Recent near miss in Bahamas found on YouTube!

[Gombessa]

I understand that 60fpm was more or less a standard some years ago. It's probably a very good thing that this was dialed back, but if they were not at 150ft for long, a hasty ascent may be the lesser of several evils (not that it's a good thing to do, just that their risk of dcs may somewhat lower than what we'd intuit...)

 

[apertyx]

Is it just me, or is the max pin on that second depth gauge only showing 115 ft max depth? I looked hard, and that's what I saw.

 

[Joefri]

Is it just me, or is the max pin on that second depth gauge only showing 115 ft max depth? I looked hard, and that's what I saw.

I just looked at it and I think it shows just over 150ft.

 

[jridg]

There's no real reason to doubt the validity of the video - and it makes an excellent point. New divers won't have been exposed to narcosis effects and may not fully understand what's happening to them. This more experienced diver went down and took them in hand to save them. Think about it - if someone took your camera away and you weren't narced, would you let them?

Don't play "is this real?" - take the message for what it's worth - which is a lot!

 

[Valwood1]

Did anyone else notice that the diver filming this was one stop away from DECO? 2nd to last bubble on the left hand side of his computer. The ascent seemed fast as well. Lucky all 3 of them were okay. It's like the blind leading the blind.

I respect and congratulate the diver who retrieved those two, but the incident does illustrate the potential dangers of "rescuing" someone. while in Costa Rica, one diver went far too deep, and bounced around up-and-down; I was using nitrox with a 100' MOD, and, while I banged the tank and waved at her maybe 25' below me, I sure as hell wasn't going to exceed my MOD to bring her up.

 

[Gilldiver]

The ascent from 150 to 15 in two minutes was standard SOP from the late 40's through the early 90's using a 60ft/minute rate. The changes in dive practice are still very recent as far as SCUBA goes.

Now I wouldn't do it as a planed dive any more, but in this cae I would get them up even faster if I had to as it was a survival situation.

As far as deco goes:
The deco limits on the US Navy tables which for 150 is:
10 minutes gives you 1 minute deco at 10 feet
15 minutes would give you 3 minutes at 10 feet
20 minutes would give you 2 minutes at 20 and 7 at 10

So, if they were shallower for the first part of the dive or just had not been down all that long, they could have going into deco and cleared on the way up.

But this is all looking a bit set up. The light seems to be too bright for that depth and all divers would be running on automatic due to being Narced. Last a single 80 is going to go very fast, so if it happened, I bet they were only down perhaps 10 minutes total.

 

[Zieg]

Well I'm not familiar with that model of computer, but is the depth dispaly supposed to blink off and on like that? And it appeared to me that the rest of the display disappeared from time to time, is that normal?

 

[UnderwaterBumbleBee]

I have that computer and it is normal for the depth to blink, probably so you spot it faster. I think you just can't see the display from glare on the screen which can happen from time to time. They have a button to illuminate the screen. It looked like he dropped the camera at 131 feet and at 149 picked it up to film his gauge again and you can see the red warning light beeping at the bottom for a deco warning.

 

[D_B]

SCARY

the max depth telltale needle on the mechanical SPG is bit over 150 ..

 

[RJP]

The biggest problem that these two had was their cameras. I believe that you shouldn't carry a camera until about dive 100. The complete lack of situational awareness that tends to accompany a camera that early in a dive "career" can be a killer, as we almost saw here.