Well, at least I didn't have to clean my wet suit and I am alive?

[CLEAR BLUE]

Very scary! Glad everything turned out OK for you.

 

[pickens_46929]

Welcome to Scubaboard!

This sounds like a classic case of "task loading"... eg. you had too many things going on at once and weren't paying attention... no a huge problem because you had the DM there and your buddy...

I agree that in warm clear water like Hawaii, depth can be hard to judge when you go from poor viz / cold water like the quarries around here.

Doubt you were narced, just distracted.

Lesson learned for the next time

Better buddy skills, communication and planning can help this in the future. A simple "Hey man, I'm distracted a bit cause I really *need* get down {urp}... can you make sure we don't blow max depth?" Plus the need for a communication device like a rattle, horn or banger...

Glad you survived. We've all pulled something "Doh!" at one point in time. Best thing like you've found is "Don't panic."

As Hal Watt's says "Communicate, Confess, Conform"

 

[sunapeebob]

I would agree with all that has been said above. I am a relatively new diver as well. I am right in the midst of doing the book work for the PADI Rescue diver course. I have now done enough dives to look around myself and develop certain rituals with my dive buddy (my son). I would second the suggestion for AOW training. I found that the basic course got you in the water, the AOW actually teaches more skills with diving. The rescue diver course expands your observation of your own and others diving. I have already told my son that we will be practicing various scenarios - stuck inflator, towing, communication, etc. He is already a MSD. You can never practice too much. Get back diving soon - just watch the depth in clear water, it can be deceptive.

 

[Diver Dennis]

When this type of thing happen to most people, it can actually make you a better diver. We all make mistakes but it's a great lesson when people learn from them. I'll bet you'll be watching your depth gauge a lot closer next time...

 

[Scared Spitless]

Thanks for all the replies and thoughts…

Nereas...I usually am checking my gauge frequently, somewhat mystifies me. Perhaps I check it after I am at depth, which doesn’t work when you are diving a wall! D/M did have a unhappy look on her face when she motioned me up. Handled it very professionally afterwards.

PerroneFord…I would have to agree with all of your points. Slow ascents are something I am working on since buying my computer. Not sure how I could have avoided the solo ascent, since I was without buddy, and D/M ascended rather quickly, once she had made I contact. She may have been using Nitrox, if she was, I feel awful for putting her at risk of oxtox.

Tfsails…I spoke with my refresher instructor about AOW before I posted this today. It’s being planned, good advice.

Ianr33…I wear my computer on the right side, it’s eaiser for me to adjust ascent rate and watch computer at same time.

Noboundaries…Interesting your comparsions between flying and diving. I have jumped a few times out of a plane, and looking at the injury and fatality stats for skydiving, as far as I can tell it’s the jumpers with one hundred or more skydives who tend to bounce. I think that’s because one of the most common methods to bounce is a hook turn to land. Newbies usually aren’t trying those. I suspect I am overconfident in the water, and that is a bad. I have been a fish since I was a baby, and swimming skills don’t ensure safe diving.

Leapfrog…made two more dives after the screwup that day, two more the next day, I would have to count the dives I made between the screw up and the time I left Hawaii. I still had a lot of days left and I wasn’t about to sit it out.

Scubadale…It’s so easy to be hard on myself, probably the ego (perfectionism) thing. I made a major mistake, that affected (and could of hurt) other people. For me, I was hot and didn’t want that to lead to queasy. It’s too bad getting in the water didn’t solve your feeding the fishes problem. A few days earlier I had been really close to feeding the fishes, and once I jumped in, and was below and swell and surge, I was fine. I did rehearse what I was going to do if I did feed the fish underwater.

Diver Dennis…I suspect I will be watching the gauge next time I dive a wall very intently, maybe I need to think about what I might miss by overcompensating my gauge watching :11:

To everyone, thanks for all the thoughts and ideas, it’s helpful to see what I missed and encouragement.

If anyone has an idea of what might have happened if I didn’t have such a great D/M, I would love to hear your thoughts. Would I have enough air to make it from the bottom of the wall back up? Maybe I can do some calculations based on my SAC. I guess one possibility is that I would have been so narced I was handing my reg to a fish. What are the other outcomes? I would bet that someone either knows someone who went even deeper than I did, or did it themselves.

Thanks again for all the ideas and thoughts,

J

 

[pickens_46929]

Slow ascents are something I am working on since buying my computer.

When I first started diving I could sink like a rock... 80 ft./min... 90 ft./min...

Got into technical diving a bit and first instructor said I needed to slow down... so I did... painfully slow... ) Next instructor he tells me to speed up lol

Took a while to dial it in... but I'm now a bit sensitized to ascent / descent speeds and tend to go slower than necessary.

LOL

 

[Melicertes]

The Transderm patch has been noted to cause problems for divers in the past, but this seems like a procedural issue to me. Actually, a number of them.

1. Not descending with buddy.
2. Not performing any kind of in-water safety check
3. Not maintaining an eye on depth during descent
4. Poor ascent rates. You had 2600psi at 166ft. What was the rush?
5. Solo ascent (but given the circumstances, understandable)

I have no alarms set and prefer it that way. Use your brain and good procedures, and the alarms become an unnecessary annoyance. Sounds to me that endeavoring to pause every 25ft or so on descent with your buddy would solve nearly everything that went wrong here.

Let me first say that I am glad that you are ok and that you walked away from the incident with what appears to be a healthy respect for diving and the ocean. When things go pear shaped things can happen quickly, very quickly and it is imperative that we deal with emergencies promptly and quickly to avoid them escalating into disasters.

I'm with PerroneFord on this one. Getting gadgets to do the thinking for you is not the way to go. What if that gadget fails and you are back at square one? Do not ever disengage your brain in favor of technology - ever. Always remain conscious of what you are doing; plan your dive and then dive your plan. This does not mean just fall overboard and suck on the hose until it's time to come up - you presumably learnt proper diving procedures - employ them.

From what you've described it definitely seems that there is a whole lot of improvement you could make in diving procedures and safety. The most obvious appears to be that you were not keeping a hawk's eye on your depth/air pressure gauge. This is something so many new divers do not seem to have drilled into them enough when they get certified IMHO.

I think you would do very well to find yourself a reputable and thorough instructor with whom you can review all the basic open water procedures with and then work on your advanced open water cert. Get back into the water quickly so you do not become paralyzed with the fear of what potentially could have happened - it didn't happen, so move past it and conquer it now. Do not get hung up on it but do not blow it off either - learn from it and use it to fuel your drive towards becoming a safer, more proficient diver. Find yourself a mentor you can trust with your life and learn, learn, learn.

Welcome to the board also

 

[Melicertes]

If anyone has an idea of what might have happened if I didn’t have such a great D/M, I would love to hear your thoughts. Would I have enough air to make it from the bottom of the wall back up? Maybe I can do some calculations based on my SAC. I guess one possibility is that I would have been so narced I was handing my reg to a fish. What are the other outcomes? I would bet that someone either knows someone who went even deeper than I did, or did it themselves.

Thanks again for all the ideas and thoughts,

J

Why beat yourself up with what could have happened? You want a realistic answer? You could have not been around to post to us here today. Stop fixating on the what if's IMHO. It will paralyze you if you get hung up on that kind of stuff - a healthy, objective analysis of what you did or did not do (and perhaps should have done) can be a good tool to use in learning from your mistakes - but once you do - move on.

 

[Diver Dennis]

Getting gadgets to do the thinking for you is not the way to go. What if that gadget fails and you are back at square one? Do not ever disengage your brain in favor of technology - ever. Always remain conscious of what you are doing; plan your dive and then dive your plan. This does not mean just fall overboard and suck on the hose until it's time to come up - you presumably learnt proper diving procedures - employ them.

"Gadgets" do fail but so can the brain in a panic situation. This dive was obviously not in any plan so a computer can help any recreational diver make a safe ascent. What happens if your mind goes blank when you realize you are at 160' or you are to narced to think clearly? I'm not advocating total reliance on a dive computer but they are far more than a "gadget" these days. The fact remains that the vast majority of recreational divers do not plan dives with tables.

 

[Melicertes]

Getting gadgets to do the thinking for you is not the way to go. What if that gadget fails and you are back at square one? Do not ever disengage your brain in favor of technology - ever. Always remain conscious of what you are doing; plan your dive and then dive your plan. This does not mean just fall overboard and suck on the hose until it's time to come up - you presumably learnt proper diving procedures - employ them.

"Gadgets" do fail but so can the brain in a panic situation. This dive was obviously not in any plan so a computer can help any recreational diver make a safe ascent. What happens if your mind goes blank when you realize you are at 160' or you are to narced to think clearly? I'm not advocating total reliance on a dive computer but they are far more than a "gadget" these days. The fact remains that the vast majority of recreational divers do not plan dives with tables.

I agree, I did not mean that one has to do everything manually at all. I have not carried dive tables with me to depth in years, but I do dive with a computer and a backup timing device and a well prepared dive plan on my slate. I also keep my buddy close. What I meant was that keeping a sober mind about what you are doing is a necessity for diving. An over-reliance on technology can easily become a liability.

Anyway, I guess I'm advocating (un?)common sense - stay awake and keep an eye on that computer but don't wait for it 'till it beeps because it might not. I'm certainly no advocate against technology but I am an advocate of keeping the brain engaged on every dive.

What if you get narced? Yes, the brain is also fallible but that, IMHO, is no excuse for not practicing prudent diving principles - we know about narcosis, oxtox etc. so we would do well to plan and dive while keeping those factors in mind. It's kind of pointless if we don't consider them until we have to deal with them at depth. If a diver is not yet thoroughly familiarized with factors that will present a risk to them (at least those that we are generally aware of) then the diver should not dive to depths [edit: or in conditions] where these factors are a reality.

When a diver is not suitably experienced to dive in certain conditions (I don't care what qualification they hold) I believe that panic will almost certainly becomes a factor in an emergency. Solution: Get the training, get the experience under reliable mentorship, and dive with confidence - minimize the probability of Panic