Great Lakes Diving - a cautionary tale

[cat]

This is for all you nice, but cw-clueless folks from warm water regions who come up to dive the Great Lakes. No sarcasm is intended, believe me - this was prompted by something that happened today to divers with many, many more dives than I have. It could have gone very, very badly (thought for a horrible few moments that the lake was about to claim a couple of solstice sacrifices).

Gentle reader,
Lake Superior is cold and very, very deep. She doesn't do warm very well. Later in the summer you might get a nice layer that reaches 50-60F or warmer but right now the water in many places is about 39F top to bottom, even on beautiful sunny days like today.
Cold-water regs and good exposure protection are not "optional". This means dry or 7/7mm wetsuits, with appropriate acessories (cold water hood, thick gloves/mitts and good wet/dry boots) and the lead to sink 'em. You may as well leave the 3mm suit at home, unless you plan to use it as an underlayer. Are your regs considered ok for very cold water? If not, consider renting locally.

Watch your depth. Vis is likely less than you are used to for a given depth. A thick wetsuit will compress more than you might expect and the resulting negative bouyancy, if not corrected for, will send you even further down. When your suit compresses, you will chill more easily. You may get narced a lot more easily by being cold. You *might* even end up thirty-plus feet below where you wanted to stop, blue from cold, too narced to notice either your depth or your shaking, trying to deal with your buddy's free-flow while slowly continuing to slide down on a steep slope of rock.
Thanks for listening, folks. I'll step off the soapbox now and let the more experienced among us add to, subtract from or fold/spindle/mutilate what I've just written.

 

[MikeFerrara]

Tell us what happened.

 

[knives]

yes Cat,
what 's up?
what kind of dive did you do ? Tell us , i am worried!

 

[JohnF]

Sounds like a run of the mill Great Lakes dive. What's the trick? 8)

JF

 

[cat]

on how much detail is ok to post here - one which wouldn't exist if it was my embarassment to consider. My contribution to the CF was that, while I certainly asked if they were sure about diving the cold in that suit and with ww regs, I lacked the confidence (and experience) to push the issue with and in the presence of, divers with so much more experience than myself (including locals with said experience). I won't make that mistake again. Oh yes - I should also have realized that his hands would be too cold to manage his BC properly in the last few feet - I relaxed too much after the 45' "pause" when he stopped acting so narced and I just had the hypothermia left to deal with.

I hope this is enough detail. This is all what I saw and heard, so there's bias (and possible narcosis on my part) involved:

Anne - we are all fine. Sorry to have worried you. Hey-you ought to know that I'm good in cold water, right?

The CF happened early enough in the dive that we were still under the NDL, even with the unplanned segue to the 100' table (had the 100' NDL in my CF plan)

The other buddy pair from the boat is made up of an experienced local diver and an inexperienced but cold-water tolerant (and newly deep cert) junior diver. The experienced local (in charge of dive) notices that the other pair has gone badly astray, searches, then expands the search to the wreck debris area down the slope, with a disturbed junior buddy right behind (all junior knew for certain at that point is that the max depth part of the dive plan was being blown to shreds - she had been looking upwards in the vain hope that pair#1 had just gotten cold and gone up without notifying us - no such luck).

Pair#2 finds pair#1 (followed the masses of bubbles) at 95' in the situation described in my prevous post.
Both switch to backup and prepare to donate primary (Junior wasn't certain that they weren't both free-flowing at that point - it looked like it at the time). Senior diver donates reg to ff diver (who was well dressed), then shuts off ff reg and reopens it. Ff stops. Senior tells junior to take the non-ff buddy, - who is blue, narced out of his mind and shivering - up. Junior does so, with a bit of difficulty (this is a pure gauge ascent, vis around 15', no references, no line and the other diver takes a bit of persuasion at first) and they swim back to the island (the other group waiting to dive helped get him into a partial change that he's brought topped with Junior's sweater and toque (+26C in shore today and I brought winter gear. I never want to hear "No room for those in the Zodiac" again).
Senior gets things straightened out at 95' (slid down to 100-105' before he was done), then brings former ff diver, now breathing his own reg again, up at a more sedate pace.

Here's the scary part - the cold diver was utterly unaware of the fact that he was hypothermic and shaking. Repeated "are you cold" queries on the slope and on the way up were always answered in the negative and he remarked later that he hadn't understood at the time why I was watching him so closely and looking so worried). How did they end up so far down? All I heard was that the buddy who wasn't cold and narced was relying on the one who was for guidance - and was not looking at his own DG.
Man, these are long posts. Sorry.

Seacur: well, I think it might have been a run-of the mill Great Lakes dive, if it had been a "run of the 7/7 mill" for all parties
(editing for some spelling errors - been a long day)

 

[diverbrian]

Like a run of the mill buddy pair unprepared for the Great Lakes yet again. How many incidents like the above have the other divers here seen? Just because someone has experience in one environment doesn't mean that they have experience to handle another. For instance, I wouldn't be diving in kelp without a local guide.

FULL WETSUITS or DRYSUITS with good insulation are not a luxury in this neck of the woods. Everybody who has trained up here will tell you that. A dive to 80 ft. in the Great Lakes can be considered more challenging than the 110-120 ft. dives that I was doing in the Caribbean.

Please listen to Cat's advice carefully. She knows what she is talking about here.

 

[jasondbaker]

You take a couple people with no cold water experience, put them in poor exposure protection and warm water regs, and go diving in Superior -- someone is going to get hurt.

Just because someone has experience doesn't mean they have specific experience with the diving conditions in your area. Diving in Superior is very different than the tropics.

 

[knives]

Good job!!!
I am not surprised to hear about this sort of thing ,it happens all too often. I am also not surprised with how you handled yourself. You wre clear headed and calm and took charge when called upon.

A

 

[Krisscuba]

I went from Miami, BBQ ing Lobster in shorts, to wearing a dead animal on my head a week later. I took a year contract in WI

I have been certified since 74., certified in Monterray Bay CA

I thought I knew what a thermocline was, I was wrong. 80 on the surface, at 6 feet, 65 and at 15 feet 50 degrees, are you people crazy?

I got up in the morning, took a shower and opened the door, three feet of snow between me and the jeep. I shuffeled through it, and sat in the jeep. My jeans now wet and cold. My hair felt funny. I reached up and it was frozen.

Sea Hunt is back on the air for the Month of June, OLN Outdoor Life Network, ch 608 on Direct tv. I do not know channels for other systems. Mon - thur 1 AM, Mon - Wed 9 PM, One hour later for those of you in Orlando. email feedback@olntv.com to get them to put it on perm.

 

[cat]

knives: Umm, I did not "take charge". My buddy, who was in charge of the dive, did and I did what I was told - even though it meant leaving him down there to finish handling the ff situation (I *hated* that - but had to get the hypothermic guy up and out before his core T started to go).

Krisscuba: thermocline? What's that? 39-41F on the surface, 39F at 100' (must be turning over in that bay) But yes, we are crazy. Well dressed, but crazy (pssst - buy a wooly hat )