Before anyone accuses me of bashing solo diving, I dive solo. In the Pacific Northwest.
Where the Indian tribes have treaty rights to fish using gill nets.
These days I'm much more observant than I ever was before of where the Indian dudes are placing their gillnets. Historically, also...e.g. from year to year.
I once saw this guy swimming with a camera after he hit a gill net.....
(From the thread below...)
"A gill-net is like a malevolent living thing. It can be large - think 15-20' top to bottom, perhaps 70'-100' long. It is invisible. It moves and swirls around to the slightest impulse. Like a bedsheet or curtain hanging vertically. A diver entangled in any portion of it will very quickly be entangled in a larger portion of it. It tends to envelop whatever strikes it and wrap around it, seizing the object/diver at any and all points where net meets valve/zipper/buckle/mask/etc.
I've witnessed a situation where a diver hit one and simultaneously had his mask ripped off, reg ripped out, his right armed pinned to his body, and both legs wrapped up, in a few seconds. He was an instructor. Two DMs tried to cut him out and both became entangled. Another instructor came up from beneath this CF and cut out the two DMs, and then all three of them did the Ginsu on the gillnet to free the other diver.
Gillnets are a freaking nightmare.
And Bear is right. Gillnets laugh at knives. It requires shears to beat gillnets. A solo diver doesn't stand much of a chance if they run headlong into a gillnet."
http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/basic-scuba-discussions/67060-can-i-really-cut-myself-out.html
The reason knives suck is that the gillnet stretches. The more you try to cut it with knife the tighter it curls around you. You need to be able to cut it without putting any pressure on it - hence the need for shears. The guy I saw was solo diving with the camera, filming students. The class went in. He stayed out to get some additional footage. Hit the net. Stayed there. Only reason he survived, oddly enough, is due to an Air II. He could move his left arm just far enough to put his Air II in his mouth. No mask, but he could breath. He waited for help, but no one came. He inflated his BC enough to get him pretty close to the surface dragging the whole net up, and he could boost himself up, yell for help, sink down, boost himself up, yell for help again, sink back down, etc. After 4 or 5 yells he got the attention of the class on the beach, and the rest is history.
But if there hadn't been a class on the beach the story could have had a different ending. Keep a sharp eye out for gill nets if you're solo diving in the PNW.
Solo divers who hit gill nets have issues...
