Strong currents, if swept away, what to do?

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Say you are at 60-70 feet. You are going with a current. You deploy your SMB. It rises but near the surface the current is of slower speed, can it rip SMB rope out of your hands leaving you without SMB?

Sorry, I think I missed something on the first read . . . You don't hold the line for the SMB you hold the spool the line is rolled up on.

The actual line is thin and if you try to hold it in bare hands against a hard current it will probably cut you.

flots
 
The first thing is to know what currents to expect and to have a plan. Usually this means diving at predicted slack current, but it might mean riding along with a current. And current predictions don't always pan out. It's why I prefer live-boat diving, if you have enough people in the group. If the currents turn out to be too strong, you can abort the dive and the boat (which has been drifting along with you) can pick you up as you pop up.

Once, in the course of surfacing, I got caught on one side of a rip while the other three divers were on the other side. The boat went to pick up those three and lost track of where I was. I was rapidly floating toward Canada. So I swam perpendicular to the current and made landfall before I got too far away from the island. It took the boat about half an hour to find me. If I had waited, I would have been out in the middle of the channel. The stupid sound-making devices were worthless. A sausage-thing would have been better. But this is the reason that I'm tempted to buy one of those Nautilus submersible VHF radios.
Yes, have a plan. When I was in Cocos, each diver was given a VHF radio, and cautioned that they had about 5 minutes to make a distress call before the current would take them out of range and the search area would be hopelessly enlarged. The boat captains had a plan in place to cooperate, so when one of the National Geographic divers on the other boat became separated, all the boats, pangas included, began a coordinated search until he was found (inside of 5 minutes).
 
If caught in a current and you are getting swept off the planned dive in a uncontrollable manner ,wouldn't the best plan be to asend to the surface at normal assent rate with safety stop.?
 
On one of my last dives, the bottom current went one direction and the surface current went the opposite direction.

I hugged the anchor line and cried like a baby.
You bastage!!! I spilled my coffee reading this !! :)
 
The amount of trouble you are in depends on the dive you are doing. If you are diving from an attended boat, I would say one of the first things you want to do is let the boat know you have lost control of your position, and that requires shooting a bag (which is why I carry one on EVERY boat dive, live or anchored). If you are diving from shore in a place where you have multiple exits, you need to figure out where the current is not blowing directly offshore. Rip currents are generally limited in size, and if you can swim parallel to shore until you are out if one, you can generally make your way back.

If you are diving off an anchored and unattended boat, or from shore where you have only one option for exit, you have a much bigger problem. If you are in shallow water, you may be able to go down to the bottom and use structure to help you work your way back to your exit. Even sand can be helpful -- a hand stuck vertically into it can give you a great deal of purchase. If you are in deep water or midwater, you don't really have an option to stabilize yourself. If you cannot get back to your exit, you have to come up with a Plan B -- which actually should have been part of the thought process before doing the dive.

Personally, I don't dive high current sites with a limited exit without some kind of insurance -- a day of very low current predictions, a second exit option, a scooter, or a safety boat.
 
Sorry, I think I missed something on the first read . . . You don't hold the line for the SMB you hold the spool the line is rolled up on.

The actual line is thin and if you try to hold it in bare hands against a hard current it will probably cut you.

flots

But a spool does not have unlimited rope. If the distance between SMB and you grows, there will be a time when you will feel a tug.
 
But a spool does not have unlimited rope. If the distance between SMB and you grows, there will be a time when you will feel a tug.

You still have to hold on, but the SMB doesn't have a lot of surface area under the water and you're not anchored to anything, so even though you feel it pulling, it's not going to rip your arm off or break the line. As long as you hang on to the spool, it should be just fine. The spool (at least my spools) holds about 2x my maximum planned depth, so the bag will actually drift off at an angle if you have opposing currents.

In any case, this is a recreational, no-deco dive. If you think you're getting swept away, there's no reason you can't surface without a safety stop and make yourself as noisy and visible as possible.

flots.
 
Last year my wife and I both had a SMB, signal mirror,strobe and an air horn just in case, better safe than sorry.
 
What one should do if is swept away by strong currents while scuba diving?

It really depends on where "away" is. For example if you're swept away in the Indian Ocean, you can kiss you 'A' goodbye. Hypothermia will probably get you before the oceanics do, so always look on the bright side of life eh what?

Before getting swept away, shoot a bag. Don't wait until you're doing a safety stop.... or wait until you're at the surface. You can be well away from help by that stage. If the current is strong enough for this to happen, you need to send up the DSMB as soon as you leave the reef. If you can't do this, you should reconsider diving independently from a guide on current prone reefs.

If I didn't have a DSMB on a spool and I was being swept of the reef, I'd rather surface without safety stop to have the best chances of being spotted. Try to take a reference (either visual or with compass) of the reef so that you swim steadily against the current to stay as close as you can to the place where help should be looking for you.

If you're doing a shore dive and you're swept away..., well you are on you're own. Stay as visible as you can. If in a group and there's planes overhead, make a circle with fins pointed inward and kick as much white water aas possible. Use anything shiny as a reflector if you have it.

If you're really worried about it, get a kit with mirror and dye packs. At the very least, a very very large SMB- the largest you can find... preferably with a flag and a slot for a glow stick at night.
 

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