OOPS,
On a recent dive I ran into a question for which I have no answer. Four of us went diving in two pairs to spear fish ant hunt for lobster off of a fifth friend's boat (the fifth remained on board during the dive). I was not hunting but wanted to observe since I am a new diver and the plan was to have the other buddy team (who was more experienced than my buddy and I) free the anchor upon completion of their dive.
We were completing the dive which went to 100 feet for approximately 25 minutes and I was at 15 feet doing my safety stop with my buddy when about one minute into my safety stop, one diver from the other pair of buddies ascended up the anchor line rapidly, pointing to his regulator. I deduced correctly that he was out of air (despite the incorrect signal) and descended to meet him, giving him my primary reg and replacing it with my air2 (secondary air source). When we began sharing air my guages showed me with 1100 lbs (my buddy had been down to 900 when we began our ascent). At this point the big question in my mind was "Where is his buddy?".
Attempts to communicate proved futile leaving me only with the knowledge that he had become separated from his buddy and did not know where he was. Not good. After approximately two minutes of sharing air, I saw movement below me and to my dismay, realized that it was MY buddy descending rapidly down the anchor line. For the record, my buddy is an instructor with fifteen years of diving experience and the others are both open water certified with many hundreds of dives. I was by far the least experienced with only about 25 dives and three months of diving since being certified.
At this point I had no idea what to do. I could not go after my buddy (nor did I want to since it seemed completely reckless) since I was currently sharing air with the third diver (who I assumed would stay with me as long as possible to decompress after his rapid out of air ascent). This also proved to not be the case as I realized that diver #3 (the one I was sharing with) had now departed for the surface after only 2 minutes of safety stop. At this point I really thought we were screwed.
My only thought was to watch diver #3 board the boat, which he did, and stay under as long as I could to assist my buddy as much as I could or look for bodies of him or the missing diver number four. Needless to say I was more than a little freaked out at this point. Shortly thereafter I saw my buddy surfacing rapidly about fifty feet away. I attempted to join him but only reached him when he had made it to the surface. We both boarded the boat and found that diver number four was already aboard and diver number three was apparently doing fine.
The miraculous part of this story is that everyone was fine. Thank god, but no one got bent or drowned although I'm still not sure how. On the boat we pieced together what actually happened and it goes something like this: divers #3 and #4 had become separated while looking for fish and contrary to our pre-dive brief did not surface, but stuck around to look for each other. Diver #4 ran short on air and surfaced with no sign of anybody else. He boarded the boat and waited.
Diver #3 continued to look for diver four and then returned to the anchor line where he waited some more, began to experience difficulty breathing and surfaced after realizing that he was out of air. He was met by me at 15 feet as previously mentioned. My buddy, thinking that we had a missing diver decided to descend again to search briefly for the missing diver #4 and to free the anchor from the bottom to insure that the boat could be moved if it was necessary to effect a rescue.
He said later that he was not overly concerned with getting bent since he had already performed a full safety stop and he had been within NDL's when we had surfaced originally. He said he intended to go down only momentarily for a quick look and to possibly free the anchor. He said later that geting bent was unlikely in his opinion since he had already done one normal ascent and safety stop and that he would only be down the second time for under 2 minutes. Regardless, upon reaching the anchor, he too ran out of air and was forced to make an emergency swimming ascent which is when I saw him come up.
Needless to say, this situation was completely pathetic. We were extraordinarily lucky that no one was bent or killed. Any input board members might have for what I could have done better would be appreciated.
On a recent dive I ran into a question for which I have no answer. Four of us went diving in two pairs to spear fish ant hunt for lobster off of a fifth friend's boat (the fifth remained on board during the dive). I was not hunting but wanted to observe since I am a new diver and the plan was to have the other buddy team (who was more experienced than my buddy and I) free the anchor upon completion of their dive.
We were completing the dive which went to 100 feet for approximately 25 minutes and I was at 15 feet doing my safety stop with my buddy when about one minute into my safety stop, one diver from the other pair of buddies ascended up the anchor line rapidly, pointing to his regulator. I deduced correctly that he was out of air (despite the incorrect signal) and descended to meet him, giving him my primary reg and replacing it with my air2 (secondary air source). When we began sharing air my guages showed me with 1100 lbs (my buddy had been down to 900 when we began our ascent). At this point the big question in my mind was "Where is his buddy?".
Attempts to communicate proved futile leaving me only with the knowledge that he had become separated from his buddy and did not know where he was. Not good. After approximately two minutes of sharing air, I saw movement below me and to my dismay, realized that it was MY buddy descending rapidly down the anchor line. For the record, my buddy is an instructor with fifteen years of diving experience and the others are both open water certified with many hundreds of dives. I was by far the least experienced with only about 25 dives and three months of diving since being certified.
At this point I had no idea what to do. I could not go after my buddy (nor did I want to since it seemed completely reckless) since I was currently sharing air with the third diver (who I assumed would stay with me as long as possible to decompress after his rapid out of air ascent). This also proved to not be the case as I realized that diver #3 (the one I was sharing with) had now departed for the surface after only 2 minutes of safety stop. At this point I really thought we were screwed.
My only thought was to watch diver #3 board the boat, which he did, and stay under as long as I could to assist my buddy as much as I could or look for bodies of him or the missing diver number four. Needless to say I was more than a little freaked out at this point. Shortly thereafter I saw my buddy surfacing rapidly about fifty feet away. I attempted to join him but only reached him when he had made it to the surface. We both boarded the boat and found that diver number four was already aboard and diver number three was apparently doing fine.
The miraculous part of this story is that everyone was fine. Thank god, but no one got bent or drowned although I'm still not sure how. On the boat we pieced together what actually happened and it goes something like this: divers #3 and #4 had become separated while looking for fish and contrary to our pre-dive brief did not surface, but stuck around to look for each other. Diver #4 ran short on air and surfaced with no sign of anybody else. He boarded the boat and waited.
Diver #3 continued to look for diver four and then returned to the anchor line where he waited some more, began to experience difficulty breathing and surfaced after realizing that he was out of air. He was met by me at 15 feet as previously mentioned. My buddy, thinking that we had a missing diver decided to descend again to search briefly for the missing diver #4 and to free the anchor from the bottom to insure that the boat could be moved if it was necessary to effect a rescue.
He said later that he was not overly concerned with getting bent since he had already performed a full safety stop and he had been within NDL's when we had surfaced originally. He said he intended to go down only momentarily for a quick look and to possibly free the anchor. He said later that geting bent was unlikely in his opinion since he had already done one normal ascent and safety stop and that he would only be down the second time for under 2 minutes. Regardless, upon reaching the anchor, he too ran out of air and was forced to make an emergency swimming ascent which is when I saw him come up.
Needless to say, this situation was completely pathetic. We were extraordinarily lucky that no one was bent or killed. Any input board members might have for what I could have done better would be appreciated.