Stopping the Snowball

So a dive I did back in March got me thinking about the Snowball effect, how a number of small problems can lead up to a potential emergency, and I thought I'd share it because I know I learned a lot from the dive, and maybe somebody else can too.

I'll list what I think we're problems and mistakes, and detail how they added up to a larger problem.

Problem #1) Overconfidence; I had signed up for a "Creature Feature" dive, which meant going to the bottom of a shallow reef and watching a bunch of guys feed a barracuda, nurse shark, and green moray eel. I was confident, absolutely unconcerned about the conditions, despite the 3 to 4 foot seas and moderate current.

Problem #2) Equipment; I had forgotten my compass & the spool of line I had came undone in my bag, so I left it on the boat.

The fist dive, the "Creature Feature" went just like I had thought. While the current at the surface was a bit rough, once underwater it was mild and hardly noticeable. Navigation on the first dive was easy, since most of the time my buddy and I just spent watching the feeding, and I spent a good amount of that time messing around with my 40 cf slung tank. The dive only boosted my confidence for the second dive, which was on a sight not far away from the first.

Now, one of the things I hadn't thought of at the time, which I should have payed more attention to, was that my buddy, a good friend of mine, only had 2 non-certification dives under his belt, which meant that I was the "experienced" diver out of the buddy team. He also hadn't done any "open water" reef dives, only shore dives. I also hadn't given much thought to our differences in personal tolerance for water temperature and seasickness.

Our first dive was 50 minutes long, and after 31 minutes we were back in the water again. The dive started out great, I was leading the way taking it easy and moving steadily against the current for the first part of the dive. The reef was awesome, it was an old wreck site off of the Florida Keys (for the life of me I don't remember the name). After about 20 minutes we stopped swimming against the current and began to slowly make our way back towards the boat. A few minutes later though, with the boat not in sight, my buddy signals he's cold. This was where not having the compass and being overconfident about the navigation came into play, after a few minutes of swimming in what we thought was the right direction both my buddy and I realize we were completely off the site. After realizing that I couldn't shoot my SMB without my spool of line we decided to surface. We were about 200 yards down-current of the boat.

So the snowball had begun to roll, we were 200 yards down-current, no-one from the boat could see us, and my buddy was already cold. Well, the snowball got larger.

When we surfaced my buddy started to puke, it was pretty easy to rule out an embolism; he was seasick. I detached my inflator hose from my wing to inflate the SMB I have, but after some insistence from my buddy we decided to go ahead and swim it. After 5 minutes of swimming at the surface we hadn't moved any closer to the boat. So, despite the nagging thought in the back of my head to just inflate the SMB, get out the storm whistle, and get the boat to pick us up we decided to descend and swim against the milder current on the bottom.

Well, we descend, and my buddy gets neutral and takes off. It quickly dawned on me that my inflator hose was still disconnected from my wing. I had never practiced reconnecting it underwater, and while I can definitely do so quickly now, it took at least 3 to 4 minutes to get it fixed on the dive. I was tired from swimming up and against the current, but I stayed on track, caught up to my buddy at the boat's tow line, got back on board and relaxed on the way back to shore.

While everything worked out perfectly fine, I can't help but thinking about the situation I had ended up in on that dive. When the snowball was largest I was 200 yards down-current, underwater with no buddy in sight, with a disconnected inflator hose and no ditch-able weight. At a point like that, one mistake could have been the difference between an annoying and tiring situation, and an actual emergency.

Things never should have gotten that far, but thankfully a lot of things went right too. Both my buddy & I are & were in good shape, we were tired at the end of the dive but not exhausted or overly worn out. We remained cool and collected throughout the whole dive, never letting any of the problems cause fear or panic. That and we had good communication throughout the dive, we knew what the other person was doing and didn't get split up until the end.

There were a lot of lessons learned from that dive, but the biggest one was to make sure that when dealing with a situation, such as surfacing down-current from the dive boat, don't make mistakes that make the problem worse, don't let the snowball grow. Avoiding overconfidence and making sure equipment's in order before a dive go a long way in making a dive safe and fun. That, and having good communication and fitness among a buddy team can not only prevent problems, but make handling them a lot easier when they occur.

So, if you read this far, congratulations, it's said that a wise man learns from the mistakes of others, a fool by his own. Be wise and dive safely and smart, it makes diving more fun.

- Dave

I remember reading something almost identical to this a year or two ago, except there I think the buddy kept angling of until he was swimming down current again adding the need for an additional decision of whether or not the diver should leave the moronic and navigationally challenged buddy.

Two questions: Why a slung tank on a shallow Florida reef and how could someone get cold swimming in shallow waters off of the Keys?

Too cold? Maybe too fit and not enough bioprene.

I could also see doing a shallow reef dive with a slung 40 - it is about as low drag as you could get with a scooter. But I suspect, being the first dive, that it was deeper and the slung 40 was maybe a pony - not a bad idea with a freshly minted buddy.

Two hours in the water, with only a 30 minute surface interval, in what I would assume is fairly light exposure protection . . . I'd be good and cold, too.

I detached my inflator hose from my wing to inflate the SMB I have, but after some insistence from my buddy we decided to go ahead and swim it.

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This is one of the reasons I like my Halcyon bags -- you have the option of inflating them from a hose, but you can also inflate them orally. On the surface, it's a PITA to do it with a hose, but dead simple to do it orally.

The incident pit is real, and often starts out with things that look innnocent. But one of the things that distinguishes technical or cave divers from a lot of recreational divers is the meticulous care they take to be sure EVERYTHING is as it should be BEFORE the dive. They are aware the stakes are high, so they are careful. Here, a bit of complacency could have caused a lot of trouble. I'm sure the couple of minutes required to rewind the spool looks like it would have been a good investment, in hindsight.

But you got through the mess, and I suspect you'll look at shallow reef dives a bit differently in the future. Thanks for sharing these lessons.

That is the trap with any piece of emergency or signalling equipment - you never need it until you need it really bad, and after X number of dives where you never use it, it is easy to get complacent and leave it behind and/or not check it to ensure it functions.

Dtaine:

After about 20 minutes we stopped swimming against the current and began to slowly make our way back towards the boat. A few minutes later though, with the boat not in sight, my buddy signals he's cold. This was where not having the compass and being overconfident about the navigation came into play, after a few minutes of swimming in what we thought was the right direction both my buddy and I realize we were completely off the site. After realizing that I couldn't shoot my SMB without my spool of line we decided to surface. We were about 200 yards down-current of the boat.

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Was this a navigation issue or was it a current issue?

The first time I was buddy diving in a current, I nearly missed the boat. We spent 25 minutes swimming into the current, but it only took us 10 minutes to get back to the boat with the current. I wasn't even looking for the boat when I saw the shadowy form of it.

Even with proper navigation, if you were looking for the boat at a particular point, you still could have missed it due to the current.

This is where natural navigation (using landmarks) really helps. The natural landmarks can act as hints that you are getting closer to the boat.

Garrobo:

Two questions: Why a slung tank on a shallow Florida reef and how could someone get cold swimming in shallow waters off of the Keys?

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The tank was simply there because I wanted to get used to carrying it. I forget what the water temperature was, but it was somewhere in the low 70's, nothing for me, but you can definitely get cold if you're underwater long enough.

DBailey:

Was this a navigation issue or was it a current issue?

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Both really.

TSandM:

The incident pit is real, and often starts out with things that look innnocent. But one of the things that distinguishes technical or cave divers from a lot of recreational divers is the meticulous care they take to be sure EVERYTHING is as it should be BEFORE the dive. They are aware the stakes are high, so they are careful. Here, a bit of complacency could have caused a lot of trouble. I'm sure the couple of minutes required to rewind the spool looks like it would have been a good investment, in hindsight.

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That, and having a compass on that dive would have made it incredibly easy to track navigation.

But you got through the mess, and I suspect you'll look at shallow reef dives a bit differently in the future. Thanks for sharing these lessons.

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Definitely, it's easy to get complacent on the "simple" dives; factor in some poor decisions and things can go wrong quickly.