a few near misses & lessons learned from a recreational scuba diver

[Saldiac]

These are just 'minor' incidents that I encountered during the recreational scuba diving I've done so far.

The first one happened the day after I finished my wreck dive course and was buddied up with someone on the boat. At that time I had done about 16/17 dives.
We were diving either the Duane or the Spiegel Grove wreck and even though we were warned about the currents and told to stay on or close to the wreck my buddy suddenly decided to swim up, away from the wreck. I immediately felt he made an incorrect decision but didn't act for a few seconds until I saw a sea turtle and a barracuda to my right. I pulled on his fin and he turned back, shot a few pics of the turtle and barracuda, then we went back to the wreck.
Thinking back still makes me cringe since this could've gone horribly wrong, especially at the depth of those wrecks.
Lesson learned: talk more in depth to new buddy to discuss the dive and dive the plan.

The second incident happened last summer when I was diving a fairly familiar site at the island here. I lost my weight belt at around 16-20 meters depth but didn't realize it right away. I tried to regain buoyancy by letting air out of my BCD but was still ascending. Then I decided to swim back down since I knew surfacing wouldn't be a good thing. Once I got back down the dive master had recovered my weight belt and helped me put it back on.
From what I remember I felt the weight belt wasn't tight enough so I opened it and closed it twice or so during the dive. Quite possibly I didn't close it properly the last time I wanted to tighten it.
Lesson learned: don't fiddle too much with weight belt underwater.

The third incident happened 2 or 3 months ago when I ended up being separated from the group. My dive buddy was lagging behind the group so I waited for him to catch up with me. The group was ahead of me and he was behind me in a rocky area. Just as I saw the group ahead turn a corner I looked back and didn't see my buddy anymore. As I turned my head to look ahead the group had disappeared.
Of course my heartbeat went up and my breathing became heavier but I calmed myself down, checked my air (still had 100 plus bar left), and started to think about the best action to take. I could either try to chase the group through the rocks with many left and right turns (potentially worsening the situation) or I could swim along the left side of the rocks which would lead me back to the vicinity of the anchor line. I chose the 2nd option and after a while I noticed bubbles in front of me. I had actually found the second group of divers from our boat and once I reached them I looked to my right and saw my own group appear from the rocky landscape. My dive buddy was with them.
Lesson learned: make sure buddy keeps up with group pace before chance of separation can occur.

I'm sure there's many more lessons to be learned through these incidents but I've only done 56 dives so far. As such, I still consider myself a novice diver with a lot to learn.

[yodelhawk]

Good info! And thanks for sharing. It's this kind of stuff that us newbies need to tell each other so we do not repeate each others mistakes. Thanks again!

[Mike]

Lesson learned: make sure buddy keeps up with group pace before chance of separation can occur.

You can try to make your buddy keep up, however if your buddy isn't keeping up you should consider abandoning the group before you abandon your dive buddy.

[Saldiac]

Good point Mike.
After the dive he explained that he was just slamming some rocks together to attract some fish. If I had stayed behind him I would've seen the group getting away from us and could have gotten his attention to rejoin the group. If we lost sight of the group in that case we would still have each other.

[TSandM]

Saldiac, I understand your issues with the third situation. I remember, when I was quite novice, doing a drift dive off Maui. The guide was moving right along, and my husband kept wanting to stop and take photographs, and the group was getting nearly out of sight. I was quite anxious, worried that if we lost the group, we'd get lost and not be able to find the boat. I kept motioning my husband to come along, and he got more and more irritated; eventually, I gave up and accompanied the guide.

I was wrong. As a buddy pair, we had resources to help one another. Leaving my husband on his own was the wrong decision, but came out of my feeling that we weren't safe without the guide. THAT was the big problem, not the decision I made. In retrospect, we should have asked (and didn't) what we should do or what the boat would do if we got separated from the group. If we'd had a procedure in place and understood that it wasn't going to be a big deal, I would have been saved a great deal of anxiety. So many things that go wrong with a dive can be avoided by a bit of communication or planning before one ever gets in the water!

[davetowz]

When things happen underwater, remember to Stop, Think, breathe, relax and then act. The only true emergency underwater is running out of something to breathe. Freaking out seldom leads to good decisions. Sounds to me like you are on the correct path.

[Saldiac]

Thanks for the comments guys.

Indeed I felt I shouldn't leave my buddy behind even if it meant that we could be separated from the group. But since recreational divers are so used to just follow the dive guide/master blindly this turned out to be a good learning experience for me. It made me want to take the rescue diver course even more than I already did.
Even if I'm still a relatively novice diver I want to have the skill set that will allow me to act properly in these situations and this also gives me more confidence and comfortability to help myself and others should I encounter a problem underwater.

Definitely discussing with the guide and your buddy in terms of what should be done if you deviate from the dive plan is a good point. It is quite easy to get caught up in taking pictures or trying to attract more fish without realizing that the group is marching on.

In this incident, it was fortunate that the separation happened at a dive site where I've dived several times so after I calmed myself down I knew what direction I should head to. Had it been an unfamiliar dive site I might have tried to retrace the dive back to anchor line. Or in the worst case I might have made a controlled ascent to the surface.

[mselenaous]

Thanks for sharing your learning experiences Saldiac. Reading about how these events happen help all of us be more alert and think in "accident prevention" mode.