mobility
Registered
Yesterday I was diving with four buddies. It was our first dive of the day and we did a boat entry into 75 degree water. It was a drift dive and we descended to a ledge at 100 ft; it is a cliff that very sharply drops to a bottom over 3000 ft deep. By the time the group descended to the cliff at 100 ft we had been swept into the deep by a swift current. We all swarm smartly back to the cliff and we started our dive swimming parallel with the ledge. Visibility was spectacular and life was abundant, a few big sharks, beautiful coral and some big game fish. Anyway, about 20 minutes in, I saw a very large fish and quickly followed it past the ledge. The fish was moving very quickly and I was really pumping to keep up. I was very aware of my depth at all times, constantly checking my wrist computer. When I reached 128 ft the fish stopped in a fissure, I got a great view and thrill. Note whether the fish had stopped or not, 130 ft was the max depth I had set for myself before dive so I had stopped descending anyway. One of my buddies came down for a look while I ascended back to 100 ft. I was now breathing very heavy from my chase and fighting the current. I am in very good physical condition, working out and running most days of the week. While I was watching my buddy while catching my breath, trying to slow my heart rate, I took a gulp of seawater. I tried to inhale one more time but the reg had flooded and I didn't have any air in left in my lungs to try and purge it. Now normally I would have "calmly" reached for my back up reg or reg from my 40 pony tank which I practice routinely. This time however, I grabbed for my back ups with a little more urgency! I could not hold my breath much longer because I was already very winded when I exhaled and I had ingested salt water. I knew i wasn't even close to out of air with 2300 psi left in my steel 100. In a split second of thought, I decided to reach for my pony regulator because I could not take a chance of the same failure, although i realized the chance was slight that my secondary regulator would share the same problem as my primary but they do share some common things including of course the primary tank. So I grabbed the regulator from my pony tank and started to breath while forcing myself not to panic (so key) by relaxing and thinking ( the instinct to shot to the surface was really strong). I worked and my breathing started to return to close to normal and by the time my buddies came over to me, I was able to signal that i was okay, however let's start our ascend. I had my buoyancy perfect and realized how critical that was because I could have descended (or ascended) while I was changing regs and there could have been an issue created when I decided on using my pony tank because it carried a slightly different oxygen mix which lowered my max depth; I was slightly pasted that depth when I initially made the switch (I didn't even consider this at the time). Anyway, I have very new, good equipment that it is checked regularly. My primary regulator worked fine when I tried it again at 15 feet while doing my safety stop. I am having it checked today. One of my buddies who I was diving with at the time said that maybe the large demand for air at the time (remember I was breathing very heavily at the time) caused the diaphragm to malfunction and sea water was able to enter. I learned many lessons including not to over exert myself like that again and it re enforced how important buoyancy control is. I always felt that you couldn't really know how you would react to a really stressful situation until it actually happens (we all hope it heaven does) but practicing our training drills is critical to remaining calm. Any thoughts on what could have caused the flooding regulator would be appreciated. Thanks
