diver_doug
Contributor
I don't know that this qualifies as a near miss exactly, but it was definitely an eye-opening experience and a lesson learned. I solo dive often (I don't have a ton of dives under my belt, but about 60 of them are solo. All of my diving has been shore-diving and, given that I live in SoCal, depths typically range from about 20-50ft (my only deep dive was for AOW, but that was only down to 85ft). A couple of weeks ago I decided to check out La Jolla Canyon (a series of walls decending down to over 500 ft). I did a fairly long surface swim and decended down to about 35ft and then started heading out towards the first wall. I had checked out a map of the site online, it showed there was a wall at about 65ft, and then a second at 143ft (I was only planning to go the 65ft wall). So anyway I'm swimming along, I check my depth and I'm at 55ft so I figure I should be getting close. I continue swimming along thinking that I should have arrived at the 65ft deep wall by now, I look at my depth gauge and I'm at 136ft! I would say the transition from 35ft to 136ft took all of about a minute. I knew I was only 6ft beyond rec limits, so I figured since I was already there I may as well hang out for a couple of minutes (in hindsight this seemed like a totally stupid idea). I did just that, and then realized after about only 5 minutes total in the water that I was already down to 1700psi (alum80, plus 19cf pony). Although I wasn't exactly dangerously low on air I was amazed how quickly air depletes at depth (intellectually, I already knew this, but it was different to actually experience it since I was so accustomed to 45-60 minute dives). I was able to ascend with no issues, do a safety stop, and surface with about 700psi. So I guess my point here is to warn new divers, or divers accustomed to shallow dives that: if you are in an environment where you are able to go deep, BE CAREFUL! It was nothing to go down to 136ft, and I feel it would have been easy to go down to 200ft...and it would have been easy to hang out there for a few minutes only to find myself at 200ft with with no air (except for the 19cf in my pony). The depth and air depletion sneaks up quick and one needs to keep a constant watch on depth and PSI to avoid disaster.