Personal involvement in a scuba diving related emergency?

Personal invovement in a scuba diving related emergency?

  • Lung expansion injury (AGE, CAGE)

    Votes: 11 11.8%
  • Decompression sickness (requiring immediate oxygen therapy at a minimum)

    Votes: 34 36.6%
  • Medical emergency (cardiac, etc.)

    Votes: 17 18.3%
  • Out of gas (includes equipment related)

    Votes: 63 67.7%
  • Severe barotrauma (e.g. ruptured eardrum with vertigo)

    Votes: 19 20.4%
  • Severe marine envenomation, sting, bite

    Votes: 18 19.4%
  • Immersion pulmonary edema

    Votes: 3 3.2%
  • Oxygen toxicity seizures

    Votes: 3 3.2%
  • Severe, debilitating nitrogen narcosis

    Votes: 15 16.1%
  • Other, specify below

    Votes: 32 34.4%

  • Total voters
    93

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Did anyone ask the young gal why she didn’t just pee in the water? That is a strange one!

It was her, a brother and father, coming up to the stop, she looked right at me with the huge smile saying she was ok, she looked at her dad and bolted. At the surface she told dad that it hurt down there - all I could think was omg how is a boat full of guys gonna deal with a 12 year old girl that says it hurts down there - lol after the fact.

The luck we had that day, a local doctor was diving with us and he graciously spoke with the young lady - they don’t cover that kind of stuff in class.
 
Two, both in 2019, one that happened to me and the other a student during OW check out dives in 50F water.

Dive # 2 of OW checkout in January 2019, all students are supposed to be using buoy line as a visual reference for descent to a training platform @ 25ffw. I was the DM, floating on the surface watching bubbles to make sure everyone got down okay. One buddy pair I noticed were a little further away and a bit out of visual range to see the line but eventually the bubbles indicated they were moving toward the platform. So I started my descent and as I got about 10 ft under I noticed a set of bubbles from off in the distance and they looked like they were fairly deep. I knew immediately who it was so I made my way to this student, who, as I reached the muddy bottom @ 43ffwm was laying on his back in the mud just breathing with no indication that he was capable of getting himself back to the surface. I grabbed the shoulder strap of his BC, stood him up and indicated that we were going to the surface (visibility was maybe 5 ft). He was coherent enough to continue clearing water out of his mask but no kicking or anything else, which left me kicking both of us to the surface with nearly 50 lbs of lead between us due to extremely cold water and lots of neoprene. Got him to the surface, got us both buoyant and towed him probably 100m back to the dock, reassuring him the entire time that he was okay. Got him to the dock, removed his fins, and he finally calmed down and exited the water. Not sure if he ever completed his OW certification after that but I know at that point he wasn't quite ready and definitely not cut out for cold water diving.

June of 2019 I was on a second dive in Cozumel at Columbia Shallows, right around 30 fsw when the o-ring inside the swivel on my full face mask blew out. It of course caught me by surprise but I knew exactly what I had to do since I've trained repeatedly on how to bail from a ffm. Disconnected my primary hose (QD fitting), pulled off my ffm, switched to my octo then put on a traditional mask I always keep in a pocket. Connected my primary to a spare 2nd stage then switched to it so I could still donate in an OOA situation, but realized that in the middle of bailing and switching, I'd dropped both my new GoPro and my ffm that somehow I just forgot to hand on to. Another buddy pair rescued my gear and I continued the dive for another 15 minutes or so but it definitely got my adrenaline pumping a bit.

So neither what I would really consider dire emergencies but incidents that happened where training took over and kept situations from getting worse.
 
Buddy team on a club rib, one chap well qualified and experienced but used to deeper diving with a small group. Other diver a new club member and qualified through a different agency. He went oog on the SS although he'd been exchanging gas signals with his buddy. Turned out they had not briefed their signals and were saying different things to each other. Why he stayed at 6m for the stop until oog was never really explained. All safe after a quickish ascent.

Extra bonus non scuba incident - a crab fishing acquaintance recently went overboard tangled in the string of pots. This in around 30m of water at 12C. Luckily the skipper saw, stopped the engine and ran to the side in time to see my friend around 10' down and was able to winch him back aboard with 'only' a broken bone, possibly caused by the weight of the string. Made me shudder hearing about it.
 
I had just one case of DCS, occurred to one of the 6 customers I was guiding in a dive at 40 meters, 20 minutes (so some deco was required). Summer 1988, Favignana Island, south of Sicily. The guy suddenly panicked, inflated the BCD and sky-rocketed to the surface. Luckily enough he did expire properly, so no lung over-expansions, just very light symptoms of DCS (a finger in one foot was aching another one in a hand was not moving).
My wife was the tender on boat, she immediately placed it under oxygen and radioed the emergency call at our base station in the resort. When I resurfaced with the other 5 customers, after doing the required deco stops, we did carry him quickly to land, where an ambulance was waiting. I was carried on the ambulance together with him, for providing info to the medical staff. 15 minutes later we were loaded on a large Navy helicopter, who carried us to the Ustica island, North of Sicily, where the closest decompression chamber was available. It was flying at just 5 meters above the water, for avoiding worsening the DCS symptoms.
The guy entered the chamber approximately 90 minutes after resurfacing, and was treated successfully with pure oxygen at 18 meters, and slow deco, in a 6-hours session.
Then we were hosted at the local firefighter's station, and the next morning he had another 6-hours "safety" session in the chamber, again in pure oxygen at 18m.
Already after the first chamber treatment all the symptoms disappeared, and after the second recompression, he was declared fully recovered, with a ban for diving of one week. In the meantime his wife reached us in Ustica, so we returned back to our resort at Favignana by public boat ("aliscafo").
I was strongly impressed on how well the situation was managed by the medical staff and by the emergency center. We were still on the ambulance when the helicopter was launched from the Navy airport in main Sicily, and when we arrived in Ustica the chamber was ready with the doctor and the technician waiting for us.
Last nice thing was that all this operation was entirely free. We only had to pay the ticket of the public boat for coming back to our island...
 
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.
Ok, so I report one of about 3 of 4 cases I was involved with...
The first one it was ME!
Despite I was using a twin tank, I had just one reg (I was a young student, no money). My girlfriend (now my wife) also had a twin tank, but again just one reg. We were on holiday at the Elba Island , in July 1979.
I made a typical, stupid novice error: I did not open entirely the valve, just one turn or one and and half, no more.
We were not very deep, just 30m (our typical dives, at the times, were around 50m), on a vertical wall covered by paramuricee and with small caverns going inside the wall, where lobster were making their "cree cree" noise.
Of course we wanted to get them for lunch. At the time, reverse kicking had not been invented yet (or, in any case, we did not know this technique), so the method was that I did enter in one of those small cavern, and after a while my girlfriend did pull me out from the end of my long freediving fins. I entered in a very narrow tunnel, captured the lobster, and when pulling me out, the valve did hit several times against the rock ceiling. So it actually closed! As I exited and faced my girlfriend I signaled her that I had no air, so we started buddy breathing and ascending. It was not easy, but we made it up to the top of the vertical wall, where there was a plateau, at 10m, where we stayed for calming our breathing. Just at that point I had the lucidity of thinking to the valve, reached it and opened, and I had air again.
We continued the dive at low depth, as the bag was full of lobsters already...
As soon as we were back to the diving shop, we did purchase other two regs, one each, for avoiding this problem again.
In the following years we did use the second reg several times for giving air to others, but none of us was OOG again. We never had the occasion to buddy-breath from a single reg again...
 
I should report another case when I ended up very low on air (but there was still some)...
Spring 1976, I was just certified, probably my dive # 10, or so. The site was Punta Mesco, out of Monterosso, in Liguria. Diving from a fisherman boat.
My younger brother was my buddy, but he was probably at his dive #5, the first one after being certified, and was breathing a lot of air. So, just after 10 minutes, he did pull the reserve rod, and signalled me that he was going up to the boat. I had to come up with him, but we had just reached the place with lobsters, and I did want to get some before emerging. So I did leave him go and continued solo. I had a twin tank and two regs (one was borrowed from my club, an old Aquilon, but still I was feeling safe, with plenty of air - no SPG, indeed).
The reality is that I did not check the time properly, so I did continue capturing lobsters (more than 20) until also I got to the reserve. I pulled the rod, and ascended to 9m, where I did check the total time and maximum depth. It was something as 45 minutes at 45 meters max, so A LOT of deco was required. I was against the rock wall, so I started patiently the planned deco trying to save as much air as possible. I went to 6m, and then to 3 meters for the last stop. When 3 minutes of deco stop were remaining, the air was at such low pressure in the tank that breathing started to be difficult. I managed to complete the deco stop and emerged safely. At that time I was away from the boat since more than one hour and half, and people aboard had already called the coast guard by radio, assuming I was lost!
They immediately called back for stopping the coast guard from coming. No one could understand how I did manage to make such a long deco with "just" a twin cylinder tank (4000 liters total).
One hour later we were all eating those fabulous 20 lobsters at the Ciak restaurant... They are incredibly better than lobsters you can eat in the US or in tropical seas, as the Mediterranean type have a more intense taste and flavour...
Ciak is still open: https://www.ristoranteciak.net/
Instead it is not possible anymore to catch lobsters at Punta Mesco, as now it is a Marine Protected Area: Parco Nazionale delle Cinque Terre
 
While guiding a group of divers on a drift dive I turned around to count heads and found four divers gathered around a single diver. When they approached me the four quickly pulled away and let me handled it. I'll have to admit I was a bit taken when the four pulled away - what if I couldn't handle the issue or needed help. Thankfully I was able to get control, got her and the group to the surface then onto the boat. On the way back to the dock she was coughing and hacking, then starting rubbing her hands and said she was experiencing tingling and numbness. She was sent away in an ambulance.

When i was helping her she lost control of the ascent (80+ feet to ~30 feet), but I was able to stop it and get the group back together. What happened underwater was she aspirated water and struggled with the equipment she had borrowed from someone. Later, I tried out her regulator and noticed water came in when I inhaled; there was a hole in the diaphragm.

The scary part was several weeks later when I got an email from an insurance company stating it needed information regarding "loss" and the lady. The way the email read did not clarify what "loss" meant. Did she die? I replied seeking clarification. The reply stated "loss" was used when the company had to pay her medical bills - hence they "lost" money on her.
 
I am lucky enough to not have experienced a diving emergency for myself or another diver yet (the only real panics and issues I've had have been during training in the pool) but I have had a few minor excitements on a dive:

-Several buddy separations (mostly from someone not understanding frog kicks and blasting up silt), one of which ended up with one team of divers being carried off by the current so far that by the time we found them their heads on the surface looked like baby seals popping out of the water
-A few panicked divers - one was hit in the head by her buddy's dangling SPG and rocketed up to the surface, luckily we were still pretty shallow but we were far from the boat so I calmed her down and got her back in the water so we could get back to the boat more quickly than a surface swim, and an OW diver on her first dive who couldn't control her buoyancy and got scared
-A very friendly and demanding sturgeon that demanded food and pets and kept ramming into me during line drills in an aquarium tank, finally stopped with one last run-in with my head when we got out. Not really a negative experience but an interesting feeling of being knocked around by a large fish
-A couple near-panics that managed to be recovered for a normal dive - a stuck inflator house that I managed to disconnect before I got too high up (found out there was a piece of kelp stuck in it later), swam face-first into a jellyfish without seeing it and it got me from the back of my neck to the front of my face, and a weight belt that decided to be free and fall off during a night dive. The last was a bit embarrassing - apparently my instructor could see my light flashing for 'Help' from on shore. Learned to catch a belt quickly and that I made a good investment in a bright torch for signaling
-Also one buddy that lost buoyancy control but no oxygen was administered We came out of a swim through, did a head count, couldn't find her and then the first person to look up (from about 20 meters down iirc) found her desperately trying to sink at the surface. The DMs decided she was fine and once she got down we continued and ended the dive normally, keeping a close eye on her. That was when my dives were still in the single digits
 
Another OOA episode.
I and my wife were bringing 4 tourists diving the Rakeedo Kandu at Maldives. Spring 1986.
We did use 15 liters singles, but tourists were given just 10 liters (never undestood why).
I was leading the group, my wife was closing, and we had 4 tourists (two buddy pairs).
The second pair was a couple..The lady was very good, she always used less than half of her tank, and she was swimming very efficiently with her long fins. I think she was an excellent free diver, converted to scuba for being the model of her buddy. He was a very tall man, with large lungs, and always the one finishing air first.
He was a cineoperator, carrying a huge aluminium case containing a 16mm film camera, with attached battery pack, two powerful halogen lamps and a large stabilising wing.
The object was weighting roughly 20 kg.
It was made neutrally buoyant by attaching two polystirene buoys, which were squeezing slightly with depth.
Rakeedo Kandu is a very deep channel at the South end of the Felhidu atoll. A strong current was flowing outward, towards open ocean.
The bottom of the channel is around 60m deep, and was full of hammersharks swimming around.
Our plan was to stop on a balcony on the side of the channel, at a depth of 30m, and to stay there for a maximum of 30 minutes.
When the cameraman did see the hammersharks he started filming. But we were 30m above them, se he abandoned the balcony and started swimming down towards them. My wife followed him, but he was plunging down very quickly, as the camera did drag it down.
She catched him by the tank valve when he was around 50m, and started pulling him up back to the balcony, swimming against the current.
The guy continued filming and did not even realise that she was pulling him up.
When back on the balcony, he was completely out of air, and my wife gave him her second reg (which we did keep on our left shoulder, for being more easily donated). So we all had to call the dive and ascend, after just 15 minutes instead of 30.
It was a risky situation: if my wife did not catch him in time, he had went outside the channel, pushed by the current, and plunged down in the open ocean.
 
Other:

Pulled an unresponsive diver up from a deep dive. She appeared to regain consciousness at about 100 feet, began returning hand signals at 60 feet. Found out later she remembered none of that.

DW
 
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