Eye Damage Averted

[FritzCat66]

Not a major near-miss, but one perhaps worth mentioning:

I was doing my Cavern cert checkout dives a couple weekends ago in Paradise Spring, just south of Ocala. Present were myself, one other cavern student, and our instructor. There were a couple other divers in the cavern when we first arrived, but they were out by the time we went in, and we had the cavern to ourselves the rest of the day.

These were our last checkout dives, so we were putting all our training together, lots of line management of course. To simulate bad-vis siltout situations, we were doing some return runs with our masks off. Pretty effective, can't focus on much of anything. Typically we would hand our masks to the instructor and perform the drill as discussed, alternating which of the two of us were leading.

On one of the "worst case" drills - masks off, air sharing with buddy to simulate an OOA, no lights - I was leading on the return. Things were going pretty well, buddy and I communicating during the ascent via arm pulls and so on. But shortly before I got to the secondary tie-off, my instructor suddenly grabbed my shoulder and stopped me.

At first I thought he did that just because we were basically done with the drill, but after he handed my mask back, and it was donned and cleared, he pointed out why he stopped me: if I had proceeded just another couple of feet along the line in that mask-off situation, I would have impaled my eyeball on a short but very pointy root jutting out from the ground just to one side and down the line a bit from my tie-off!

We were moving along at a decent pace, and I have no doubt I would have done serious damage to my face or eye if I hadn't been stopped. Even with a mask on, it could have really hurt.

So, this was not a major incident, however I am extremely thankful I had an observant instructor paying close attention! And I suppose a lesson to be learned from this is to double-check the surroundings of your tie-offs, keeping in mind you might be approaching them under siltout conditions and unable to see simple hazards like that root.

We finished our dives without further incident. Paradise Spring really is beautiful, even for a reef-oriented diver like myself.

>*< Fritz

[TSandM]

One of the things I have a hard time remembering is to keep my arm up in front of my face while doing lights-out exits. This is a great cautionary tale.

[tstormdiver]

During my cave course, my instructor has started to use a 2mm beanie style hood turned around backwards as a blindfold during lights- out drills. It allows him to keep his light on to monitor my progress, completely blocks out all sight & light on me, while allowing me to keep my mask on (not that I have any problem swimming with the mask off), thus eyes are a little more protected. I also agree with TS&M, you should also keep a hand sweeping out in front of you to help avoid any objects that you may encounter.

[FritzCat66]

One of the things I have a hard time remembering is to keep my arm up in front of my face while doing lights-out exits.

Good advice, TS, something that was not emphasized in my training.

During my cave course, my instructor has started to use a 2mm beanie style hood turned around backwards as a blindfold during lights- out drills. It allows him to keep his light on to monitor my progress, completely blocks out all sight & light on me, while allowing me to keep my mask on

I gather my instructor usually does something similar, but figured for cavern the no-mask variation also works well. Yes, I could see some light, but not really enough to work with, couldn't even see the line I was holding (which is why I was at risk for impaling my face on that root). Short of actually silting out the cavern, seems like a decent simulation.