What do you do when donating to a panicked diver who initiates a buoyant ascent?

[steinbil]

This question is based on something that happened to a friend of mine on a dive to around 15m/50ft.

- Buddy seems panicky and signals OOG.
- You donate your primary, make sure buddy puts it in mouth, and switch to your secondary.
- Buddy inflates BC and starts the elevator...

What do you do?

Do you grab your buddy, and try to hold him/her back?
Try to grab the inflator to deflate the BC?
Empty your own BC to try to get negative to offset buddy's lift?
Try to pull your primary back and hope buddy makes it to the surface?
Follow your buddy in a quick ascent from depth and make sure to exhale?

I would also love to hear from divers who have experienced this: what happened, what was the response, would you do anything differently in the future?

 

[grantctobin]

If they're actually OOG, how is the power inflator working?

 

[Divin'Papaw]

I was dragged to the surface from the deck of the Milwaukee Car Ferry (~100 FFW roughly) in Lake Michigan by an OOG diver. One of my scariest moments on scuba. All I could do was flare, dump gas from my wing/drysuit, and try and slow us down. Thank God it wasn't a deco dive.

 

[VikingDives]

What do you do?

Do you grab your buddy, and try to hold him/her back?

Try to grab the inflator to deflate the BC?
Empty your own BC to try to get negative to offset buddy's lift?
Try to pull your primary back and hope buddy makes it to the surface?
Follow your buddy in a quick ascent from depth and make sure to exhale?

I would also love to hear from divers who have experienced this: what happened, what was the response, would you do anything differently in the future?

Every dm/instructor here has likely dealt with something like this at some point.

All of your responses are reasonable, it really depends on what you can do, given the situation.

If the panicked buddy has all 7 feet of your long hose, hose control, and is already ascending, I'd probably dump gas first...

The rest of your questions should be covered in a good rescue course, but ultimately, your safety comes first.

 

[happy-diver]

Stab the bc

 

[MidOH]

Dump me, with left hand. Dump them by the bottom dump with my right hand.

If they dont pull it together. Ill have the long hose, and theyll just have a loose mouth piece to chew on.

 

[rhwestfall]

Stab the bc

Or the diver...

I was it 125' on the Forest City in Tobermory and my insta-buddy (arm's length away) is vertical, looks at me, pulls the reg from his mouth and looks at it. I grab my long hose primary and begin to hand it to him. He drops his regulator and shoots for the surface holding mine. I tried to grab him, he starts to pull me up, and I decided to tug of war my reg back and let him go...

He burped and farted a bunch that afternoon on the boat deck, and I never did another dive with him again....

 

[gamon]

You're asking the wrong question.

The answer to the right questions are "The Solo diving course is available through most major Scuba diving agencies" and "You are under no obligation to accept an instabuddy just because the dive charter is trying to shift liability from themselves to you".

 

[berndo]

If the diver is breathing from the reg you can grab the shoulder strap and slow down the ascent, when the diver doesn't have the reg in their mouth you need to let him go and follow.

A panicked diver is not pressing any buttons, they just bolt.

 

[ginti]

If they're actually OOG, how is the power inflator working?

Panic if the buddy goes into a panic attack, they don't act rationally anymore. I am not sure why a panicked diver would think they are out of gas if they actually are not, but I can think of some scenarios (although a bit imaginative, a bit too much maybe)