I posted my write up of a recent incident on some of our local (New York City area) dive forums, and it got a lot of engagement, almost all positive. But I realize that the way that we do things here is not the way that people do things elsewhere. I have had some lively discussions here with people who are more used to hot drops and drifting deco. And that's fine, I think that people should work out what works best for the specific environment that they are in.
But I figured I would post it here to see what a wider range of divers thought of this, and also as a teaching point.
If you click on this link, you will see the article on my website with a number of photos and illustrations, which might be helpful for newer divers. But I also just posted the text here for readability. Had to break it up into two posts becuse of the character limit.
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My buddy and I blinked, and then blinked again. We had carefully followed our navigation line back to the anchor line’s tie in point on a deep, dark wreck off the New Jersey shore. We needed to leave the bottom NOW, as we already had racked up a good bit of deco obligation. So all we had to do was to grab our strobes and head up that anchor line, back to sunshine, like we had done many times before.
Unfortunately, the anchor line wasn’t there.
Wreck diving in the NYC area has a well established culture, with protocols and gear optimized over decades for this environment, at the cost of many tragedies and near misses. So if you haven’t been diving here before, please listen when the boat captain goes over standard practices, even if you have tons of technical diving experience in warm water or caves. And if you’re a new diver, learn these skills and practice them – you never know when they may save your life.
We dive in deep cold water with often limited visibility. We dive in shipping lanes where heavy commercial traffic is frequent. And we may be diving on days with heavy seas, strong currents, or fog. Unlike locations where divers drift to and from the dive site and the boats follow them above, the boats here are tied into the wreck with a heavy rope and chain (the anchor line). They will have limited maneuverability, especially if there are divers in the water on long deco.
We recently had an incident over the wreck of the Arundo, which highlighted two things. One, how important it is to know your emergency procedures. Two, how lucky we are to have such excellent and well trained captains and crew. The old idea that a dive boat is “just a taxi to the wreck” is not true. While of course, the diver is ultimately responsible for running a safe dive, having calm and experienced topside support has on many occasions made the difference between life and death. Whether it’s a bent diver requiring emergency air evacuation or a drifting diver lost at sea, the surface team is critical. I don’t want to trust my life to just anyone with a boat and a stack of waiver forms.
One of the main requirements for local wreck diving is that you ONLY descend and ascend while maintaining physical contact with the anchor line (or other attached lines of the “Carolina rig”), to ensure that you get back to the boat safely. Free ascents are not acceptable and may get you on the “boat is full” list. Of course, anything is better than drowning, and sometimes free ascents happen, but anyone in our area should do whatever they can to avoid them.
So we stay on the anchor line. Once we are on the wreck, unless it’s small, intact and in relatively clear water, it’s a good idea to run a navigation line. This is thin “cave line" – essentially heavy duty string - that the diver places on the wreck from a reel, securing it to fixed points at intervals, to make sure that they can find their way back to the anchor line. And when you start running that line, it’s important to tie it off NEAR the anchor line but not directly to it, as we shall soon see.
My buddy and I descended onto the wreck. As usual for this site, it was very dark. We did see another diver at the tie-in point (where the anchor line is secured to the wreck). He was trying to tell us something, speaking through his regulator, but we couldn’t figure out what he was saying. Since he didn’t seem to be in distress or needing assistance, we just started on our dive (spoiler alert – we shouldn’t have done that!).
We tied in near the anchor point, using a wreck reel to run our navigation line and swam off, spending a little over 30 minutes at 115 feet. We then followed this line back to where we started. And we didn’t see the anchor line.
For a few minutes, we were second guessing ourselves. Maybe we tied our navigation line too far from the tie-in, and we just couldn’t see it in the dark water? But after looking around for a few minutes, we realized what had happened – the anchor line had broken free. We couldn't tell exactly how that happened at the time, but another diver later told me that he had seen the chain pull through the portion of the wreck that held the tie in This can happen when it’s holding a dive boat bobbing up and down in heavy seas. It’s rare, but that’s a lot of pull, and on that day it happened. You can see why you don’t tie your navigational line to the anchor line itself!
But I figured I would post it here to see what a wider range of divers thought of this, and also as a teaching point.
If you click on this link, you will see the article on my website with a number of photos and illustrations, which might be helpful for newer divers. But I also just posted the text here for readability. Had to break it up into two posts becuse of the character limit.
-----
My buddy and I blinked, and then blinked again. We had carefully followed our navigation line back to the anchor line’s tie in point on a deep, dark wreck off the New Jersey shore. We needed to leave the bottom NOW, as we already had racked up a good bit of deco obligation. So all we had to do was to grab our strobes and head up that anchor line, back to sunshine, like we had done many times before.
Unfortunately, the anchor line wasn’t there.
Wreck diving in the NYC area has a well established culture, with protocols and gear optimized over decades for this environment, at the cost of many tragedies and near misses. So if you haven’t been diving here before, please listen when the boat captain goes over standard practices, even if you have tons of technical diving experience in warm water or caves. And if you’re a new diver, learn these skills and practice them – you never know when they may save your life.
We dive in deep cold water with often limited visibility. We dive in shipping lanes where heavy commercial traffic is frequent. And we may be diving on days with heavy seas, strong currents, or fog. Unlike locations where divers drift to and from the dive site and the boats follow them above, the boats here are tied into the wreck with a heavy rope and chain (the anchor line). They will have limited maneuverability, especially if there are divers in the water on long deco.
We recently had an incident over the wreck of the Arundo, which highlighted two things. One, how important it is to know your emergency procedures. Two, how lucky we are to have such excellent and well trained captains and crew. The old idea that a dive boat is “just a taxi to the wreck” is not true. While of course, the diver is ultimately responsible for running a safe dive, having calm and experienced topside support has on many occasions made the difference between life and death. Whether it’s a bent diver requiring emergency air evacuation or a drifting diver lost at sea, the surface team is critical. I don’t want to trust my life to just anyone with a boat and a stack of waiver forms.
One of the main requirements for local wreck diving is that you ONLY descend and ascend while maintaining physical contact with the anchor line (or other attached lines of the “Carolina rig”), to ensure that you get back to the boat safely. Free ascents are not acceptable and may get you on the “boat is full” list. Of course, anything is better than drowning, and sometimes free ascents happen, but anyone in our area should do whatever they can to avoid them.
So we stay on the anchor line. Once we are on the wreck, unless it’s small, intact and in relatively clear water, it’s a good idea to run a navigation line. This is thin “cave line" – essentially heavy duty string - that the diver places on the wreck from a reel, securing it to fixed points at intervals, to make sure that they can find their way back to the anchor line. And when you start running that line, it’s important to tie it off NEAR the anchor line but not directly to it, as we shall soon see.
My buddy and I descended onto the wreck. As usual for this site, it was very dark. We did see another diver at the tie-in point (where the anchor line is secured to the wreck). He was trying to tell us something, speaking through his regulator, but we couldn’t figure out what he was saying. Since he didn’t seem to be in distress or needing assistance, we just started on our dive (spoiler alert – we shouldn’t have done that!).
We tied in near the anchor point, using a wreck reel to run our navigation line and swam off, spending a little over 30 minutes at 115 feet. We then followed this line back to where we started. And we didn’t see the anchor line.
For a few minutes, we were second guessing ourselves. Maybe we tied our navigation line too far from the tie-in, and we just couldn’t see it in the dark water? But after looking around for a few minutes, we realized what had happened – the anchor line had broken free. We couldn't tell exactly how that happened at the time, but another diver later told me that he had seen the chain pull through the portion of the wreck that held the tie in This can happen when it’s holding a dive boat bobbing up and down in heavy seas. It’s rare, but that’s a lot of pull, and on that day it happened. You can see why you don’t tie your navigational line to the anchor line itself!
