I
idocsteve
Guest
I have been reading the forum for a while now, and whenever I log in, I get a message that I have yet to make my first post and introduce myself to the ScubaBoard community. No more lurking for me! I officially enter the forums and say "hello" with a discussion about a disturbing diving incident that happened to me earlier this year in Cozumel, and follow up with a few questions.
We were doing a typical Cozumel style wall-drift dive, and although the group had been advised to stay together, on this particular dive my buddy and I got caught up in the beautiful sights of the reef and got separated from the rest of our dive group. We never lost sight of each other, and we decided through hand signals that we would continue the dive, and use our SMBs to signal the boat when we surfaced. Hey, Cozumel dive sites aren't exactly the middle of the Atlantic, and we figured that we could always swim for shore in a worst case scenario.
About 5 minutes later, while exploring the deep wall and crevasses at about 100', I saw a large flash of color off to my right. As I swam closer, I realized that what I was seeing was -unbelievable as this may sound- the long flowing hair of a beautiful redheaded mermaid, wearing a blueish colored seashell bikini top that barely covered her nicely curved upper body. She was accompanied by another, this one was a blonde-haired variety; her outfit was pink; and she filled hers pretty much the same way as the first, although due to her somewhat larger upper body endowment, her suit consisted primarily of two large conch shells. I signaled my partner using my underwater air horn (and lots of animated hand gestures!), he immediately swam over, and in his surprise, dropped his regulator right out of his mouth! Although I had not undergone training for this particular situation, I calmly switched to my backup reg and started to hand him my primary, but the blonde had already seen the problem and had quickly swam over and replaced it in his mouth, while at the same time giving him a wide smile and parting her lips slightly, as if to support him in his resumed breathing.
They motioned for us to follow them, and although we were about halfway through our air at over 100', we figured this just might be a once in a lifetime opportunity (the eagle ray that we saw on a previous dive didn't even come close to this). So we followed the mermaids as they gracefully swam, using a sort of dolphin kick that most experienced divers could only come close to achieving. We followed them through a maze of underground passageways, which eventually ended in an airfilled underwater cavern. We popped our heads up and out of the water, where we found that we could breathe fresh air from the cavern. The mermaids were nowhere to be seen, but here sat a chubby-faced, heavily-breathing green-skinned guy with sharp teeth, who we found out was named "Maury". Maury told us to get out of the water and doff our gear. Since he was accompanied by two heavyset, large-faced, large-mouthed creatures who called themselves "groupies", we felt we had no choice but to oblige. After exiting the water and removing our gear, we were grabbed from behind by a creature which held us in a tight grip in its many curvy suction cup arms. Maury told us that were to hand over all our valuables...our dive computers, dive knives, even our hotel room keys (which I keep in a waterproof pouch in my BC). He said that if we did not comply, the creatures would ink us, and permanently stain our dive gear. I had a new wetsuit/BC and a rental tank for which I was responsible, and I did not want to ruin them, so I agreed to his demands, as did my buddy. We were then unceremoniously dumped on the rocky floor of the cavern. Following the shakedown, we were permitted to re-enter the water with the remainder of our dive gear and find our way back out of the cavern, where we made an uneventful ascent followed by a 3 minute safety stop at 15'.
We had a long surface wait, as we were quite aways from the boat, which had drifted with the current while we were being robbed by assorted marine creatures in the cavern. I felt both embarrassed and ashamed that we fell for the old "mermaid-as-bait scuba equipment ripoff scam", so as we waited, with our SMBs inflated, I turned to my dive buddy and said (with more than a little bit of sarcasm), "do you think they took our room keys so the girls can meet up with us later tonight?" He gave me a very strange look, and said, "what are you talking about?". I repeated, "The mermaids- do you think they will come back to the hotel?". He looked directly at me, and said, in a rather slow, careful way, "I remember swimming at 100', and then we got separated from the group and we decided to continue the dive; then we saw two very large colorful angelfish, one pink and one blue, and we followed them into a swim-through a short ways, but we retreated right after we saw the large green moray eel and the octopus. On the way out there were 2 large groupers hovering over the reef"...and that's all he remembered of the whole thing!
So here are my questions:
Do you think my dive buddy was experiencing nitrogen narcosis, and that's why he cannot remember the details? Do we log the time spent in the cavern as part of the dive even though were not diving? Does breathing fresh air from an underwater cavern add to our residual nitrogen time? Why would a mermaid want a dive computer- are they subject to the same DCS limits as the rest of us? Do you think the mermaids could even get into our hotel? (they were very smooth in the water, but how they would get around on dry land (they would be flopping around all over the place), and how would they ever figure out the elevators? Would the loss of our gear in the cavern be covered by DANs equipment insurance coverage? Do you think we followed the proper procedures? I don't recall going over any of this during my certification courses.
Thanks in advance for the help from all the knowledgeable ScubaBoard members, and for the rest of you, be careful because this is probably not the first time this kind of thing has happened!
We were doing a typical Cozumel style wall-drift dive, and although the group had been advised to stay together, on this particular dive my buddy and I got caught up in the beautiful sights of the reef and got separated from the rest of our dive group. We never lost sight of each other, and we decided through hand signals that we would continue the dive, and use our SMBs to signal the boat when we surfaced. Hey, Cozumel dive sites aren't exactly the middle of the Atlantic, and we figured that we could always swim for shore in a worst case scenario.
About 5 minutes later, while exploring the deep wall and crevasses at about 100', I saw a large flash of color off to my right. As I swam closer, I realized that what I was seeing was -unbelievable as this may sound- the long flowing hair of a beautiful redheaded mermaid, wearing a blueish colored seashell bikini top that barely covered her nicely curved upper body. She was accompanied by another, this one was a blonde-haired variety; her outfit was pink; and she filled hers pretty much the same way as the first, although due to her somewhat larger upper body endowment, her suit consisted primarily of two large conch shells. I signaled my partner using my underwater air horn (and lots of animated hand gestures!), he immediately swam over, and in his surprise, dropped his regulator right out of his mouth! Although I had not undergone training for this particular situation, I calmly switched to my backup reg and started to hand him my primary, but the blonde had already seen the problem and had quickly swam over and replaced it in his mouth, while at the same time giving him a wide smile and parting her lips slightly, as if to support him in his resumed breathing.
They motioned for us to follow them, and although we were about halfway through our air at over 100', we figured this just might be a once in a lifetime opportunity (the eagle ray that we saw on a previous dive didn't even come close to this). So we followed the mermaids as they gracefully swam, using a sort of dolphin kick that most experienced divers could only come close to achieving. We followed them through a maze of underground passageways, which eventually ended in an airfilled underwater cavern. We popped our heads up and out of the water, where we found that we could breathe fresh air from the cavern. The mermaids were nowhere to be seen, but here sat a chubby-faced, heavily-breathing green-skinned guy with sharp teeth, who we found out was named "Maury". Maury told us to get out of the water and doff our gear. Since he was accompanied by two heavyset, large-faced, large-mouthed creatures who called themselves "groupies", we felt we had no choice but to oblige. After exiting the water and removing our gear, we were grabbed from behind by a creature which held us in a tight grip in its many curvy suction cup arms. Maury told us that were to hand over all our valuables...our dive computers, dive knives, even our hotel room keys (which I keep in a waterproof pouch in my BC). He said that if we did not comply, the creatures would ink us, and permanently stain our dive gear. I had a new wetsuit/BC and a rental tank for which I was responsible, and I did not want to ruin them, so I agreed to his demands, as did my buddy. We were then unceremoniously dumped on the rocky floor of the cavern. Following the shakedown, we were permitted to re-enter the water with the remainder of our dive gear and find our way back out of the cavern, where we made an uneventful ascent followed by a 3 minute safety stop at 15'.
We had a long surface wait, as we were quite aways from the boat, which had drifted with the current while we were being robbed by assorted marine creatures in the cavern. I felt both embarrassed and ashamed that we fell for the old "mermaid-as-bait scuba equipment ripoff scam", so as we waited, with our SMBs inflated, I turned to my dive buddy and said (with more than a little bit of sarcasm), "do you think they took our room keys so the girls can meet up with us later tonight?" He gave me a very strange look, and said, "what are you talking about?". I repeated, "The mermaids- do you think they will come back to the hotel?". He looked directly at me, and said, in a rather slow, careful way, "I remember swimming at 100', and then we got separated from the group and we decided to continue the dive; then we saw two very large colorful angelfish, one pink and one blue, and we followed them into a swim-through a short ways, but we retreated right after we saw the large green moray eel and the octopus. On the way out there were 2 large groupers hovering over the reef"...and that's all he remembered of the whole thing!
So here are my questions:
Do you think my dive buddy was experiencing nitrogen narcosis, and that's why he cannot remember the details? Do we log the time spent in the cavern as part of the dive even though were not diving? Does breathing fresh air from an underwater cavern add to our residual nitrogen time? Why would a mermaid want a dive computer- are they subject to the same DCS limits as the rest of us? Do you think the mermaids could even get into our hotel? (they were very smooth in the water, but how they would get around on dry land (they would be flopping around all over the place), and how would they ever figure out the elevators? Would the loss of our gear in the cavern be covered by DANs equipment insurance coverage? Do you think we followed the proper procedures? I don't recall going over any of this during my certification courses.
Thanks in advance for the help from all the knowledgeable ScubaBoard members, and for the rest of you, be careful because this is probably not the first time this kind of thing has happened!
Welcome aboard!
