Cold induced near-panic!

[EireDiver606]

I still remember an outing where a n00b was diving 10C water in a club DS (trilam), with only thin hiking underwear. That was downright dangerous, the poor sod was hypothermic when he climbed ashore. If he'd had issues underwater, he'd have a decent risk of being up to his armpits in serious doodoo. I had a serious chat with the leader of that guy's club afterwards.

Yes it was stupid. It was in very shallow water though, only about 5-8 meters and 35 mins.
But yeah lesson learned, never doing that again......

 

[Storker]

it was stupid

I don't know if I've actually stumbled into the guy I was talking about, but in any case: I don't blame the n00b, he probably didn't - and shouldn't be expected to - know better. The responsibility was on his club's DO, who, with proper experience, should have looked out for him.

 

[Luis_DLH]

I've had a few "dark narc" episodes and they were all in cold water below 70' but above 100FSW. Same dives in warmer water no issues. I think the cold could be involved sometimes for some people. N narcosis is mostly theory anyway this would be just one more.

I was thinking more about this, the op mentioned a swim thru, which is confided to a degree. My experiences with narcosis in cold water with a "panic" feeling the "dark narc" feeling , were also related to at least the apprehension of confinement in the form of entanglement. Wrecks in low vis / dark water with lots of nets was a trigger for me. I've don't remember feeling that frighten even when I had something real to be frighten about! I "talked" myself down as I lost 10' of depth. The rest of the dive was fine even after going back down but that initial sight of all those nets, fishing lines and ropes spooked me good.

The weirdest part was that this swim thru was the size of a garage which added to the confusion because I have been through some that were alot tighter than that with no problem.

 

[Rred]

Afterdark-
"My experiences with narcosis in cold water"
Bear in mind that the USN has had "cold water tables" for many years, formally recognizing that colder water and colder divers will combine to make for more bent divers--and more narcosis along the way. No big surprise there.

 

[AfterDark]

Afterdark-
"My experiences with narcosis in cold water"
Bear in mind that the USN has had "cold water tables" for many years, formally recognizing that colder water and colder divers will combine to make for more bent divers--and more narcosis along the way. No big surprise there.

Yes, thanks for reminding me. I wasn't trying to surprise anyone, I was trying to relate to the OP's experience.

I'm a life long NE diver most of my diving is done in cold, low vis water so my experience with cold water is plenty. Last time I saw more than 25' vis was 2011. I'm pretty sure what the OP experienced and my experiences are probably caused by similar conditions. I have no phobia's of closed spaces, I worked in closed places for 20 years inspecting nuke subs. However I've noticed the combination of cold, dark depths 70+FSW and some kind of visual trigger, sometimes brings on a feeling of fear that I've never experienced any where else at any other time.