MonkSeal
Contributor
Yesterday I was buddied with inexperienced diver. He claimed he was experienced enough but without recent dives. He took a video camera with himself "to shoot a few sequences". Divemaster asked me to keep an eye on him because he surfaced from 10m without safety stop on dive day before. Plan was to dive at 20m for 30min (two of us) and the rest of divers were supposed to go to 35m. He wasn't able to maintain buoyancy and I trimmed him and calm him down and warned him about air consumption (which was enormous - we started with 200bar, after 10min he was at 100bar). Suddenly he emptied his jacket and descended to 40m "to shoot from the other angle". I descended also and brought him slowly back to 25m. Than I realized he would be OOA in few minutes. I informed DM we were going out and we started to ascend. I knew that we had a deco obligation because of his trip to 40m but I had enough air. As we reached 18m he signalized he was OOA. I was little surprised because I expected this would happen in few minutes but I took my primary (long hose) and tried to put in his mouth. At the same time I emptied a little bit my jacket, grab him and made us neutral. He grabbed regulator and then left it floating and tried to grab my bungeed octo. Of course he couldn't reach it and then he panicked. I tried to calm him down but he started to strangle me. All that time I was trying to put my primary to his mouth and he was refusing it trying to get my octo. After one long minute of struggle I succeeded and I finally grab my octo and started to breath. At that moment I thought "Everything is under control, again". But it wasn't. He kicked and went up. I emptied my jacket completely and grab his camera (attached to his jacket) and tired to descend. But he was fining up. When we reached 5m (in less then 30s) I let him go because I couldn't stop him any more. He surfaced immediately and boat crew lifted him up. I looked at my Mosquito - 5 min of deco. After I finished it (I added 2min more at 3m and last 3m 1min), I surfaced - he was on O2. Captain contacted DAN and they advised O2, hydration and observing. After two hours no DCS signs were shown and he seemed OK. Where did I get wrong ? Before this dive I was sure I could handle such situation because I had similar case before and solved it with no problems.