Freak yourself out?

[Walter]

"You know that feeling you get ................ is something there? Just wondering if/when/how often this happens when you're in the water. Especially for you ocean divers... I think I would find myself constantly looking above, below, behind, left, right and ahead for sharks, etc."

Nope. If you are in the ocean there are always sharks around. There's no reason to wonder, I know they are there. I don't usually know where or how close, but I know they are close enough to sense me. If I'm lucky they'll come close enough for me to see them.

Chris makes an excellent point. If you feel something is wrong with the dive - abort the dive as quickly as you safely can. There may be a logical reason or there might be just a feeling - either way you should abort the dive.

 

[Paul168341]

Never worried about anything as far as animals are concerned, but yeah, I've spooked myself on a few occasions. Usually there is some other factor, depth, narcosis, low vis, strong current etc...
SOmetimes active imaginations are a real bane.

 

[scuberd]

one time I was diving off of Carmel, the vis was only about 15 ft, and it was real surgy. As we were swiming along, we were going through an area of real thick plant, lots of green and brown alge, sea fans and sea palms. With the condition and the menacing plants all I could think of were the old movies about sea mosters hiding in the plants or just outside of the vis. Of course, nothing came of it, but it was kinda creepy none the less.

 

[MNScuba]

I could see myself in that situation... and probably will be sooner or later, hopefully later!

Fun stories!

 

[k4sdi]

A couple of days ago, a friend and I dove in KY lake trying to find a childs retainer that was dropped off a dock. The vis was, well, let me put it this way. I had to hold the gauges against my mask to read them. I dinna have to let my imagination slip away, It fled at first touch of the water!


Mark

BTW no such luck on finding it. Kinda figured that would happen.

 

[redacted]

I really think operating a night in the Army got me over those kinds of head games.

 

[dvleemin]

A couple of years ago I was diving in Cuba at a resort. We were using resort equipment that wasn't in great shape. I spent quite a bit of time talking to the DM's and they said they had a tough time getting replacement parts for their regs, and even things like mask defroster.

So we were doing a dive down to about 110'. That was the deepest dive I had ever been on. After a couple of minutes down there, I really noticed the increase difficulty in breathing. So that got me thinking - bad idea. I starting thinking about the maintence of the reg I was using, and thinking that there was no way I could make it to the surface if it completely died. I figured even if I did DCS would get me. I'm almost completely panicked. I came so close to flipping it and racing full blast to the surface. Well, I grabbed my buddy and told her to wait a second, and that something was wrong. I then shut my eyes, and told myself to relax, and stop panacking. Fortunately I was able to get a hold of myself and complete the dive (although I ascended to 60' and followed the DM's from there). The strange thing is is that I'm not the type of person to panic, so it completely surpised me. I think a bit of it was narcosis.

In any case, I dove a couple of hours after that to make sure I could handle it,and I was. And for the rest of dives on the trip, I stayed at 60' and above.

Darryl

 

[Jef]

I’m thinking of sharks when I stride off the boat into the water. One of the first things I usually do after getting wet is do a full 360 to see if anything bigger than me is down there.
Fortunately the biggest shark so far was a 4 foot nurse shark.

 

[srkdvr]

:mean:

I haven't had that problem as yet, not to say the next time won't be different. I am like some of the others, sharks and big fish are out there and so be it. I want to see them more than they want to see me I think.

Rich :mean: