deepfix
New
Last Thursday, March 12, my wife and I were on a dive with Dive Paradise in Cozumel. There was another very experienced couple, a solo guy also with a lot of experience, a brand-new diver (this was literally her first or second dive after certification) and us. We're in our 40s, and for me this was dive #29. We were using Dive Paradise's rental gear - only our masks, my computer, and my wife's BC were our own. Depths and timing below come from the data in my computer.
About 37 minutes into a beautiful dive with several big rays, the first stage of my reg failed. I had checked my air a few minutes before, and it had read 1200 PSI. Right after that check, I had swum over to photograph a juvenile drumfish and then a peacock flounder. When it happened, it was as if someone had simply shut off my tank - I tried to inhale and got nothing. On a previous trip, I had run out of air during the safety stop; in hindsight, this was different - rather than breathing becoming gradually more difficult, this was instantaneous - but my first thought was that somehow I had exhausted my supply. My buddy (AKA my wife) was a few feet below me, and I was able to reach her octo after only a few kicks. Because the failure was apparent only after I'd exhaled and then tried to inhale, I was already pretty panicked. I neglected to purge the octo after grabbing it, and as a result tried to take a breath including the seawater in the mouthpiece, choked, and then repeated - after about three tries I was able to actually take a breath. I very nearly lost it completely at that point, but made eye contact with my wife and took her hand and made myself calm down and breathe slowly. She tried to slow my (and now, our) ascent by emptying her BC and was working on emptying mine (all one-handed, since I had her other), nonetheless during the course of getting my breathing stabilized I'd taken us up to a peak of eight feet below the surface. Our DM had been buddied with the newly certified diver - in the minute or two between my reg's failure and getting control of my breathing again, he had handed the new diver off to the experienced diver who was solo and gotten over to us - once he was there and trying to assess the situation, we were able to descend back to 17 feet, and eventually to 21 feet. He checked my mouthpiece and found it blocked; I saw him look at my SPG (which read over 1000 PSI) and then hit the purge on my own octo (which I had not tried, under the assumption that my tank was empty), and I saw it bubble. He passed it to me and indicated that I should try it. I did, and got the same result as with the primary - nothing. I signaled "no air" and went back to my buddy's octo. Our DM then tried my octo himself, looked at my gauge again, then tried shutting off my tank, re-opening it, and testing both mouthpieces again with no change. He signaled us to buddy up and do a safety stop, and went back to the rest of the group. After the safety stop, we surfaced and got into the boat. The captain started to unhook our gear, and I told him that we wanted to wait for the DM since the reg had failed - my wife repeated that in Spanish and expanded upon it. The captain then tried my reg and got the same result - when trying either mouthpiece, it would hiss briefly then stop. He then tried it on another tank, again with the same result. Next he tried a different reg on the tank I had been using, and confirmed that it still had air - the gauge still showing about 1000 PSI.
We reported what had happened at the office upon returning to shore, and were given the email address of the general manager. So far, the message my wife sent describing the event and requesting a refund for the equipment rental has garnered no reply. She also sent a report to PADI.
I'm posting this here because I took away a fantastic reminder about how important it is to stay close to your buddy - it was such a close thing between getting that octo and just heading to the surface as it was, that any more distance and I would have been the recipient of some emergency medical attention *at best*. Sadly, It was also apparent that this failure was part of pattern, and I feel that it's important to warn people: out of a week of diving with Dive Paradise, there was no boat trip that didn't feature some sort of equipment problem, and just about always multiple ones. Included were many bad (or missing) O-rings on tanks and leaky reg hose connections - those seem to be common with rental gear in my brief experience, but we also saw a bad SPG (it read 4000 PSI on a fresh tank) and a depth gauge that was stuck at 50 feet. My wife also was given a rig without a depth gauge and told to rely on my computer (on my arm - my rig also lacked a depth gauge) on one dive. Another diver was issued a BCD that had a hole in it, which wasn’t apparent until he was under water and having trouble. Another couple we were on several dives with had complained about the lack of safety briefings, PFDs, and life safety equipment on the boats. The day after this incident, we were on a boat with them for two dives - on that trip, there was a safety briefing, and computers were handed out to anyone that didn't have their own. My wife was issued a brand new reg (which they carefully pointed out). I was using one I had borrowed, so I don’t know what they would have given me. Nonetheless, when we got in the water for the first dive, another diver got a mouthpiece that was letting through a lot of water. Examination revealed a tear in the rubber; she was then told to use her octo, which subsequently failed during the dive and forced her to use her buddy's octo to ascend and exit. Most of the staff at Dive Paradise - on shore or off - were great. I told the DM from Thursday that I would dive with him any day, and I meant it. Sadly, it seems that there is a *serious* lack of equipment maintenance at Dive Paradise these days, which is all the more sad given their historic reputation.
I would love to know what the nature of the failure was - I'm guessing foreign material or a broken spring, but don't (yet) know a lot about the inner workings of regs.
About 37 minutes into a beautiful dive with several big rays, the first stage of my reg failed. I had checked my air a few minutes before, and it had read 1200 PSI. Right after that check, I had swum over to photograph a juvenile drumfish and then a peacock flounder. When it happened, it was as if someone had simply shut off my tank - I tried to inhale and got nothing. On a previous trip, I had run out of air during the safety stop; in hindsight, this was different - rather than breathing becoming gradually more difficult, this was instantaneous - but my first thought was that somehow I had exhausted my supply. My buddy (AKA my wife) was a few feet below me, and I was able to reach her octo after only a few kicks. Because the failure was apparent only after I'd exhaled and then tried to inhale, I was already pretty panicked. I neglected to purge the octo after grabbing it, and as a result tried to take a breath including the seawater in the mouthpiece, choked, and then repeated - after about three tries I was able to actually take a breath. I very nearly lost it completely at that point, but made eye contact with my wife and took her hand and made myself calm down and breathe slowly. She tried to slow my (and now, our) ascent by emptying her BC and was working on emptying mine (all one-handed, since I had her other), nonetheless during the course of getting my breathing stabilized I'd taken us up to a peak of eight feet below the surface. Our DM had been buddied with the newly certified diver - in the minute or two between my reg's failure and getting control of my breathing again, he had handed the new diver off to the experienced diver who was solo and gotten over to us - once he was there and trying to assess the situation, we were able to descend back to 17 feet, and eventually to 21 feet. He checked my mouthpiece and found it blocked; I saw him look at my SPG (which read over 1000 PSI) and then hit the purge on my own octo (which I had not tried, under the assumption that my tank was empty), and I saw it bubble. He passed it to me and indicated that I should try it. I did, and got the same result as with the primary - nothing. I signaled "no air" and went back to my buddy's octo. Our DM then tried my octo himself, looked at my gauge again, then tried shutting off my tank, re-opening it, and testing both mouthpieces again with no change. He signaled us to buddy up and do a safety stop, and went back to the rest of the group. After the safety stop, we surfaced and got into the boat. The captain started to unhook our gear, and I told him that we wanted to wait for the DM since the reg had failed - my wife repeated that in Spanish and expanded upon it. The captain then tried my reg and got the same result - when trying either mouthpiece, it would hiss briefly then stop. He then tried it on another tank, again with the same result. Next he tried a different reg on the tank I had been using, and confirmed that it still had air - the gauge still showing about 1000 PSI.
We reported what had happened at the office upon returning to shore, and were given the email address of the general manager. So far, the message my wife sent describing the event and requesting a refund for the equipment rental has garnered no reply. She also sent a report to PADI.
I'm posting this here because I took away a fantastic reminder about how important it is to stay close to your buddy - it was such a close thing between getting that octo and just heading to the surface as it was, that any more distance and I would have been the recipient of some emergency medical attention *at best*. Sadly, It was also apparent that this failure was part of pattern, and I feel that it's important to warn people: out of a week of diving with Dive Paradise, there was no boat trip that didn't feature some sort of equipment problem, and just about always multiple ones. Included were many bad (or missing) O-rings on tanks and leaky reg hose connections - those seem to be common with rental gear in my brief experience, but we also saw a bad SPG (it read 4000 PSI on a fresh tank) and a depth gauge that was stuck at 50 feet. My wife also was given a rig without a depth gauge and told to rely on my computer (on my arm - my rig also lacked a depth gauge) on one dive. Another diver was issued a BCD that had a hole in it, which wasn’t apparent until he was under water and having trouble. Another couple we were on several dives with had complained about the lack of safety briefings, PFDs, and life safety equipment on the boats. The day after this incident, we were on a boat with them for two dives - on that trip, there was a safety briefing, and computers were handed out to anyone that didn't have their own. My wife was issued a brand new reg (which they carefully pointed out). I was using one I had borrowed, so I don’t know what they would have given me. Nonetheless, when we got in the water for the first dive, another diver got a mouthpiece that was letting through a lot of water. Examination revealed a tear in the rubber; she was then told to use her octo, which subsequently failed during the dive and forced her to use her buddy's octo to ascend and exit. Most of the staff at Dive Paradise - on shore or off - were great. I told the DM from Thursday that I would dive with him any day, and I meant it. Sadly, it seems that there is a *serious* lack of equipment maintenance at Dive Paradise these days, which is all the more sad given their historic reputation.
I would love to know what the nature of the failure was - I'm guessing foreign material or a broken spring, but don't (yet) know a lot about the inner workings of regs.
