JasonC
Registered
So I spent the last weekend in PG. I was on a 2 week business trip with a colleague who's a dive instructor, and we ended our trip with a 4 day vacation in PG. We arrived in Manila from Seoul Friday almost midnight, crashed at Victoria Inn 
(separate rooms!), friend picked us up at 8AM, and we made the 11AM ferry and arrived in PG just after noon.
We did 11 dives from Saturday afternoon through Tuesday.
I have ~200 dives, been diving for >10 years.
It so happened that he had 2 friends there the same weekend, a Tech Instructor and his girlfriend, who was gonna do her Tech 2 certification. They did 2 days of recreational dives with us.
So when they joined us, we decided to do our favorite dive, Sabang Canyons -> Fish Bowl. As most of you know, the currents are usually strong, and fishbowl is at 90 ft, so the divemasters only take very experienced divers.
[for those unfamiliar with Fish Bowl...]
Fish Bowl is an awesome dive, because fish take refuge in the bowl while the current howls around it. The fish bowl is actually bowl shaped, about 8 feet deep and 25 ft wide. Several schools of fish are always in there, from small fish to 1 ft batfish, to 3-foot jacks, tuna, and sweetlips, and many others, swimming around in your face. If you swim up to the rim, and stick your face in the gale, you can watch fish go by, feeding and swimming vigorously going sideways in the strong current. Sometimes a 6-foot shark may be in the bowl.
The 2 tech divers were carrying twin tanks because they were planning to do some exercises during our safety stop. Mistake #1.
It was 3 PM and the current was unusually strong. While descending initially, I spotted another group of divers, and I thought, "whoa, look at them go". And then when we got closer to the bottom, I thought "whoa, look how fast the bottom is going".
Mistake #2, current was too strong, should've aborted then.
Divemaster then signals, "turn left". Me and my instructor buddy start finning, but the 2 tech divers struggled because of the drag of their twin tanks. Miss Tech Diver dissapeared from view; the vis was poor because of the swirling currents. I grabbed a rock on the bottom, and so does my buddy. Divemaster is behind us, and further back is the male tech diver.
The current was so strong (4 knots) that my mask would lift if I turned sideways. It felt like sticking my head out of a car at 70 mph. I thought it was only because I was in between 2 large boulders, so I let go and grabbed another rock. When I grabbed the new rock, I got blown away, carrying the rock! I kicked and grabbed another rock, which held. Mr. Tech Diver and the Divemaster had started a lively hand signal discussion. He wanted for us to stay down a bit and see if Ms. Tech Diver shows up, while he went up to check the surface. Mistake #3. Divemaster thought he was saying "you guys continue your dive, I will go up look for her at the surface". DM was saying "no we blew by the site, we abort now". So we all signalled to let go and go up, and the 2 carried on with their conversation for a bit longer. In the meantime, me and my buddy notice that there is a strong downwelling. My buddy starts to inflate his BC heavily to ascend, while the DM and Mr. Tech are going down. I am torn between hanging with my buddy who was ascending relative to us, and hanging with the DM. I'm thinking "I can hang with my buddy who's experienced, but the DM knows the terrain and has a safety sausage. I don't want to be run over by a boat on the surface, or be invisible to the boat man". So I decided to hang with the DM. In the meantime, my buddy was looking down and thinking, "that may be the last I'll see of them".
In the meantime, we get scattered, and I inflate and check my depth. I was going down. I add more air, still descending. I started finning. I add a lot of air. Still descending! I add a LOT of air until my BC was full. I start kicking hard to stay with the DM. I inflated my BC fully, and my computer reported 101 ft, 102, 103, 105, 107. Our air bubbles were rushing down, torn into little pieces by the downwelling. The DM had a 50-lb lift BC, and I had a 30-lb one. I had to kick pretty hard to stay with him. It took almost all my willpower not to kick so hard that I would fatigue easily and burn through my air, which would be a problem if the computer gave me a deco stop. It also took almost all my willpower to keep my breathing deep and even, while I could feel my heart pounding. After what seemed like an eternity my computer reported we were at 120 ft and still descending. I never had the feeling of a fully inflated BC, tugging up hard, 100+ ft down, in blue water! Holy *****!
The thought that the depth gauge was malfunctioning crossed my mind, but then I realized "I better not bet on that.. and I'm starting to get narced to even consider that!". I decided at this point, if I reach 135 ft and am still descending I'm gonna ditch the weight belt and deal with the DCS rather than run out of air.
After a minute of kicking with a full BC and reaching 121 ft, my computer's depth alarm started beeping, but then the current started to dissipate and we started making headway. Soon I had to deflate my BC in a hurry. The water was still turbulent and we started ascending in fits and starts. Air bubbles would swirl around us. At several points my Suunto computer beeped at me for ascending too fast. Finally we got to 20 ft and we began our safety stop; the computer had given me a 2 minute penalty for the sudden ascents for a total of 5 minutes. Get this, during the whole 5 minute safety stop, small bubbles from us kept on rising up from below.
When we got to the surface we were scattered over half a mile of water. I was the only one who managed to stick with another diver, the DM. We were the ones who stayed down longest and so were swept out the farthest.
When we got on the boat my instructor buddy said "that's what kills beginners". The concensus was that the current was 4 knots. Turns out I wasn't the only one who considered ditching the weight belt.
Excitement didn't end there. On our way back in the boat, my buddy spots a safety sausage faaaar in the distance. I could barely see it, and I was the only one wearing polarized sunglasses. We turned the boat around, it turns out to be a pair of divers lost by their boatman!! They'd been drifting since just before we started our dive. They were a Norwegian guy and a DM from Tropicana. We took them to their boat who was a mile away, and boy, was the DM mad at the boatman! Note to self: buy a FAT safety sausage, and make sure the boatman is experienced! I shudder to think what would've happened if my buddy hadn't spotted them.
When we got back to the resort we swapped stories and we downloaded our computers' logs. Turns out Miss Tech lost us early, and began her ascent. Her computer's log showed she got to 140+ ft. The downwelling lasted over a minute. She didn't ascend terribly fast but didn't do a safety stop. Mr. Tech got to 130 ft, and ascended waaaaaaay too fast (120 ft in 45 seconds, without a safety stop). My instructor friend said that it's common for instructors to forget proper safety procedures when they think a girlfriend/wife is in peril. My friend also got to 130+ ft, (probably due to crappy rental fins), and me and the DM got to ~121. Boy am I thankful my Apollo Biofins rock. They are STRONG fins.
My tank was down to 1400 psi by the time I began my safety stop at the 11 minute mark. Ms. Tech used up half of her twin 80's!
Whoa. Thankfully nobody got bent.
So what do we do, well the next morning we dove Fish Bowl again, just to make sure it was still there.
We think it's worth a T-Shirt: "I survived the Sabang Canyons Salmon Run", with a cartoon of a salmon with a scuba unit.
(separate rooms!), friend picked us up at 8AM, and we made the 11AM ferry and arrived in PG just after noon. We did 11 dives from Saturday afternoon through Tuesday.
I have ~200 dives, been diving for >10 years.
It so happened that he had 2 friends there the same weekend, a Tech Instructor and his girlfriend, who was gonna do her Tech 2 certification. They did 2 days of recreational dives with us.
So when they joined us, we decided to do our favorite dive, Sabang Canyons -> Fish Bowl. As most of you know, the currents are usually strong, and fishbowl is at 90 ft, so the divemasters only take very experienced divers.
[for those unfamiliar with Fish Bowl...]
Fish Bowl is an awesome dive, because fish take refuge in the bowl while the current howls around it. The fish bowl is actually bowl shaped, about 8 feet deep and 25 ft wide. Several schools of fish are always in there, from small fish to 1 ft batfish, to 3-foot jacks, tuna, and sweetlips, and many others, swimming around in your face. If you swim up to the rim, and stick your face in the gale, you can watch fish go by, feeding and swimming vigorously going sideways in the strong current. Sometimes a 6-foot shark may be in the bowl.
The 2 tech divers were carrying twin tanks because they were planning to do some exercises during our safety stop. Mistake #1.
It was 3 PM and the current was unusually strong. While descending initially, I spotted another group of divers, and I thought, "whoa, look at them go". And then when we got closer to the bottom, I thought "whoa, look how fast the bottom is going".
Mistake #2, current was too strong, should've aborted then.
Divemaster then signals, "turn left". Me and my instructor buddy start finning, but the 2 tech divers struggled because of the drag of their twin tanks. Miss Tech Diver dissapeared from view; the vis was poor because of the swirling currents. I grabbed a rock on the bottom, and so does my buddy. Divemaster is behind us, and further back is the male tech diver.
The current was so strong (4 knots) that my mask would lift if I turned sideways. It felt like sticking my head out of a car at 70 mph. I thought it was only because I was in between 2 large boulders, so I let go and grabbed another rock. When I grabbed the new rock, I got blown away, carrying the rock! I kicked and grabbed another rock, which held. Mr. Tech Diver and the Divemaster had started a lively hand signal discussion. He wanted for us to stay down a bit and see if Ms. Tech Diver shows up, while he went up to check the surface. Mistake #3. Divemaster thought he was saying "you guys continue your dive, I will go up look for her at the surface". DM was saying "no we blew by the site, we abort now". So we all signalled to let go and go up, and the 2 carried on with their conversation for a bit longer. In the meantime, me and my buddy notice that there is a strong downwelling. My buddy starts to inflate his BC heavily to ascend, while the DM and Mr. Tech are going down. I am torn between hanging with my buddy who was ascending relative to us, and hanging with the DM. I'm thinking "I can hang with my buddy who's experienced, but the DM knows the terrain and has a safety sausage. I don't want to be run over by a boat on the surface, or be invisible to the boat man". So I decided to hang with the DM. In the meantime, my buddy was looking down and thinking, "that may be the last I'll see of them".
In the meantime, we get scattered, and I inflate and check my depth. I was going down. I add more air, still descending. I started finning. I add a lot of air. Still descending! I add a LOT of air until my BC was full. I start kicking hard to stay with the DM. I inflated my BC fully, and my computer reported 101 ft, 102, 103, 105, 107. Our air bubbles were rushing down, torn into little pieces by the downwelling. The DM had a 50-lb lift BC, and I had a 30-lb one. I had to kick pretty hard to stay with him. It took almost all my willpower not to kick so hard that I would fatigue easily and burn through my air, which would be a problem if the computer gave me a deco stop. It also took almost all my willpower to keep my breathing deep and even, while I could feel my heart pounding. After what seemed like an eternity my computer reported we were at 120 ft and still descending. I never had the feeling of a fully inflated BC, tugging up hard, 100+ ft down, in blue water! Holy *****!
The thought that the depth gauge was malfunctioning crossed my mind, but then I realized "I better not bet on that.. and I'm starting to get narced to even consider that!". I decided at this point, if I reach 135 ft and am still descending I'm gonna ditch the weight belt and deal with the DCS rather than run out of air.
After a minute of kicking with a full BC and reaching 121 ft, my computer's depth alarm started beeping, but then the current started to dissipate and we started making headway. Soon I had to deflate my BC in a hurry. The water was still turbulent and we started ascending in fits and starts. Air bubbles would swirl around us. At several points my Suunto computer beeped at me for ascending too fast. Finally we got to 20 ft and we began our safety stop; the computer had given me a 2 minute penalty for the sudden ascents for a total of 5 minutes. Get this, during the whole 5 minute safety stop, small bubbles from us kept on rising up from below.
When we got to the surface we were scattered over half a mile of water. I was the only one who managed to stick with another diver, the DM. We were the ones who stayed down longest and so were swept out the farthest.
When we got on the boat my instructor buddy said "that's what kills beginners". The concensus was that the current was 4 knots. Turns out I wasn't the only one who considered ditching the weight belt.
Excitement didn't end there. On our way back in the boat, my buddy spots a safety sausage faaaar in the distance. I could barely see it, and I was the only one wearing polarized sunglasses. We turned the boat around, it turns out to be a pair of divers lost by their boatman!! They'd been drifting since just before we started our dive. They were a Norwegian guy and a DM from Tropicana. We took them to their boat who was a mile away, and boy, was the DM mad at the boatman! Note to self: buy a FAT safety sausage, and make sure the boatman is experienced! I shudder to think what would've happened if my buddy hadn't spotted them.
When we got back to the resort we swapped stories and we downloaded our computers' logs. Turns out Miss Tech lost us early, and began her ascent. Her computer's log showed she got to 140+ ft. The downwelling lasted over a minute. She didn't ascend terribly fast but didn't do a safety stop. Mr. Tech got to 130 ft, and ascended waaaaaaay too fast (120 ft in 45 seconds, without a safety stop). My instructor friend said that it's common for instructors to forget proper safety procedures when they think a girlfriend/wife is in peril. My friend also got to 130+ ft, (probably due to crappy rental fins), and me and the DM got to ~121. Boy am I thankful my Apollo Biofins rock. They are STRONG fins.
My tank was down to 1400 psi by the time I began my safety stop at the 11 minute mark. Ms. Tech used up half of her twin 80's!
Whoa. Thankfully nobody got bent.
So what do we do, well the next morning we dove Fish Bowl again, just to make sure it was still there.
We think it's worth a T-Shirt: "I survived the Sabang Canyons Salmon Run", with a cartoon of a salmon with a scuba unit.
