How would you react to this ?

[84CJ7]

If its a down current near a wall you really have to get away from the wall, frequently those pour over the wall like a waterfall and you will watch anything and everything no matter how inflated get sucked down along with it, sometimes very deep. It loses concentration a certain distance from the wall and weakens significantly.
Usually getting away from the structure causing the phenomenon if possible will allow you to escape easily.

This phenomenon was just really bizarre, it was like the horizontal rolling you get at the front of a line of thunder storms where the warm air passes over cold air and you get the same sort of horizontal rolling visible in the clouds. I had trouble while watching the video staying oriented to up or any other underwater structure, so I am not sure exactly what happened even.
In a rotating vortex you want to avoid being spun like a top and tuck into a ball to get oriented so you are basically doing a tight back flip or something like a barrel roll, swimming outward with the current to build up to escape velocity as you work away from the center of the vortex. This one was really tightly wound and looks like it would have been very confusing.

 

[Freewillow]

My wife and I got caught in a Vortex in Palau last Oct. Not easy to get out of, swimming out when twirling not easy. I had physical contact with my wife, with nearly fully inflated 32lb wing (wifes BCD inflated 50%) we still went down, started up pulled down again. This was in blue water. DM said when he shot his bag the bag went down.

can you explain a bit in more details what you guys had to do in order to escape from it? Thank you

 

[The Chairman]

I want to play with one! That looks like crazy fun.

 

[tr3a]

can you explain a bit in more details what you guys had to do in order to escape from it? Thank you[/QUOT

we were swimming hard so my guess is we somehow managed to get far enough away that the lift from or BC's finally brought us up.

 

[Freewillow]

Thanks

 

[Akimbo]

Good advice here:
COPE WITH DOWNCURRENTS - DIVE Magazine

Forget about the “don't touch anything on the bottom” dictum if you have to climb the wall to avoid visiting 300'. Just watch where you grab so you disturb barnacles instead of crushing coral or a nudibranch.

 

[DKL]

I would have tried inflating my BCD. If that didn't get it I might have considered ditching my weights also. That looked like a real come to Jesus moment to me. Cudos to the other divers trying to reach in and help.

 

[bakodiver391]

Another reason to carry a large capacity SMB and a large reel and practice deploying your buoy quickly. I have been caught in several vertical vortexes and simply deployed the SMB. This avoids the uncontrolled ascent scenario. I have had 3 divers hanging on the reel and maintain depth. You are not going to pull down a bag with 50-75 lbs. of lift and it will rise in a vortex.

 

[jodylynn007]

That looked like ridiculously scary **** to me... first dive video that's scared the poop out of me actually and I've seen a LOT of videos.