Bahamas Close Call Video

[bowlofpetunias]

Aaron Welcome to ScubaBoard and thanks for sharing the video.. sobering indeed! It should be required viewing in all courses.

The sad thing is how many divers have probably been that close and never realized it! I wonder if they ever realized how much they owe you and how close they were!

have you heard from them since this event? I hope your father-in-law has made a recovery as well.

[ItsBruce]

Thanks for the video and for providing an assurance that it is genuine. It is truly disturbing.

I do not generally dive particularly deep. An instructor and I did a 120 fsw dive at a resort on a day when we were not saddled with noobs. Since we were on AL80s, I monitored my depth, limits and gas very closely. I am not sure if my care in monitoring was just caution or the result of narcosis. I do not rule out the latter because while I could run through a series of mental tests, it could have been narcosis telling me I was doing well on them. The divers in the video were way out of their league and I will always remember the video when I dive. Thanks.

[ahpoolman]

Bowlofpentias: To answer your question about if I have stayed in contact with them the answer is no. I never even asked their names. They were speaking broken english from an asian dialect. Sometimes we get comfortable in the water and forget that there is truly a risk in diving. I admit I am way too comfortable in the water and the Wa-Wa's wake me up on every dive to remind me that I am not invinsible underwater.
I assume these 2 divers were potentially narced. It's really hard to say and jump inside thier head to find out. For all I know they could have more dives under their belt than me,(doubt it). Maybe they are used to starting their deco obligation with 400 PSI at 150ft and I just ruined their dive. I know one thing, they ruined my dive. I'll forfit a good dive any day to do this again for someone, hopefully this never happens again and they should show this video to at every cert. class. I'll be honest the music makes it more dramatic in my opinion! I love Johnny Cash. Aaron Hagen Gilbert

[la_diver]

Great vidio Aaron. I had asked a question in a previous post but may have gotten lost.
Both diver appear to be young is this correct? If so I could not imagine sending my child diving without an experienced dive buddy at that age.

[mikemath]

It really should have been the DM noticing and responding to these divers instead of you, Aaron. Great job acting responsibly and effectively--without a doubt you saved the lives of these divers. I'm amazed you were able to conduct the rescue and still be able to record footage to use to reconstruct the event. It makes this an excellent video for illustrating the risks of diving beyond your experience.

I wonder if the language barrier you mentioned may have been a contributing factor. Perhaps they didn't understand the dive briefing. Nevertheless, they have no excuse for not monitoring their gauges and diving within their experience.

[ahpoolman]

I definately agree with you mikemath about the language barrier and the fact that they may not have fullu understood the dive breifing. As far as the video rolling when I was going down to them that I don't remember if I did it on purpose or not, but it was cool when I realized it when I made the video, Made it a little more dramatic. If you notice when the camera floats above my wrist if you watch the video in HD you can see the an additional 2 divers at around 80ft diving above me and they look so far away. Also if you listen closely while it's floating above my wrist, you can hear me tapping on my tank to try to get their attention. I did not have a tank tapper I took my wedding ring off my finger and tried to tap as hard as I could, but you can hear it if you listen closely..Thanks for the comment..Aaron Hagen Gilbert AZ

[Dive California]

Aaron...you are a blessed man. Don't know many divers (let alone DMs) that would chase idiots to 150' Then you make the ascent that you did...and fly before waiting 24 hrs. Perhaps it was you're lucky day too. You say you would do it again....why? Don't you have family, loved ones...think of them.

I'll thank you again for the two idiot divers you were stuck with.

[FredT]

Aaron,

As a future reference if you have to push time to fly breathing down a couple green bottles of pure O2 will help a lot. It lowers the nitrogen in the fast tissues to near 0 and speeds up out gassing considerably. It may not stop the hit, but it should be much easier to recover from.

[jmorriss]

Wow...that just sent chills up and down my spine.

Those kids are damn lucky you were there. Good on you.

[openmindOW]

Ahpoolman, thank you for your posts.