Wall dive in unexpected current: What you would do?

[Soakedlontra]

You plan to dive a wall that is about 90 ft deep but you decide to keep your max depth at 70 ft. You think that you have hit slack, but as soon you descend the current begins to pick up. You drift along the wall while moving into a shallower depth. Then you encounter a channel where another, stronger, current, pushes you out into open water. You try to swim against it, you hang onto cobblestones that are unstable, there is no bull kelp to hold onto nearby. You back up and find a sheltered spot in the rocky outcrop. Now you are stuck there. What would you do to get yourself out of those conditions?

1) stay there until your air supply allows then let it go, drift and do a control ascent in mid water?

2) drift along with the current that comes from the channel and begin a controlled ascent in mid water straightaway to get the hell out of there as soon as possible?

3) kick as hard as you can against the current, crawl while holding onto rocks at the same time to reach the first bull kelp stipe that you can find and begin to climb up using the stipe as a rope and while holding onto the kelp you do your controlled ascent and safety stop and then surface?

 

[Doc]

1) [-]stay there until your air supply allows then[/-] let it go, drift and do a control ascent in mid water?

The second half of #1.... But I suppose it depends upon where your exit is, a boat or on-shore.

Which kinda' amounts to #3...

2) drift along with the current that comes from the channel and begin a controlled ascent in mid water straightaway to get the hell out of there as soon as possible?

 

[Cave Diver]

I'd likely choose to abort the dive and do a controlled ascent as soon as possible, given your scenario.

 

[Crush]

4) deploy DSMB, ascend to 20 ft, do 3-min safety, surface, prepare to use mirror or whistle if necessary.

 

[TSandM]

I'm a little confused.

You began a dive along a wall, with the bottom at 90 feet, right? The current was blowing you along the wall. There is then a break in the wall, with a current blowing out through it? So you can't really go back the way you came, and you can't go forward because you can't cross the gap?

What I would do would depend on the situation of the dive. If this is a live boat dive, I'd drift, blow a bag, and ascend (assuming the "channel" wasn't the opening into a marina or something else with heavy boat traffic). If it was an anchored boat dive, I would have aborted if the current blowing me along the wall was too strong to swim back against, unless the current was going to reverse. If it was a shore dive, again, I'd have had some serious second thoughts about continuing, if I couldn't swim back against the current, but if I had done the dive hoping it would reverse, I would definitely try to stay with the wall to ascend. You have no guarantee, if you drift, that you will be able to get back to ANY fixed point, shore or boat.

If you can't make headway against the current, you can always dump all your gas, get as negative as you can, and crawl.

 

[Garth]

I'd likely choose to abort the dive and do a controlled ascent as soon as possible, given your scenario.

I agree with this. No sense in waiting.

 

[knowone]

Running out of air is bad.
A bag is good and bobbing around in the ocean is more embarassing than life threatening.
Becoming out of breath under water is also bad.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

You plan to dive a wall that is about 90 ft deep but you decide to keep your max depth at 70 ft. You think that you have hit slack, but as soon you descend the current begins to pick up. You drift along the wall while moving into a shallower depth. Then you encounter a channel where another, stronger, current, pushes you out into open water. You try to swim against it, you hang onto cobblestones that are unstable, there is no bull kelp to hold onto nearby. You back up and find a sheltered spot in the rocky outcrop. Now you are stuck there. What would you do to get yourself out of those conditions?

1) stay there until your air supply allows then let it go, drift and do a control ascent in mid water?

2) drift along with the current that comes from the channel and begin a controlled ascent in mid water straightaway to get the hell out of there as soon as possible?

3) kick as hard as you can against the current, crawl while holding onto rocks at the same time to reach the first bull kelp stipe that you can find and begin to climb up using the stipe as a rope and while holding onto the kelp you do your controlled ascent and safety stop and then surface?

Depending on circumstances, I'd ...

2) shoot a bag, drift and do a controlled ascent in mid-water straightaway to get the hell out of there as soon as possible

or

3) pull myself back along the rocks till I reached a relatively sheltered area where I could either make a free ascent, or use bull kelp to help me make a controlled ascent

Keep in mind that bull kelp won't grow beyond about 40 feet depth, and typically won't be found out where the current's strong ... so if you make it to the kelp the chances are you will be able to ascend unassisted. But you don't want to kick as hard as you can to get there because that's a recipe for CO2 overload. If you can pull yourself upstream to where the kelp is, do so. If not, go with the flow ... but make sure you shoot a bag first. Having faced pretty much the exact scenario you described several years back up around Race Rocks (Victoria, BC), we were more than a quarter-mile from the dive site by the time we surfaced. Give the boat as much notice as possible that you are leaving the area ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[gypsyjim]

I certainly see no value to option #1. What ever portions of #2 and/or 3 work, get an SMB onto the surface as soon as feasible, so your location is known.

 

[Soakedlontra]

I'm a little confused.

You began a dive along a wall, with the bottom at 90 feet, right? The current was blowing you along the wall. There is then a break in the wall, with a current blowing out through it? So you can't really go back the way you came, and you can't go forward because you can't cross the gap?

Yes. It was a boat dive and I don't remember the topography of the site well now, but I do remember that there was not a beach but a fairly steep rocky shore. We could have tried to keep kicking diagonally to the current to reach that shore and somehow pulling ourselves out of the water like two sea lions but it did not seem to me a very practical option.

When we tried to crawl along the ledge that was on top of the wall at about 35 feet, where the second faster current was running, and realized that we were using a lot of energy and air not to mention the level of stress going steadily up we gave up and backed off. Then my buddy found a spot protected from the current but by then I had made up my mind and I gave him the thumb up to start a controlled ascent even if that meant that we had to drift in open water. It took me a while to convince him to quit the dive and begin the ascent, though!

We did not shoot the SMB until we were on the surface. Luckily we could still see the boat so we must have drifted less than a quarter of a mile and guess what? I usually carry a whistle inside the left pocket of my drysuit but this time I had put it inside the pocked of my undergarment! We got lucky that the speed of the current (roughly estimated to be about 3kt) did not increased a lot while we were ascending (that was my biggest worry). With some effort I was able to prevent my stress level to take over me and by then my breathing was not too bad considering the circumstances. I had 1,250 psi left when I finally climbed the boat ladder.

For the first time I seriously considered to skip the 3 minutes safety stop to reach the surface as soon as possible. After 2 minutes I could not wait any longer and signalled my buddy to surface.