First Dive Problem

[hedgert]

I dived for the first time yesterday. After watching a video the night before, then 40 minutes of theory and maybe 20 minutes in shallow water practising removing the mouthpiece, swapping to someone else's octopus and clearing the mask (all of which I managed) I was taken on a reef dive - where the first part was restricted to 5m, then the intention was to go deeper.

I had a problem twice that I couldn't work out, that my instructor put down to me panicking; but I don't think I did panic - when the problem happened (described below) I went through the skills I knew (including taking the instructors octopus), and having tried them all, I still had no air and at that point I surfaced (from 4m). This happened twice - and I don't know what happened (and having been told I panicked hasn't helped me understand).

On both occasions I was swimming around horizontal breathing through the regulator and had been for a little while (some minutes). I did have problems managing my depth - I'd been told to go up or down by pressing short bursts on the BCD valves - not to push and hold, I was getting used to how long it took and how many presses it took but I think the instructor felt I was too slow and would come over and give a firm push on the valve button - usually to put me on the bottom if I was coming down. So I'm aware that concern over not managing my own depth may have distracted me. On both occasions I suddenly found my mouth completely full of water and then I was gagging. I pressed the front of the regulator to push the water out, but it didn't seem to do anything (I mean I got plenty of air coming into my mouth and plenty of bubbles appearing, but it didn't clear the water from my mouth - I still had no air to breathe. The instructor offered me her octopus and I put that in, pressed the valve to push the water out but I still had a mouth full of water. I didn't see much option but to surface.

I'm obviously concerned about ever trying again, knowing that I can't do that (surface) from deeper than I was, and yet I don't understand how to get out of the situation I was in - to be safe. I'm not sure whether in addition to pressing on the valve to clear water I have to do something else - perhaps I wasn't breathing out at the same time - although I was needing to breathe, so I'm not sure what air I had to breathe out, or maybe somehow as I was pressing the valve I was changing the shape of my mouth and somehow letting more water in.

If I'm ever to do this again I obviously need more practice than I had up front before the dive this time, but I really need to understand how to deal with that particular situation.

Can anyone help?

 

[Far_X]

Hmmm, I am not too sure how the water got into your mouth. What might be a good idea is to see if you can replicate that in the pool where you know you can stand up if you need to breathe. It really is worth practicing. My first OW dive was really bad with an uncontrolled ascent from thirty five feet so understand your concern. But here I am, over three hundred dives and four years later, certified for decompression dives and loving every minute I spend under the water no matter how shallow or how deep. Stay with it.

Welcome to the board, by the way.

 

[MauiScubaSteve]

How much snorkeling experience do you have? Not many children go straight from crawling to running, and not many people go straight from swimming in a pool to scuba diving. If the two regulators were not malfunctioning, you may not have been completely sealing your mouth around the mouthpiece.

I tell all my students that successful snorkeling is pretty much a prerequisite. Also, when purging the reg by pushing the front, there will still be some water in your mouth. You breath gently and cautiously around that water to get just enough air into your lungs so you can exhale all the water out of your mouth and then take a full breath.

Hope this helps.

 

[PhilK]

You have to blow out at the same time as pressing the purge button. If you don't have air to blow out just 'spit' water out through your reg. It'll exit through the exhaust valve.

Didn't you have plenty of pool diving first? Did this occur in the pool?

 

[Puffer Fish]

Not sure what is going on...I would suggest that you and your instructor spend a little time with removing/clearing the regulator to resolve the issue. Being human, sometimes we don't all learn at the same rate, or have the same physical understanding of a particular issue.

 

[MauiScubaSteve]

You have to blow out at the same time as pressing the purge button. If you don't have air to blow out just 'spit' water out through your reg. It'll exit through the exhaust valve.

Didn't you have plenty of pool diving first? Did this occur in the pool?

Reread the first paragraph of the original post (OP); this is the typical senario for a student at a location that does a lot of Intro or Discover diving. If there are only a couple students the first pool session does not take very long, although 20 minutes is still short by my standards. After the first pool session, it is within some agency standards to go straight to open water for the first dive.

If you have enough air in your lungs to blow out, there is no need to use the purge button. The reason for using the purge is because you have no air in your lungs. It does not take very much air to clear a reg of water. When you have no air in your lungs you can still compress your mouth and spit to push most of the water in your mouth out into the reg so the purging will force most of the water out the exhaust.

 

[hedgert]

Thank you for the various replies - lots to try.
As suggested in the last post - this was a Discover Scuba Diving half day organised by a PADI certified place. It was at a location in the Maldives where there was no pool, so the initial skills training was done in the lagoon - where the sea was very calm.
I definitely felt the need for some more aclimatisation before trying what I did yesterday in OW. The suggestions about getting familiar with snorkeling and especially the last post (thank you halemano) about, and when to use, the button were very useful.
I will also try to simulate whatever happened (maybe by just letting my mouth fill with water in a pool where I can stand up) until I can deal with it before I go back out into OW.

 

[8thElementDiver]

hedgert,

Good job on staying cool in those situations. It really sounds like you got a rotten instructor, too.

Take a full Open Water course where you live. Be sure you're comfortable with the instructor (and if you're not comfortable with them, tell them you want someone else--there are a lot of rotten instructors outside the Maldives, too). Tell the instructor what happened and work with them until you feel absolutely comfortable about clearing your regulator. Have your instructor help you with buoyancy control and equalization techniques so you can descend more easily, too.

BTW, if you find yourself with a leaky regulator in the future (not uncommon with rental gear), try switching to your own octopus first--hopefully that one won't leak.

 

[diver 85]

You need to learn how to dive before you get killed.........PLEASE take the time and some money and learn correctly--unless............

 

[hedgert]

Thanks 8thElementDiver - I'll keep at it.

diver_85 - not sure what you are getting at - as I wrote in my original post I had the experience I described above while being professionally instructed by a PADI qualified instructor. I'm not sure what more a novice is supposed to do. I didn't make any of the decisions about readiness or otherwise for a dive - I was in the hands of an instructor.