Personal involvement in a scuba diving related emergency?

[Celt]

Plenty foulings but never thought as emergency just par for the course. Went to 1 seriously foul diver in 68meters and OOA brought him to the surface. 2 rapid ascent one perforated sinus and the other serious spinal bend. Brought 2 divers back down to 60 feet after they suffered dci but both ended up in a chamber 1 made full recovery but both lived. Plenty free flows and other minor stuff. Recovered 5 drownings but not emergency’s.

 

[chillyinCanada]

OOG situations less than 10, but I'd need to check my log books for the exact number. The first one was an instructor in Thailand back in the 90s that was allocated to me as a buddy because I was taking photographs, dived solo on the remainder of that particular trip.

All other OOG have not been buddies!

Buddy stung by lion fish inside a wreck on shore dive south of Jeddah in Saudi Arabia back in the 90s. On surfacing he looked green and was vomiting, we had a two kilometre walk back from the reef to shore, by the time we reached the shore he felt fine.

Perforated both ears on several occasions, some resulting in gross ear infections, never had vertigo though as the pressure has always been positive from inside and occurred whilst clearing my ears.

Assisted with a DCS diver on three occasions. One was during a 70m tech dive when one of the group had issues with shoulder joint after boarding. Put on O2 for a couple of hours prior driving to a chamber whilst on O2, which was also a two hour drive and over a mountain.

Second DCS (suspected) was a recreational diver with severe pain in lower back after boarding. O2 on the boat barely lasted five minutes when it was empty. Donated my pony with 50% as that was the next richest gas on the boat for the journey back to the marina. Ambulance took over on arrival at the marina.

Third DCS (suspected) was a recreational diver, feeling severely unwell on surfacing and vomiting. No O2 on the boat and we were two hours away from the port. An instructor on the boat put her on 32% as this was the richest gas we had (prior to me always carrying a pony with 50%) and we returned to port after only one dive on a two tank trip. Taken to local hospital in North Oman on arrival back at the port.

Rescued an entangled diver on a night dive (not my buddy), when everyone had returned from a shore dive (Jeddah, Saudi Arabia back in the 90s). Diver on the surface but first stage had become entangled on a piece of rope from a mooring line about ten meters from the entry / exit steps to the jetty. He was in a major panic and had been shouting but no-one had heard him including his buddy! Actually all that was required was for him to de-kit and he would have been free, but had been trying to swim towing a 55Gal drum with 10m of chain connected to large concrete blocks. He was a work colleague at the time, and we all had a good laugh about it afterwards. He had surfaced with his buddy, but she had swam to the jetty before him with other divers and had not noticed he was not in the group.

I had to laugh too!

 

[divinh]

Early in my diving... < 30
- Got disoriented by bubbles coming up from divers below and found myself on the surface
- Underweighted and struggled to stay down
- End of dive required swimming against unexpected current. Normal safety stop. Finished dive with 5 bar.
- Another diver got lost when we returned to a very crowded bay, 5 boats?. Case of crisscrossing groups? She didn't surface after 1 minute and instead searched along the shoreline. She surfaced 50m? away on her own, after making a safety stop. I spotted her as the surfacing solo diver out in the distance.

Later...
- After a sitting back entry from a tender, I started to back away when I backed into the diver who entered before me. It was a drift dive, so we needed to enter quickly and back away from the tender. The diver before me didn't back up fast enough and decided to fiddle with his gear. As the tender backed up, the hull hit my forehead and I got a gash. I swam up to the DM and pointed to my forehead and he said it was okay, so I proceeded with the dive. At the end of the dive, the blood was apparent once I was out of the water. Gash was sealed with liquid bandage and there's no scar.
- DMT tried to deploy SMB and got tangled in the line. (We were led into the extreme shallows, < 5m.) I was his buddy and untangled him.
- Another diver in our dive group thought she was OOA and went for the surface. She hadn't been diving for 10(?) years, didn't take a refresher, and thought 50 bar, where SPG's typically are marked with red, meant OOA.
- Another diver signaled 4 minutes, instead of 3, when we arrived at the safety stop. The DM checked his dive computer and he was in mandatory deco. He had been doing multiple dives over three days and many times went below everyone to look at things. He probably never saw mandatory deco on his computer before and also thought he would just clear overnight.
- Last diver was still getting out of the water when the prop started up. Everyone yelled and it was quickly shut down.

 

[chillyinCanada]

Early in my diving... < 30
- Got disoriented by bubbles coming up from divers below and found myself on the surface
- Underweighted and struggled to stay down
- End of dive required swimming against unexpected current. Normal safety stop. Finished dive with 5 bar.
- Another diver got lost when we returned to a very crowded bay, 5 boats?. Case of crisscrossing groups? She didn't surface after 1 minute and instead searched along the shoreline. She surfaced 50m? away on her own, after making a safety stop. I spotted her as the surfacing solo diver out in the distance.

Later...
- After a sitting back entry from a tender, I started to back away when I backed into the diver who entered before me. It was a drift dive, so we needed to enter quickly and back away from the tender. The diver before me didn't back up fast enough and decided to fiddle with his gear. As the tender backed up, the hull hit my forehead and I got a gash. I swam up to the DM and pointed to my forehead and he said it was okay, so I proceeded with the dive. At the end of the dive, the blood was apparent once I was out of the water. Gash was sealed with liquid bandage and there's no scar.
- DMT tried to deploy SMB and got tangled in the line. (We were led into the extreme shallows, < 5m.) I was his buddy and untangled him.
- Another diver in our dive group thought she was OOA and went for the surface. She hadn't been diving for 10(?) years, didn't take a refresher, and thought 50 bar, where SPG's typically are marked with red, meant OOA.
- Another diver signaled 4 minutes, instead of 3, when we arrived at the safety stop. The DM checked his dive computer and he was in mandatory deco. He had been doing multiple dives over three days and many times went below everyone to look at things. He probably never saw mandatory deco on his computer before and also thought he would just clear overnight.
- Last diver was still getting out of the water when the prop started up. Everyone yelled and it was quickly shut down.

Yikes

 

[АлександрД]

I think you have to add in list
"Other equipment failures"
I had: camera box fluding, hose takes off from adaptor (It was not OOG, I had second tank), mask glass drop-out(found and put it back ), Fin belt cracking

 

[formernuke]

One OOA, wound up ok. Not me.

 

[Saniflush]

OTHER
Mine happened last year and was not much of an incident by comparison. LDS trip to St Lucia. We were on a site where current was a factor so the boat was having to get close to us, kill the engine, and pick up the three or four people that they could before the boat would be beyond reach to the rest of the divers. They would then crank back up, reposition and pick up the next group. Rinse and repeat. One diver had tired herself out either on the dive or with the goings on of trying to get on the boat and said she was not going to be able to swim fast enough to intercept the boat on one of it's passes. I stayed with her to swim tow her. We got her back to the boat and on but she was really beat to the point of where she just couldn't even stand up once back on the boat. This was a very experienced diver but was a bit older and had misjudged what a/the dive could take out of her. It was really an eye opening experience to me about what could have happened from a seemingly small problem.

The footnote that makes me smile about this and I still raz the above diver about to this day is this. While I am towing her and kicking like hell to get to the boat about halfway there I hear her ask if " are we there yet?" She really wanted to know and was not trying to sound like one of my kids. I turned my head and said "we might be if you would kick a little". It provided some good comedy relief and levity when back on the boat and to this day.

 

[CanadaDan]

One OOA (myself during safety stop early in my diving experience, waited the 3 seconds left on my stop and surfaced calmly and safely). Dive buddy was aware and with me.

One hypothermia (myself, leaky drysuit zipper during deep dive in 3c water). Didn't really register how cold I was until the safety stop. Dive buddies had to help me out of the water and then out of my suit to warm me up with their own bodies.

One diver rescue during sidemount training. A diver fully dry-suited and weighted but without tanks or mask slipped off a large flat ledge in 1' of water where we were getting staged. He sank about 10'. I immediately dropped in, got behind him and swam/lifted him up to another diver still on the ledge who pulled him out. At the time my lifeguard training kicked in. Without a second air source (I only had one air source as I had only clipped on one of my tanks) and with him being essentially blind not knowing I was there it seemed safer to get behind him and push him out of the water.

 

[scubadada]

Fellow divers,

The number of votes and replies to this thread has been very gratifying. The pattern of scuba related emergencies is being revealed. All categories of emergency have received votes other than ox tox seizures. The "other" category has been very active, I will go back and attempt to list these when the thread slows down.

Thanks,

Craig

 

[ReadyDiverOne]

@scubadada +1 on @Trailboss123 kudos for these polls, thanks much.

I am really struck on this one that people are reporting relatively few at depth OOA situations--as others have said on this board that is I think a testament to the quality of modern equipment and quite heartening.

For me, my Atomic SS1 Titanium began leaking air at the outset of a dive and I aborted at about 85 feet. Although I could have released the inflator hose and done the dive without it, I wasn't comfortable continuing because this was the second dive in a brand new location and it was a deep recreational dive. Moreover, I have a DiveAlert horn on that hose, and this makes the coupling higher up and harder to release.

My buddy and another diver were with me and it was no big deal, but I just decided to call it. It was a bummer, especially since I had had the SS1 serviced recently; no one where I was could service it so I had to dive an octo for the rest of the trip. I've since learned how to retune it with a little allen key, pretty simple. But in the future, on far away or foreign dives (which I hope to be my new normal post-COVID) I definitely intend to carry a second hose, DiveAlert and octo as backup (the hose for my BCD inflator is different than that used by Atomic for the SS1, as is the DiveAlert).

Thanks.