Solo diving on a rebreather

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wedivebc

CCR Instructor Trainer
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I was asked in another thread to comment on an event that happened to me several years ago so I felt this would be a good place to share it.

I have been a scuba instructor for about 13 years including SDI solo diver specialty. I used to do a lot of solo diving and would on occasion solo dive on CCR.
So a while back I was diving in Mexico with some friends. My two buddies and I were diving Megs. Sofnolime in Mexico was quite a bit more expensive and when someone offered me some Mexican Medical CO2 absorbent at a fraction of the cost I thought it would be a good way to save some money.
We had two friends who had just completed their OC cave course and wanted to see the giant "Fang" in Chac Mool. We offered to set up the jump from the cavern line for them because it can be hard to find in the halocline. We agreed we would go in 10 minutes ahead and they would follow our line. Although we had been there a couple of times before for some reason we didn't find the cave line right away and by the time we had set up the jump our OC friends were hot on our heels. We decided to stay in front of them and started swimming quite rapidly to beat them to the fang. I felt myself huffing and puffing on the way in but just thought it was from the heavy swimming.

When we reached the fang room the cave opens up to a big room with the floor about 50 feet lower than the tunnel. I had a sense of vertigo when I reached that point and held onto a rock as my head began to spin. I reasoned that my breathing was under control and I didn't have a headache so I discounted any symptoms of CO2.

On the way back I was in front so I adopted a leisurely pace and felt everything was much better when all of a sudden my buddy taps me on the shoulder and I hear him say "are you OK?" I assure him I was fine and keep swimming. Five minutes later another tap, "are you sure you're OK" I reply "Yeah Yeah, (expletive) I'm fine". A minute later another hard tap tap "BAIL-OUT, BAIL-OUT!!!!" I'm like "what the F%^&" and do what I considered to be an instructor quality bailout drill with exaggerated motions and all. As soon as I got on bailout I felt as though a fog had lifted from my brain and the cave got bigger and clearer.
When we got out of the cave I opened my scrubber and the indicating sorb had a solid layer of purple between the inlet and the outlet.

Upon reviewing the video of the dive I got chills when I saw what my buddy saw. My trim position was almost head down vertical, my fins were crossing and twitching all over the place. I was wandering all over the cave away from the line. I had no awareness of this at the time.

I am convinced beyond a doubt if I had not been diving with an attentive buddy (two in this case) I would have eventually succumbed to CO2 accumulation which several hundred feet back in a cave is as good as dead. I completely lacked the ability to recognize the symptoms and therefore would not have been able to save myself or bailout on my own.
 
Thanks for sharing. A good reminder for many of us.
 
Thank you for sharing. I think in addition to not diving solo, it really drives home the point to never take a shortcut with the machine.

I may be a bit off base, but it seems like a significant portion of ccr accidents begin before the diver even gets near the water.
 
It gave me the chills reading it. Glad you are alive to post. Cheers.

---------- Post added February 4th, 2014 at 10:28 PM ----------

I'm not a rebreather diver so excuse my ignorance, so was the absorbent you used the issue? If so how/why?
 
Now you said you dont dive solo CCR anymore, but the cause of the issue was improper Sorb. Also do you think if you went to OC when you got to the larger room for a breath or two you would have noticed there was something wrong? I try to make it a habit anytime I feel something abnormal to switch the BOV to OC and take a breath or two and maybe flush the loop depending. Just curious and thanks for sharing.
 
Thank you for sharing. I think in addition to not diving solo, it really drives home the point to never take a shortcut with the machine.

I may be a bit off base, but it seems like a significant portion of ccr accidents begin before the diver even gets near the water.


Very true also of any scuba accident but CCR especially

Now you said you dont dive solo CCR anymore, but the cause of the issue was improper Sorb. Also do you think if you went to OC when you got to the larger room for a breath or two you would have noticed there was something wrong? I try to make it a habit anytime I feel something abnormal to switch the BOV to OC and take a breath or two and maybe flush the loop depending. Just curious and thanks for sharing.

Sanity breaths are a double edged sword. A traditional CO2 rentention hit will not clear up from just a few breaths. The fact that mine did means I had not retained that much CO2 and in the absents of other symptoms I did not even consider it to be an issue. I was convinced I was OK right up until I bailed out.
 
There's an interesting video I got to watch during my course. I'm not sure where to find it online, but it was made by british health and safety. It featured a camera crew from the local news station getting some footage for a story, when one of them took a co2 hit. The cameraman managed to get the whole thing on tape, terrifying to watch.
 
There's an interesting video I got to watch during my course. I'm not sure where to find it online, but it was made by british health and safety. It featured a camera crew from the local news station getting some footage for a story, when one of them took a co2 hit. The cameraman managed to get the whole thing on tape, terrifying to watch.

It was SkyTV and it's on YouTube as the "rebreather incident" if you search.

I'm glad you came out of your incident ok, Dave.

-Adrian
 

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