Lessons Most frightening moments

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After seeing how the post I wrote about the reverse block resonated with people, I would like to make another post today, namely about the most frightening moments I've ever had.

It's easy, particularly for novice divers, to think that people like myself, with decades of experience, thousands of dives and a deck of c-cards have everything under control and nothing bad ever happens.

I wrote about the reverse block because of that. I wanted to show that I am still human and I can still make mistakes. On the internet there is a strong tendency for (technical) divers and instructors with a lot of experience to project an image of themselves as always solving problems correctly, always making the best decisions, and in the case of instructors in particular, having a monopoly on good ideas that lead to perfect students diving perfectly.

None of that, of course, reflects reality at all.

So I will start. I urge experienced divers to share their own stories.

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First
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1985. I was certified as AOW and we were making a deep dive along a wall. The bottom, for all intents and purposes, at the bottom of the wall was unsurvivable. A diver who diving with a group slightly ahead of us got caught in a large ball of discarded fishing line that he didn't see. He started sinking. The incident started at 42 meters. My buddy and I had just started our dive and we saw this happening. Nobody in his group did. We went after him. This was the first time I had dived deeper than 42 meters. I couldn't tell how deep we were when we caught him because the (analogue) depth gauge I was using was pinned at its maximum depth. This was also my first deco dive or at least my first dive where I was "off the tables" and unable to to know how to ascend. I was, at that time, unaware of oxygen toxicity, gas management and ascent protocols. We returned (at a rapid pace) to 30ft. (10m) and waited there until our tanks were empty on the assumption that any damage done by our deep incursion would be fixed by that. Upon surfacing we didn't know if we were going to get the bends or not. I was, frankly, scared. It still gives me the heebiejeebies to think about this incident more than 30 years later. We did something there that was completely out of control (also the rescue) and we got off easy.

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Second
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2002, I think. I was working as a DM. We temporarily lost a diver during a dive. The situation was that we were on a platform at 25m and doing some exercises for the AOW (deep) dive. A group of divers (maybe 6) descending LANDED on us and kicked up so much silt in their attempts to slow down before impacting the bottom that the visibility went from 5m to black-out in a matter of seconds. I grabbed the two divers right in front of me and dragged them out of the silt cloud. One of them turned out to be our diver and the other one turned out to be one of the idiots who landed on us. We were missing a diver. We surfaced. Naturally our divers were told to surface if they became separated but this diver did not. He remained where he was and waited to be rescued. On the surface we decided that I would search for the missing diver because I had the most experience of everyone (including the instructor). At that point I was a DM but I was already technically trained. I had very limited time. I went back down and eventually found him but it was luck. He survived and my beard got grayer overnight. If I couldn't have found him in the next 5 min his death would have been on my conscience until I died. This was so frightening to me that I nearly abandoned all plans I had to become an instructor.

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Third
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The accident. My team saved the life of a diver who ran out of air during an AOW training dive (by another group, not mine) and was left for dead on the bottom at 18m. We acted quickly and professionally and got him into the hands of paramedics within about 10 min. As an aside, the fact that the Dutch paramedics were able to be on scene so quickly was no small part of this! He looked dead when we retrieved him. He lay in coma for several weeks after the incident. Doctors had basically written him off when -- unexpectedly to all -- he woke up and subsequently made a reasonable (albeit not full) recovery.

The impact on myself and on the members of my team was substantial, particularly because of what we viewed as our 'mistakes'. One diver (the DM) stopped diving. He started hyperventilating during the descent to find the "body" and after that he started to hyperventilate on EVERY dive. He stopped diving.

To me it changed EVERYTHING about how I view training and my role as an instructor. I didn't organize things on the surface as well as I could have, if I had had a second run at it. Yes, I had the EMS on site in 10 min. Police, paramedics, trauma doctor, helicopter, fire department with a boat, a private boat.... all of that I had..... but I was overwhelmed and not communicating as well as I could.

Someone tried to chase my (uncertified) OW students into the water to go search. He didn't know that they were uncertified and I ripped him a new one in a way that I regret, giving in to the emotion. An NOB (CMAS) instructor showed me by example how to control the dive site in a way I had never learned, I missed seeing a diver (the DM who caused the accident) displaying passive panic. It only became apparent to me when they had to take him away by ambulance when he collapsed.... it was MUCH more messy scene than I had ever imagined and I was not in control as well as I would expect from myself. At one point, once the EMS had control of the surface situation I grabbed another diver (a DM) and went searching myself. This was a mistake. I can't get over the mind set that drove me to ACT when I SHOULD have been coordinating! I'm like the guy who charges into a burning building because I can't fight the urge to DO SOMETHING! I HATE that about myself.

Since that time (it's been years) I've been replaying that event in my mind and thinking, "if I had only done XXXX then YYYY". It drives me CRAZY to think that if we were sharper we could have found him 30 seconds or a minute earlier and his recovery could have been better. The fact that he survived is utterly astounding. These things never end like that.... but I feel responsible for the fact that it took so long.

This was a formative moment in my diving. I considered stopping as well but eventually decided not not to. To this day I cannot -- and will not -- teach or participate in the Rescue course, even though I may be the one instructor in my circle who is most qualified to talk about the differences between theory and practice. It's just too intimidating.
 
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I will say this is NOT typical of their usual care. I believe the only reason they allowed this was due to their very positive history with my dive shop from previous trips. We also ALL agreed to this dive. It just wasnt explained very well what we were getting into.

All in all, I was very impressed with the Bonne Terre mines and the saftey they go through. I didnt make this post to defame them in any way. It was just one of those wierd circumstances. I would also add, that while being the scariest of the two dives, and my hyper ventilation issue, dive 2 was WAY WAY cooler than dive 1. :)

Also odds are that you wouldnt be in a situation where the trails were silted out. This is apparently very rare. But they had received almost 2 feet of water over the week previous.

I would certainly go back and dive with them again. So again. Please do not take my post as a defamation of Bonne Terre. This was a one off situation.

The cave system was im sure very fun. The lack of scuba dives was why you panicked and luckily you saved yourself. But what if another in your party had done that and run out of air and would have had to share air? if no one was over 500 then it could have been fatal. Im not knocking your post or the operators of that dive just saying it was probably a lot closer to danger than anyone realized. Im just commenting as I use alot of air and always rent 100s because of that. I am a thin guy but i breath more air than large men under water. Hopefully this gets better for me.
 
So you married the guy you hated to no end. Im dying here. This explains alot about my life. I cant understand WHY any woman would want to be around me. Glad I found scubaboard. Alot of scary but also alot of funny

So today we were learning to roll and he almost let me drown and then I remembered I knew how to get myself out

Sometimes the video will mess you up!


I’m better than he is :wink:
 
Last sunday I had a new experience in a cave, a lost buddy.

Coming back from a deep section, we arrived at the bottom of a shaft at 47m/154ft. As planned and briefed, I started preparing for a gas switch while ascending to 33m/100ft. My buddy was above me, instead of being at the same level for a gas switch. While I switched, he signaled an ok with his light, to which I responded after completing the switch.

When I reached the ceiling of the shaft, he was already way ahead of me. I saw his light disappear in the distance.
vlcsnap-181104.jpg


No idea, at that moment, why he was in such a hurry. Gas problem? I had two thirds of reserve with me and he was swimming away from it.

At 20m/66ft I staged a tank with EAN50, which was not part of the dive plan, but just extra security. That tank was still there, so apparently he didn't need that one.
At 10m/33ft we both staged our EAN80 tanks, part of our plan - a slow swim back to the exit during half an hour while decompressing. Both tanks were present on the line.
He hadn't been there. He had probably missed the junction and continued through the lower section.
After clipping my stages and a light to the line, I started looking for him, but the lower section was empty. I returned, took my own tanks, switched gas and headed for the exit.

That's when your mind starts running. Dozens of questions coming up along the way, and the realization that this day might turn into a search-and-recovery situation, with all the sh#t piling up, ready to hit the fan. No matter how often you practice such a scenario, the emotions that dive along with you are never there on a training dive.

I found him 50m from the exit, switching to a staged tank of oxygen, which was neither part of the plan, just a redundancy. I took that tank, checked his computer and guided him out of the cave. After completing our last decompression stop, we finally surfaced. End of cave diving, time for a very thorough refresher for him.
 
so what happe
Last sunday I had a new experience in a cave, a lost buddy.

Coming back from a deep section, we arrived at the bottom of a shaft at 47m/154ft. As planned and briefed, I started preparing for a gas switch while ascending to 33m/100ft. My buddy was above me, instead of being at the same level for a gas switch. While I switched, he signaled an ok with his light, to which I responded after completing the switch.

When I reached the ceiling of the shaft, he was already way ahead of me. I saw his light disappear in the distance.
View attachment 488158

No idea, at that moment, why he was in such a hurry. Gas problem? I had two thirds of reserve with me and he was swimming away from it.

At 20m/66ft I staged a tank with EAN50, which was not part of the dive plan, but just extra security. That tank was still there, so apparently he didn't need that one.
At 10m/33ft we both staged our EAN80 tanks, part of our plan - a slow swim back to the exit during half an hour while decompressing. Both tanks were present on the line.
He hadn't been there. He had probably missed the junction and continued through the lower section.
After clipping my stages and a light to the line, I started looking for him, but the lower section was empty. I returned, took my own tanks, switched gas and headed for the exit.

That's when your mind starts running. Dozens of questions coming up along the way, and the realization that this day might turn into a search-and-recovery situation, with all the sh#t piling up, ready to hit the fan. No matter how often you practice such a scenario, the emotions that dive along with you are never there on a training dive.

I found him 50m from the exit, switching to a staged tank of oxygen, which was neither part of the plan, just a redundancy. I took that tank, checked his computer and guided him out of the cave. After completing our last decompression stop, we finally surfaced. End of cave diving, time for a very thorough refresher for him.
so what happened to him? did he lose line? did he run out of back gas?
 
so what happened to him? did he lose line? did he run out of back gas?
There was never a gas problem, but he did miss a T on the line. He got spooked down there, for whatever reason. I just know that he did not give that dive 100% attention.
 
There was never a gas problem, but he did miss a T on the line. He got spooked down there, for whatever reason. I just know that he did not give that dive 100% attention.


maybe gas narcosis a bit? moving fast seems to me to be a symptom ive seen people speed up when narced even after getting to shallower depth.

Hey quick question do divers ever hook up to each other in cave dives? I mean tie ropes to each other?

btw wow if a buddy leaves you in a deep cave dive, I mean I might be real upset at him
 
Absolutely not.

Hey quick question do divers ever hook up to each other in cave dives? I mean tie ropes to each other?
 
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