What's the most intimidating dive you've done or thing that happened to you?

[smellzlikefish]

My most intimidating were the series of dives I made in conjunction with an experimental aquaculture project that wanted to put drifting cages as far as 70 miles offshore of the Big Island of Hawaii. Never mind the fact that we were over ten thousand feet of water at any given moment, or the fact that the seas in the middle of the ocean can be crazy, and don't worry about the Alenuihaha Channel that, at any moment, might draw us up into its bat(poo) hellish waters, and I didn't mind that we were well out of reach of immediate rescue. What kept me awake in the preceding nights were the sea monsters. We knew that this cage full of 2000 growing, feeding, pooping fish was going to be the most active Fish Aggregation Device in the world, attracting every ilk of oceanic predator the world has ever known. Sure, I was excited to see a whale shark, some tuna, a few mahi, and an ono or two, but prior to that project, I had never faced down an oceanic whitetip shark (note: absolutely NOT a whitetip reef shark), an animal that still, after squaring off with over 50 or so of them, still commands my utmost respect. And I never expected large marlin to be that scary! I will never forget the clicking/whistling sounds a false killer whale makes underwater, nor will I ever jump so fast as when I turned around to see a monstrous, ominous black figure over my dive buddy. That last instance turned out to be a jet-black pelagic manta ray, but it was a terrifying thing to jump out of nowhere over my shoulder on a dive. Some dives were nothing but blue, and some were like the entire Wild Kingdom nature program vomitted around you. Truly spectacular, but some dives made me realize exactly where we fit on the oceanic food chain.

 

[The Laconic]

Isla Alamo cenote. I'm a novice cave diver, and was diving with a guide and a third who was more experienced than me. I don't think any of us had been there before, but we had a plan and followed it. We did two dives, which overall went just fine. But at one point, I was leading, and after going down a quite horizontally-restricted passage, it ended in a pretty narrow restriction. I attempted it once, twice, without success; I didn't push it further, because I had in mind people who tried to force themselves through a restriction and got trapped. If not a no-mount restriction, it was a one-mount restriction. I signaled the team to turn around, which was quite tricky, again because it was already a narrow passageway, and then the viz went to zero. Low viz doesn't bother me in itself, but the minute or so while I waited for the other two to turn around and get out of the way was as stressful as it's gotten for me. Basically a minor attack of claustrophobia. It wasn't fun, but I wasn't truly worried that something was going to go south. And that's why you get training, folks.

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

I don't think I could be a cave diver. I even got the heebie jeebies exploring old silver and talc mines in and around Death Valley/ Darwin area. Maybe I'm just naturally trained to think about it, but as a native Californian I always have earthquakes and cave-in's in the back of my mind. I don't have problem with overheads and not being able to go up, but a feeling of getting trapped.

I have another ripping current story down at the Channel Islands once which sent me off into the Pacific and I had to get rescued by the chase boat, but I'll save it for another time. I'm going to watch the Warriors.

 

[wildbill9]

Mine sounds mild but since it still is with me on every dive after 35 years of diving I will tell about it. It was my open water certification and the dive master decided to take a few that "seemed" to really love it down one last time to 60 ft. It was April at a lake (surface temp 63), full wetsuit hood and gloves, thermo at 18 ft and then it got COLD. I had ear trouble so it took me longer to get down and I lost much buddy -mistake #1. Vis about 6 feet (it was a lake) so once I equalized I dumped the air out of my bc to catch up with them- mistake #2. Pitch black at the 45 feet, can't see anything, at 65 feet hit the mud/silt bottom and did not know which way was up. Tried to swim up but up was down and hit bottom again. Took a deep breath (ok prob sucked regulator half way down my throat) and calmed down. Hmmm... put air in bc and I will go up so I did....except by then my feet were trapped in fishing I line and I wasn't going up. I think I must have sucked down half my tank in 5 min. I could not tell which way was up and I was trapped! I stopped and thought this is what I trained for... think dammit think. Ok- I have a dive knife, first cut the fishing line- ok i am lose. A little air in bc...must be going up......after forever (7.3 seconds in actuality) I saw light...follow smallest bubbles up. I surfaced and lived. I could easily not be here today if I had panicked. Learned many lessons that dive and just telling story makes me jittery. Live and learn and to this day I debrief after each dive with my dive partner of 30 years. I love this sport but will never disrespect the risks I take every time I go down

 

[WarrenZ]

We dove the Yukon in San Diego with a storm coming in this was the kind of diving where you go on tank air from the time you leave your seat to the time you get back on the boat. The storm was stiring up the seas to about 6' waves when we got to the wreck once we got in the water and on the wreck everything was fine however we had a diver drink too much seawater and felt too constricted in his wetsuit so we had to drag him back to the boat. By the time I surfaced everyone was back on the boat talking about calling the next dive and heading for the pier I was ok with that as several people were trying to be discretely seasick and I didnt see the seas improving. However we had a couple of marines with their instructor and they needed to do one more wreck dive to finish their certification they decided they had paid for 2 dives they WERE going to get another dive. I decided that I would rather dive then sit on the boat so back in the water I went.

During the dive I kept an eye out for the marines and when they went up I followed them to the safety stop. At the 20' level I stopped to hover and watch these guys do their stop One of the guys was having a little trouble holding the safety stop he obviously remembered the open water manual where he was told to hold onto the anchor line to hold your position in the water. Of course with 6' waves and this rope attached to the 48' boat getting tossed around on one end and the wreck on the other end the rope was doing a bit of moving in the water. Keep in mind that these guys were marines and when they decided to do something they were not going to give up so rather than let go of the rope that is jerking out of his hand he decided to grab on with both hands and go for a ride.

This is where I almost died, as the marine student was getting ripped through the water like a flag in a tornado I was laughing so hard that my mask was leaking when on one of his larger rotations I caught a fin to the face which dislodged my mask and knocked my reg out of my mouth and around the back of my head so now I have a free flowing reg floating away on a 7' hose. I quickly switched to my backup reg tracked down my primary and stopped the free flow and cleared my mask. I still had a case of the giggling $hits for the rest of the stop watching these guys. Their instructor did come up to me after the dive to make sure I was ok and tell me he was expecting me to have problems when I got kicked. Im not sure why I that was I had a pony to bail out to if things got too bad so I wasnt in any real danger from the free flow. When we got back to the marina only 3 or 4 customers were not seasick and I enjoyed watching the marines turn green feed the fish when they saw me nosily enjoying the clam chowder the crew had prepared for us.

 

[Avonthediver]

Two dive's come to mind as scary and intimidating both salvage work both in lakes both had bad or no visibility.

The first a few buddy's and I where doing a small I would say easy S&R for a fella on Norfork lake in Arkansas the water had good viz till you got around 65ft and it got black and cold. The site we where working on was around a known old home site with a cistern but by our GPS we should be off the home location..this was not really the case. My buddy and I went down around 65 to 70 ft still holding to the anchor line when suddenly the line dropped and took us down fast to 85 or 90ft and jurked us when the anchor line reached its end but not touching bottom!
This scared the crap out of us and we went up shaking and did or safety stop.
What it turned out to be was that we had landed on the edge of the big cistern and without the anchor set the boat drifted and thus causing the chain and anchor to fall off into the 10X 80 pit taking us with it!
My dive buddy and I went on to complete the planed dive but it took us a bit to get our nerve back.

Second was a small shallow lake only about 20 ft deep with trees still up for fishing. I was asked to go find a lost boat motor that had fallen off while fishing and the guy hit a submerged tree.

Easy and fast right? Not so easy not so fast the water was very red with viz 1-2 I made three dives with no luck in finding the motor. When we got to the dock the old timers where laughing about the alagator that was swimming around while I was down over my spot! Needless to say I was done for the day.
Later the guy who lost the motor found out that another fisherman saw the spot and had pulled it up by snagging and did not tell the owner.

 

[mdb]

This is a good thread. Lots of lessons learned. Current has been often cited. One dive off Farnsworth Bank comes to mind.
I often solo dive and like a first early morning dive before breakfast. One fine California morning diving off that great site I
went in about 7:00 AM solo and took the anchor chain down. The current was ripping and I was on my way to Hawaii. A
quick decision to thumb the dive and come home. I dropped down and compass navigated back to the anchor line and the
stern exit. Lesson learned. The Public Safety Diver post was very interesting to read. I'm sure this is a good and continuing
thread. Very good post OP.

 

[Avonthediver]

This has been a very good thread and the story's have been amazing! I feel like one of the best post in a long time.

 

[Dizzi Lizzi]

... I lost my grip on the rocks & the up current then sent me from 40 ft to the surface in only a few seconds. I could only "blow & go" & hope for the best. The good thing was,.. it was at the relative beginning of the dive, so I luckily did not get DCS. It had my heart racing, though.

what is blow and go?

 

[admikar]

Mine sounds mild

I wonder how your wild ones sound?