In light of a recent thread I thought I post a similar experience I encountered a few years ago involving a tank valve that was only just turned on (1/2 turn on).
This resulted in the first real panic Ive witnessed under water and although no injury occurred this could have had disasterous consequences. I was diving with 2 friends, both newly certified and myself AOW with under 100 dives.
This all happened due to a tank valve only just turned on, so when inhaling the pressure gauge needle would drop 60 bar. It was noticed by the diver during the dive, but wasnt delt with untlil the needle started to hit 0 bar.
We were finishing the dive in 40ft of water and he started to breath down to 0 psi once his tank pressure was getting low. He showed his buddy then me this problem. His buddy didnt recognise the problem, either did I but when he first approached me I could see distress. I offered him my alternate which he turned upside down, took a breath and got some water, spat it out and charged for the surface. I went after him and got some air out of his BC as he wasnt attempting to. Then I let him go.
On the surface he was OK. Managed to avoid DCS and overexpansion but to my knowledge doesnt dive anymore.
A contributing factor for this was distraction. We were gearing up, litterally BC's on, when we were called to give first aid assistance to a fallen climber who was later air lifted away. After returning to our gear we were all a bit flustered.
For some reason we just put on our gear and did the dive. We should have waited awhile to regain our composure or cancelled the dive as we werent properly focussed on the task. It was difficult to recognise at the time but I consider this a major contributor to the incident.
Being the most experienced I felt responsible for what happened. I had specifically showed him to check his pressure by purging the reg and watched him and his buddy do a precheck, but still it wasnt noticed before the dive.
Always check your gear including breathing from your reg while watching the SPG.
A partly turned on tank is worse than a turned off tank IMO.
This resulted in the first real panic Ive witnessed under water and although no injury occurred this could have had disasterous consequences. I was diving with 2 friends, both newly certified and myself AOW with under 100 dives.
This all happened due to a tank valve only just turned on, so when inhaling the pressure gauge needle would drop 60 bar. It was noticed by the diver during the dive, but wasnt delt with untlil the needle started to hit 0 bar.
We were finishing the dive in 40ft of water and he started to breath down to 0 psi once his tank pressure was getting low. He showed his buddy then me this problem. His buddy didnt recognise the problem, either did I but when he first approached me I could see distress. I offered him my alternate which he turned upside down, took a breath and got some water, spat it out and charged for the surface. I went after him and got some air out of his BC as he wasnt attempting to. Then I let him go.
On the surface he was OK. Managed to avoid DCS and overexpansion but to my knowledge doesnt dive anymore.
A contributing factor for this was distraction. We were gearing up, litterally BC's on, when we were called to give first aid assistance to a fallen climber who was later air lifted away. After returning to our gear we were all a bit flustered.
For some reason we just put on our gear and did the dive. We should have waited awhile to regain our composure or cancelled the dive as we werent properly focussed on the task. It was difficult to recognise at the time but I consider this a major contributor to the incident.
Being the most experienced I felt responsible for what happened. I had specifically showed him to check his pressure by purging the reg and watched him and his buddy do a precheck, but still it wasnt noticed before the dive.
Always check your gear including breathing from your reg while watching the SPG.
A partly turned on tank is worse than a turned off tank IMO.
