How many have legitimately used your knife/shears underwater in an emergency?

[macado]

I apologize if this thread has already been created before but couldn't seem to find it and figured it might be a good topic.

How many of you have legitimately had to use your knife or shears in an emergency or entanglement situation?

I'm not talking about a dive where you specifically brought a knife to cut lines or do work underwater that you planned. I usually always carry EMT shears with me but I've honestly never had (and hope I never have) an emergency situation where I am required to use them in a life threatening situation.

I know in places like Cozumel the risk of entanglement is much less. Here in New England (as i'm sure other places) the risk is much greater as you constantly have to contend with fishing lines, lobster buoys, etc.

Any old tales of entanglement or being caught on fishing line or monofilament? How did you react? How bad was the entanglement?

 

[g1138]

No true emergencies where a cutting device was actually required. But one entanglement story.

I was doing a training dive for my scientific certification. My buddy and I were swimming back from our transect line when a strand of kelp wrapped itself around my first stage. My buddy isn't the best in buddy-buddy contact, was already swimming a length ahead of me, and kept swimming to the point where I wouldn't be able to see him through the vis and kelp in the next few seconds.

So I deployed my knife, cut the kelp and swam off after him. He eventually turned around to see me "bolting" toward him knife in hand.

Other than that the only other times I've ever deployed my knife was for practice when I switched my gear config, and also to use as a marker when I'm acting as base for a circle search.

 

[Roko]

I've used my shears to cut fishing line that I've been caught in. Not really an interesting story, we were exploring the bottom of a mountain lake at 80 or so feet, with literally only a foot or two of visibility at the bottom. The lake itself is more or less a wall dive. (Also a popular cliff-jumping site). The bottom consisted of sunken tree/logs from what I can tell, and fishing line. We decided to ascend to a shallower depth with better visibility on the wall, but quickly discovered we'd been caught up in line. Not really an emergency, we calmly cut ourselves loose and carried on with the dive at a shallower depth with better vis.

We remained pretty calm through the situation. There was a point where my leg was more or less attached to the bottom of the lake by the line, but most of the rest of the line was just incredibly annoying as it was wrapped around what seemed to be every piece of gear we had..... I don't think we actually got stuck/restricted enough to start worrying. Glad I had the shears, though. Best $5 I ever spent.... At the end, my dive buddy was just holding lengths of line out with her hands while I chopped it up into tiny pieces...

 

[fisheater]

I had to cut some bull kelp that had snagged my gear. (Note: Yes you can "snap" giant kelp with your hands. But you can't with bull kelp.)

I was also once entangled in some fishing line at night. As I planned how to find the "up" side of the line in time to cut it after I was to let go of the "down" side, the knot on the terminal tackle let go and the fisherman reeled in an empty line.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Scott L]

Never...

 

[CuNanoTube]

Does carving a pumpkin (underwater) count?

 

[Nikki McAllen]

You're not gonna like this....

Explosively generated diarrhea upon ascent (not me thankfully !!). Guy sliced his suit then tore it open so he wouldn't foul himself. Fortunately he had the forethought to do it HEAD DOWN. Worked like a charm.

Would have made one helluva YouTube video !!!

For this reason I will forever carry a dive knife...

 

[TMHeimer]

Explosively generated diarrhea upon ascent (not me thankfully !!). Guy sliced his suit then tore it open so he wouldn't foul himself. Fortunately he had the forethought to do it HEAD DOWN. Worked like a charm.


Hmm.. Some kind of maneuver would you say.....

 

[g1138]

Explosively generated diarrhea upon ascent (not me thankfully !!). Guy sliced his suit then tore it open so he wouldn't foul himself. Fortunately he had the forethought to do it HEAD DOWN. Worked like a charm.

Hmm.. Some kind of maneuver would you say.....

 

[jupitermermaid]

I was diving at the Blue Heron Bridge and a fisherman snagged me by the shoulder of my wetsuit and tried to haul me up. Not a real emergency since the water is only 15-20' deep, but I had to cut the line so he wouldn't rip open my shoulder with his hook as he tried to haul me in.


Now, I carry them to snip the poisonous spines off lion fish when I catch them.....