't see the boat, I couldn't see my boyfriend, I couldn't find my bcd...and I didn't think about what I was supposed to do - like ditch my weights!
Fortunately, my boyfriend was just one swell behind me, and he grabbed me, gave me his air and yelled REALLY loud at the boat G*D DAMMIT GET OVER HERE NOW! They zoomed over to us and he was still yelling at them GET HER OUT OF THE WATER NOW!!
They grabbed me, pulled me into the boat, and while relieved, I felt like a total moron.....
It certainly was a learning experience on so many levels!
(and our LDS owner has been giving me crap ever since I told him about it!)

:drown:

 

[PhotoTJ]

I posted this in SoCal Divers, also.

I was diving a beach dive here in Malibu, CA today. The red tides seem to be gone, and I thought I'd grab a scallop or two, and get my 'lobster eye' tuned up, as the season starts next week. Now, in the course of getting scallops, you will stir up the water a little, and as a result, you will be visited by our state fish, the Garibaldi. And soon, you will have an entire crowd of friends zooming around you. Kelp bass, Sheepshead, SurfPerch, Blacksmiths, and others.

Well, all this was going on, when I actually heard every fish around me disappear. (Sort of a quick whoosh, if you're wondering.) As soon as everyone vanished, I turned around, tank to the reef, and looked around with my scallop bar held high.

Why?

Cause a 10' Great White was swimming by, passing about 15 feet from me!

I stayed there for 10 minutes or so, till I felt a nibble on my glove. The Garibaldi were back.

I pretty much commandoed my way back to shore, swimming in quick dashes from cover to cover. You wouldn't think a 190-pound diver in full gear could hide behind a single kelp stipe, but I managed it.

OK, I've now dove with a Great White with no cage! And I didn't soil my wetsuit!