diver_doug
Contributor
I wish we had more details because the story only says that the diver was stuck and his buddy left to get help. As a noobie, I am trying to understand why he couldn't have gotten out of his BCD or drop fins or something and buddy breath? I understand that dropping a BCD would result in a rapid ascent, but considering the alternative? I guess I just want to know. It shakes me up.
Tough to say. I will say that that crevice is pretty narrow, so if you ended up in it, and you were dealing with surge and panic, you could definitely have a difficult time turning around/focusing sufficiently to fix the problem/etc. Even if you did turn around, or free yourself from an entanglement, that crevice is narrow enough that you could get banged around pretty easily by the surging water. His buddy probably wanted no part of that crevice so buddy breathing wouldn't really be an option. As far ditching gear is concerned, he may have been too panicked to think to remove his gear; plus I really don't know if that would have even been of any benefit because, on really surgy days, the surf pounds in that little crevice (and there's some pretty nasty looking rocks)...surfacing may have resulted in death by rocks instead of death by drowning. Anyway, who really knows at this point...all I can say for sure is that, having seen that crevice from above on surgy days, it is definitely not something I would want to end up in.