Tell us about your entanglement experience?

[The Chairman]

(ears are out of the water that's how shallow I am) :lilbunny:

I've seen those ears! You could be three foot deep and they would STILL be sticking out of the water.

I have been entangled a few times by mono and once by a hook and leader. The tank usually has to come off. Since I wear no weight (steel tank), I just have to be careful about keeping my BC between me and the surface.

 

[ArcticDiver]

Reading this thread has reminded me of a near entanglement that could very well have been fatal.

It was a live boat dive off Quadra Island, BC, Canada. We all went in the water and drifted along the wall admiring the creatures. All the dives there are outstanding and this one was no exception. I did notice that about midway through the dive our boat was hanging a lot closer to us than normal.

After coming to the surface the skipper told us that a long liner with line, and hooks, in the water was disregarding the Alpha and Dive flags and was headed right over top of us. Had our skipper not moved his boat to block the long liner we could very well have been snagged. Now that would have been a pickle!

 

[underwasser bolt]

I was at Possum Kingdom Lake in about 1993. There was an orchard of pecan trees long since submerged. I was diving with my wife, dont remember the depth, but it was February or March, and the temp was cold. I swam through a monofilament line that was tangled between the trees. I was so tangled I could not move my right arm and my legs were bound in the line also. I carried two knives at the time, and I was able to reach just one of them. I sent my wife to the surface when i hit 500 psi. She was reluctant but went. I was slashing fishing line with my knife. I hit the surface with 200 psi. Closest I have ever come to dying while diving.

 

[redrover]

Lost hair clips and my long hair wrapped all around my valve. Thought I’d never get that BC off me.
(Note to self: The clip bright idea for Hair Management failing after 3 successful; indicates potential catastrophic loss of all hair and, NEVER use that again.)

 

[Splitlip]

I had a couple similar to Dumpster Diver's while policing hooks and leaders. Fortunately I was using SCUBA so was able to sort things out.

I had one real squirly entanglement experience though. A friend of the family asked me to inspect the hull of his sail boat as he thought he hit something. The boat was docked at the marina at the Old Port Cove Yacht Club. Simple enough. Viz was crap but it I was in a marina.
Went under and while inspecting the hull, my 1st stage got caught up in a rats nest of mono filiment wound around the prop shaft.
I was stuck pretty good. Had one cutting tool and hacked and cut blind behind my head. Kept thinking please don't drop the knife. In hind site, I might have been able to get out of my backpack, but managed to cut the stuff off.

 

[Gary D.]

A very large percentage of our training focus’s around entanglement. We don’t worry much about cutting out but on gear removal so the diver can better work the entanglement.

The first step is to identify the severity of the problem and identify the product. There is stuff out there that you are not going to cut or remove with a knife or shears.

I had a good one several years ago where I just got free enough to get to shallow water. Then I just knelt down and let the rest of the team spend several minutes cutting me free. I had a couple of lures big enough to catch Jaws on stuck in me. Those were about three times larger than what the law allows here in Idaho. For that lake they were bigger than the fish. It would be nice to know who was using them because I know a dark damp area where they could store them.

The funny thing about entanglement is you never know where or when they are going to happen. It doesn’t have to come from man made items and nature has plenty to concern a swimmer or diver.

I have run into people who say they are careful and it will never happen to them. Guess what, it only takes once to be your last if you are not ready.

Gary D.

 

[ArcticDiver]

...
The funny thing about entanglement is you never know where or when they are going to happen. It doesn’t have to come from man made items and nature has plenty to concern a swimmer or diver.

I have run into people who say they are careful and it will never happen to them. Guess what, it only takes once to be your last if you are not ready.

Gary D.

Right on. I've cruised our river a couple times. But, with limited visibility, current that I've seen crumple an aluminium canoe, and lots and lots of sweepers and underwater obstacles I soon decided it just wasn't worth the risk.

 

[ferretchen]

Slowrain,
I'm glad that your entanglement situation wasn't serious for you or your partner, but I have to say... diving in a livestock pond sounds like a biohazard situation, even without a dead body... Pretty disgusting, I imagine. The runoff into those ponds can be unspeakable.

 

[Thalassamania]

'till I read Gary D.'s piece I'd forgotten this one. 1972, I was a auxiliary with the Alameda County Sheriff's Office Dive Team. We had a call out to recover a gun from a shootout down on the docks. There were a number of teams searching and we each had overlapping areas to cover ... we knew the gun was there.

A boat placed our downline and my buddy and I entered the water and descended the line. There was a bit of current and absolutely no visibility, so it was a search by feel. My buddy was on the bottom at the clump weight and I had a reel. Each time I made a circle he'd give me a one jerk, I'd return the single pull, he'd give me three, I'd give him three back and I'd let out another three feet of line and make another sweep.

I've gone around a bunch of times and I'm really more than a little bored. The all of a sudden I hit something solid in front of me. It's big. It's hard. It's heavy. I stop and go to kneel on the bottom. Bam ... I can't raise up. I feel left ... It's big. It's hard. It's heavy. I feel right ... It's big. It's hard. It's heavy. Bottom's still mud. I can't figure it out. I'm a little freaked out, but I stay still and stark giving my buddy continuous pulls. I can hear his regulator, I feel his hands one my calves. He moves about a bit and then I can feel him gently pulling me backward. This goes on quite a while. Finally I feel his hands near my shoulders and I reach back and hold onto one of his hands. I can kneel. I grasp his right hand in my left and we start to feel about. There's a hard object sticking up out of the mud that has a top and three sides and I've just swum clean into it through the open side.

We mark it with one of those old "Sea Hunt" CO2 cartridge inflated floats and a piece of cord, go back to the down line and surface.

Another team found the gun later in the day. A few days latter we went back at slack water on the incoming tide. There was enough visibility to just make out what had caused the problem ... an old car with the rear window busted out that was buried in the mud to it's deck and that had filled up with mud.

 

[AirInHere]

Spending most of my time diving in Northern California, I get entangled in kelp every once in a while, but as others have pointed out, its not much of a concern.

However, I did have a scary experience with entanglement while diving in Florida last winter.

I was diving the Blue Heron Bridge/Phil Fosters Park at slack tide. It was getting dark (slack tide was about 5:30pm) and I was diving Eanx 32 in an aluminum 100. Well, I started the dive late and ended up being down for a little over an hour. It was very dark when I exited the water, and I was glad I had brought along my divelight.

I had to drag around a dive flag (I hate those things) and the tide had picked up pretty severely while I was out exploring. What I didnt realize was that the line for the dive flag had gotten snagged on about fifty places on the channel wall and that the shifting water had looped the rope around me.

Visibility had dropped to about 5ft and my dive buddy was already around the corner of the wall and was swimming for shore when I realized I was fully entangled.

The current is picking up and becoming unswimmable quickly, its almost fully dark outside, vis is reduced to nothing, dive buddy oblivious, yellow nylon rope firmly wrapped all around me. And big (I mean BIG) scorpionfish lying all over the place, so I dont really want to lay down on one on accident.

Panick never set in, but I had to get my spool and slowly reel my line in untangling myself as I went and trying to get the line removed from where it had wrapped around the structure. I was not having a good time.

I was never bound up to where I could not move, but I sure was tethered to the wall and was not going anywhere untill I got untied.

I also started thinking about sharks....I have no idea why.