What was your, "Oh got it lesson learned moment"

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ScubaBadger32

Contributor
Messages
160
Reaction score
81
Location
North Carolina
# of dives
25 - 49
What did you witness, hear about, or even have happened to you that changed how you dived, or at least viewed diving?

For me, it was a octo that got tangled up on my arm! now, i just make sure that hoses are straight and true before every, single, dive.
 
I had a DM run out of air about 30 minutes into a dive. He never checked his gas on the boat and had grabbed a used tank. He then continued to not check his pressure until he had a hard pull.

Lesson learned- complacency can happen to anyone with any qualification. Do your own precheck every dive. Also, just because they are a DM (or higher) doesn't mean you won't have to save their ass.

On a boat two buddies were going backwards off the side. One went and then the captain told the other to go shortly after. Diver 2 didn't look back and almost killed his friend by landing smack ontop of his head. The first diver put up his hands just in time to not get full connection with the tank to his face. He luckly got away with only about a 1/2" gash on his nose.

Lesson learned- just becase they are a captain on the boat doesnt mean disregard a visual check. Also, get your ass away from the boat asap and never be below anyone getting on or off a boat..
 
Doing "At some point in the dive I/you will go out of air" with a good buddy. Air share with their short standard hose had us face to face struggling with buoyancy. Air share with my long hose gave us room to float apart, able to see around us and fully in control like normal. The benefit in the pool had been clear, but the ocean made it very real. Not for everyone, YMMV, but for me....

A time I f'ed up was walking into the surf zone with mask around neck, reg fortunately in, with my normal gear and weights, with my fins in one hand and about a 20 lb weight belt on the other arm for a lift bag drill. Which exceeded the excess lift of my BC. If you add gear or cargo, think things through.

I've also swam out without my air on, and jumped in with fins in hand instead of on my feet.
 
I was in an irrational and stupid contest of trying to use as little lead as possible. I started with 8kg then 6, 4 and eventually 3 in SW with my 5.5mm wetsuit and jacket BCD. My weight check was ok, I could descend from surface at the beginning of my dives by just fully exhaling and I could easily hover horizontally for my safety stop at 5 m at the end. However, one day, at the end of a dive, I followed a DM in a cavern (not a cave) at 5m and because of poor visibility, I did not realize that I was going up, lost my buoyancy and ended up stuck at the ceiling at 2 meters maybe less. Had to really fight to get free and exit the cavern. 2 lessons learnt. 1- Striving to use as little lead as possible is stupid. 2) Better being slightly overweighted than slightly underweighted. For your safety, you must be able to descend from the surface at anytime, even with an empty tank at the end of the dives.
 
Deep, dark, cold, black water isn't as scary as my mind told me it would be. It's actually pretty peaceful.

Sharks aren't bad.

But the biggest thing for me was an email from a highly regarded instructor. Up until I had some back and forth with him I wanted to be some type of militant diver, like the GUE diver on the front of a magazine. He brought me back down to earth.. really went on about how diving should be fun. If you're not having fun then what's the point? I'll never forget that email. Changed my perspective and I've never dived the same since. Thank goodness too because my kids would have hated me if I brought them into it that way.
 
Off Okinawa, getting darker, tide going out, nearing end of dive and my buddy has a sinus rupture, bleeding profusely, ghes getting disoriented and I have to help tow him against the current, through the whiteout over the reef since he's now about out of air and I'm working for two divers. We made it back near the entry point on shore. You need to check the tides and know what they can do when going through reefs. Also I had a high performance reg that gave me enough air when I was breathing like I was running a 440 delay.
Lesson learned.
 
Ooh, good question. The most obvious one in retrospect was when conditions were rough. I had a bad dive the day before, ended up having to do a miserable surface swim in chop against current. Yet I was still waffling on whether to go on the boat dive. A very experienced military diver and instructor in our group took one look at the chop and said, "No thanks." That was a wakeup call. If this person is willing to thumb the dive, what am I thinking? It's supposed to be fun. As it turned out the boat couldn't even make it out to us, so there was no decision to make, but it's changed my thinking ever since. Want to cancel? You should. The money may already be spent, but you always, always have a choice.
 
I wish I kept a list of lessons learned, because I have had quite a few. And I'm sure I will continue to have them. Isn't learning great?

One lesson that I recall off the top of my head was that at the beginning of a dive my buddy and I descend together, looking at each other, until we reach the agreed-upon depth, and then signal what we're going to do next, such as "let's proceed in this direction." We adopted this rule after a dive in a low-vis quarry in which we descended and promptly swam off in opposite directions, totally losing each other. This may not sound like a big deal, but at the time we were just getting familiar with diving doubles and drysuits, and the possibility that our buddy had a problem and may be dropping like a brick toward the deep bottom raced through our heads. When we later discussed what happened we each swore we understood the planned direction we would swim. We have since heard the wisdom from technical divers that the descent may be the most critical part of the dive, because gear problems and personal problems tend to make themselves known here, and problems do not tend to go away as the dive progresses but rather more likely tend to lead to bigger problems. There's a related lesson about making sure the dive plan is mutually understood: we should do more than just nod our heads to indicate agreement with what the person giving the briefing said. But the lesson I recall most is to not lose sight of my buddy on the descent. We have occasionally made an exception to our rule, such as when doing a backroll entry from a boat, but we still keep a close eye on each other to the extent possible.

I wouldn't necessarily suggest that everyone adopt our rule. It's just our rule, and we adopted it because we felt we learned a lesson that day.
 
On a boat two buddies were going backwards off the side. One went and then the captain told the other to go shortly after. Diver 2 didn't look back and almost killed his friend by landing smack ontop of his head. The first diver put up his hands just in time to not get full connection with the tank to his face. He luckly got away with only about a 1/2" gash on his nose.

Lesson learned- just becase they are a captain on the boat doesnt mean disregard a visual check. Also, get your ass away from the boat asap and never be below anyone getting on or off a boat..

Reminds me of when I got hit on the head.
When rolling back off a boat, when instructed to go (enter the water). I was taught, if you are the diver closest to the bow, as you roll back, ALWAYS put a straight arm out across your buddies chest and count 1, before you roll back. If they haven't gone on the go instruction, you will knock them in with you as you roll back.

As the diver closest to the bow, if you go first, and they delay fractionally, they are likely to land on top of you. As the boat is likely to continue moving forward even with the motor out of gear.
(If you are the diver closest to the stern, be ready, and go immediately, otherwise your buddy is likely to knock you in as he enters).

As an instructor with a very nervous student, I failed to follow this rule.
She sat in the wrong place (towards the stern, instead of towards the bow). I didn't put my arm out as I normally would because she was so nervous. On the go, she paused, then went. She landed on top of me.

I new she had hit me hard, but it was only a shallow dive, and I actually felt ok, and didn't have double vision.
So we did 20 minutes at around 10m.
When I got back on the boat, and removed my scuba set. The skipper handed me a cup of tea, I pulled my hood off, and the blood started to flow.... straight into my tea. Spoilt a perfectly good cup of tea, and the skipper made me hang over the side to stop the blood running all over the deck. (Whilst someone else poured saline solution into the wound and tried to patch it up.

I had a 2 inch cut in the top of my skull. That evening, I ended up in A&E for them to superglue it closed because it kept opening up and bleeding - made us late for the curry.
 
Reminds me of when I got hit on the head.
When rolling back off a boat, when instructed to go (enter the water). I was taught, if you are the diver closest to the bow, as you roll back, ALWAYS put a straight arm out across your buddies chest and count 1, before you roll back. If they haven't gone on the go instruction, you will knock them in with you as you roll back.

As the diver closest to the bow, if you go first, and they delay fractionally, they are likely to land on top of you. As the boat is likely to continue moving forward even with the motor out of gear.
(If you are the diver closest to the stern, be ready, and go immediately, otherwise your buddy is likely to knock you in as he enters).

As an instructor with a very nervous student, I failed to follow this rule.
She sat in the wrong place (towards the stern, instead of towards the bow). I didn't put my arm out as I normally would because she was so nervous. On the go, she paused, then went. She landed on top of me.

I new she had hit me hard, but it was only a shallow dive, and I actually felt ok, and didn't have double vision.
So we did 20 minutes at around 10m.
When I got back on the boat, and removed my scuba set. The skipper handed me a cup of tea, I pulled my hood off, and the blood started to flow.... straight into my tea. Spoilt a perfectly good cup of tea, and the skipper made me hang over the side to stop the blood running all over the deck. (Whilst someone else poured saline solution into the wound and tried to patch it up.

I had a 2 inch cut in the top of my skull. That evening, I ended up in A&E for them to superglue it closed because it kept opening up and bleeding - made us late for the curry.
That is ridiculous, You deliberately knock another diver into the water, flipping them backwards against their will?

If you did that to me, you might expect- if you are a male (and I am serious here) a solid punch to the face after we enter the water. I would probably follow that up with ripping your regulator from your mouth, so as to facilitate a more clear discussion of the situation - of course.

Rolling off a boat is serious stuff, your "idea" is dangerous, unnecessary and would probably make me quite unhappy.
 

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