Question Perfect sabotage at 110' deep...?

[wine_dark_sea_]

Hello all! I've lurked on these boards for months. I'm a total novice. My mom used to forbid me from even LOOKING at scuba flyers because of my asthma. (FYI: If you've got no time for pleasantries, skip to the bold parts.)

On my first day here, I didn't know what a regulator was. Or the difference between open- and closed-circuit. Since then, I've greatly enjoyed my struggle to comprehend your tales, triumphs, wisdom, and culture. I'm inspired to try diving someday soon! But that's not what this post is about.

No, I'm finally posting because -- wait for it -- I'm ~writing something~.

(You may be thinking: "do your own job." Honestly, I tried. Dozens of hours of research. Your passion is COMPLICATED, in a beautiful way. Aren't you annoyed when dummies like me don't do it justice?)

Here's the short version: Let's say a ghost is hell-bent on ruining your week while you're 110' deep on the ocean floor. What's the worst they could do to you / your equipment without it being an ironclad death sentence? And how would you manage to survive? I'm envisioning a simple, legible sabotage -- e.g., valves stuck open or closed / hoses or bladders punctured / flood, leak, or free-flow / entanglement, etc. -- but take the prompt any direction you please. It could be loud and in-your-face...or silent and sneaky.)

Yes, a dive to 110' is open to broad interpretation. Maybe it's a deco dive, maybe not. Depending on the timing, a quick ascent to the surface may or may not incur a gnarly DCS hit. You decide. Whatever alphabet soup describes your kit -- CCR, OC, FFM, BCS, BOV, DIR (joking, I think), etc. -- I want to hear what you would fear.

Thank you so much for any and all guidance you can offer! Hopefully you get something out of this too. An exercise in vigilance and preparedness, perhaps?

 

[PBcatfish]

110ft is a deco dive on air after about 15 minutes at that depth, which is easy enough to do, but with mixed gasses the maximum no decompression bottom time is longer and you become more likely to run out of air before hitting the deco limit unless you are carrying doubles or a really big tank or a rebreather.

My worst oops so far at 100+ feet was a pressure gauge that stuck at around 1100psi & led me to believe that I had more air in my tank than I actually did. After seeing the same pressure on 3 different glances, I tapped the gauge on my tank & it dropped suddenly to just over 400. My controlled ascent was immediate.

A friend got his arm stuck in a hole in a coral reef, after trying to grab a lobster that went in deep. He was nearly out of air when he made a desperate move & took an injury in order to get free. I wasn't on that dive. That story is second hand.

Another friend who had been diving for many years, got bent after a dive to around 110ish feet. This was a guy who carried a second computer for redundancy. He did not blow the limits on the computer. He was the guy who checks the mixes in all the tanks on the boat himself. He was in somewhat deteriorated physical condition when he got into the water that day. He got a serious DCS hit doing the same dive that he had done many times before. I've been less likely to push to the edge of the limits since then. I was not on the boat that day either. That story is also second hand, but corroborated by several people I have dove with regularly.

This other one only happened in probably 30 or 40 feet of water, but could have happened at any depth. I was using an old mask, that had been a favorite for probably about 20 years. The plastic frame busted & the mask flooded. I was not able to read my gauges to judge my ascent rate or pick a depth for a safety stop. I gradually found my way to the surface, but it didn't seem like a certain thing. It's pretty hard to judge if you are going up or down when you are moving slowly without a functional mask. A modern computer would normally beep at you if you go up too fast. When I do shallow dives with no risk of hitting a deco limit, I usually don't bring one.

The other failure that I've had at around 100 feet was an old BC letting go. I don't take old BCs deep any more. I've had a total of 3 BC failures in 35+ years of diving. One was a failure at the bladder to hose connection on an old wing that had only been used a few times. That BC looked like new, but age had made the plastic brittle. The second failure was a split seam on the same BC after replacing the bladder. The material just let go. The third was a stitching failure on a BC that had seen a lot of use in a chlorinated pool.

 

[Trace Malinowski]

Some say, "Bent is better than dead," but I disagree based on being dizzy for 2 1/2 years from DCS and having residual injuries. In the past, I would have told you that a total malfunction of all possible methods of breathing would mean a simple emergency ascent. Now, if a ghost created a total failure of my breathing gas supply which would mean an emergency ascent that could result in DCS, I'm not going anywhere.

 

[happy-diver]

"Monkey f--k, monkey f--k, monkey f--k!" as exclaimed one half of the "bicker brothers"
as his body was being torn to pieces, with nitrogen expansion turning his blood to froth

 

[Wibble]

Proper Planning and Preparation Prevents Piss Poor Performance

You train, you practice, you think in advance. More importantly you have redundancy especially for an "overhead" restricted dive (meaning a hard ceiling such as a cave or shipwreck, or a "soft" ceiling such as a decompression obligation).

33m/110ft isn’t particularly deep and is a relatively standard recreational dive meaning no decompression. Therefore the surface is theoretically accessible in the case of a total equipment failure.

However, it completely depends upon the diver's response to the emergency. Panic and you’re dead or injured. Prevaricate and you reduce your chances of survival.

Your actions depend completely upon the circumstances of the failure:

• Do you have redundant gas supplies—a "pony" backup or bailout?
• Do you have a buddy to help you?
• Can you do anything about the leak—shutdown the valve?
• Have you any buoyancy?
• How out of gas are you? Low or completely out?
• Get the heck out of there. As you’re ascending the gas in your BCD/drysuit/lungs will expand and you may be able to breathe

Training, practice and experience will save your life.

 

[Wibble]

To add, technical divers spend a lot of time working through failures and response procedures. This includes using reliable redundant kit, having redundant reserves of gas, closing valves and breathing from alternative sources, incorporating failures in planning, etc. etc.

The main point being that you don’t find yourself in this position in the first place. But when you do, you can mitigate this with pre-prepared solutions.

Arguably technical diving is safer then recreational diving.

 

[NothingClever]

Hello all! I've lurked on these boards for months. I'm a total novice. My mom used to forbid me from even LOOKING at scuba flyers because of my asthma. (FYI: If you've got no time for pleasantries, skip to the bold parts.)

On my first day here, I didn't know what a regulator was. Or the difference between open- and closed-circuit. Since then, I've greatly enjoyed my struggle to comprehend your tales, triumphs, wisdom, and culture. I'm inspired to try diving someday soon! But that's not what this post is about.

No, I'm finally posting because -- wait for it -- I'm ~writing something~.

(You may be thinking: "do your own job." Honestly, I tried. Dozens of hours of research. Your passion is COMPLICATED, in a beautiful way. Aren't you annoyed when dummies like me don't do it justice?)

Here's the short version: Let's say a ghost is hell-bent on ruining your week while you're 110' deep on the ocean floor. What's the worst they could do to you / your equipment without it being an ironclad death sentence? And how would you manage to survive? I'm envisioning a simple, legible sabotage -- e.g., valves stuck open or closed / hoses or bladders punctured / flood, leak, or free-flow / entanglement, etc. -- but take the prompt any direction you please. It could be loud and in-your-face...or silent and sneaky.)

Yes, a dive to 110' is open to broad interpretation. Maybe it's a deco dive, maybe not. Depending on the timing, a quick ascent to the surface may or may not incur a gnarly DCS hit. You decide. Whatever alphabet soup describes your kit -- CCR, OC, FFM, BCS, BOV, DIR (joking, I think), etc. -- I want to hear what you would fear.

Thank you so much for any and all guidance you can offer! Hopefully you get something out of this too. An exercise in vigilance and preparedness, perhaps?

You’re writing something, you say, and I sense your enthusiasm for cracking the technical aspects (non-Menduno definition) of diving but apparently only a cursory interest to become a diver.

Is this ‘something’ going to be a movie script with just enough showcasing to get us into the theater but replete with errors to make us cringe throughout and regret spending the money?

Rather than trying to learn the technical aspects (again, non-Menduno definition) of diving by wading through a forum and running a high risk of errors in your something, an option is to just focus your attention on engaging/hiring somebody with proven expertise to provide you more efficient drafting.

@Trace Malinowski above has already appeared. @Jim Lapenta is another name that comes to mind but there are others. I’d DM them for interest or referral to somebody that passes their sniff test who can help you.

It’s the internet. Using a fishing net approach across the forum increases your chances of getting a pedant, a frustrated troll looking for vindication or an instructor whose enthusiasm for a lifestyle exceeds their expertise in training.

 

[BackAfter30]

Read Tom Clancy's Without Remorse (the book, not the friggin' movie) for an interesting take on your subject, and other related thoughts.

 

[Edward3c]

Not another Open Water film please. Though it did make $55m.

 

[Superlyte27]

Some say, "Bent is better than dead," but I disagree based on being dizzy for 2 1/2 years from DCS and having residual injuries. In the past, I would have told you that a total malfunction of all possible methods of breathing would mean a simple emergency ascent. Now, if a ghost created a total failure of my breathing gas supply which would mean an emergency ascent that could result in DCS, I'm not going anywhere.

Use your wing as a rebreather. Then go to the hospital for the worst bronchial infection of your life.