My First Deep Dive (Very Minor Mishap)

[FinnMom]

So they took you to 30m on your 10th dive? Doesn't that mean your 5th-8th dive after certification? And a poor-vis quarry with more than one student per instructor no less. Doesn't sound like the the judgement of anyone I would want as an instructor.

We were required to have 25 dives before starting CMAS** class. I think that amount of experience & practise allowed everyone to get vastly more out of the class.

 

[fnfalman]

So they took you to 30m on your 10th dive? Doesn't that mean your 5th-8th dive after certification? And a poor-vis quarry with more than one student per instructor no less. Doesn't sound like the the judgement of anyone I would want as an instructor.

We were required to have 25 dives before starting CMAS** class. I think that amount of experience & practise allowed everyone to get vastly more out of the class.

Every dive agency has different requirements.

Was it smart to go down that deep on the 10th dive? No. But that's why she was in a class supervised by instructors. Two students per instructor is a very low ratio.

However, going into a deep low viz dive and was told to kneel on a rusty car roof instead of hovering or at least hanging on the line...that's not good practice. As is wearing 5-mm suit for a 60-F water temperature.

---------- Post added February 24th, 2014 at 10:20 AM ----------

We were then all supposed to kneel on the roof of the car.

This is simply not good practice, and that instructors need to get their students away from the kneel down on something mentality. We're scuba divers and not bottom walkers.

As I was positioning myself to kneel on the car, I felt that I was very heavy (we were warned about it, but I didn't really know what to expect) and I started slowly falling backward.

This is what happened when you didn't establish neutral buoyancy but instead kneeling on something. Your instructor warned you about it, but should have told you to put air in your BC and establish a hover instead of sitting on something.

I put my hand down on the roof of the car to steady myself and managed to cut up my middle left finger pretty badly. I remember looking at my hand and it was bleeding pretty badly, but knew were were only down there for a very short time, so decided to push the cuts closed with my other fingers and assess the wound on the surface.

Unless your finger was cut to the bone, there's really no point quitting the dive now. Your finger was already cut and you might already got infected. Might as well finish doing the exercise and then go up. There's nothing immediately life threatening.

and freezing (16c/60f in a 5mm wetsuit)

I'm a cold tolerant fellow, but I'd be freezing at 60-F and in a 5mm wetsuit too.

In hind sight, should I have rather signaled to the instructor that there was a problem and went up to better assess the situation? I am concerned that the effects of nitrogen narcosis was impairing my ability to assess the situation. What would have you guys done?

Sure, the narc does affect your thinking, but when you suffer a sharp wound like that? Adrenaline tends to cut through anything else. I doubt that I'd be narced to see a ghastly wound with blood squirting out and say, "Hey, it's cool."

Also, does the effect of narcosis lessen as a diver gets more experience?

I'm sure that like everything else, with exposure, you'd get used to the effects like alcoholics function a little bit better than regular people when they're both drunk. However, I've been narced a few times in my life and a couple of times it was the dark narc. Not a very pleasant experience at all even though I was much more experienced by then.

What I've noticed is one's state of mind truly affects the narced state of mind. If you're calm and collected, then you don't feel the onset of the narc as much, or it doesn't become debilitating. If your mentality isn't all there, chances are you will get the dark narc. Both times I got the dark narc, I was worrying about not being able to navigate back to the ascend lines because of low viz AND my prescription lenses didn't allow me to read the compass headings.

 

[iamrushman]

you will pay to learn....lessons are expensive....go to Harvard or the school of hard knocks ...lucky you live to dive another day...

 

[Atsbits]

Hahahaha! Did this exact dive for my first deep dive. We had lights though.

Wanna start off by saying miracle waters is definitely not the miracle it promises. It's green, mucky and has a sulfurous odor at the bottom. The mk1 vw golf we had to kneel on is very old and rusty but I didn't touch it with anything but my knees.

It was cold and dark and I got pretty narcced on my first time down there too, when I rose back to the warmer depths, realized the intensity caused me to bite through a mouthpiece.

Got my sums right though! Booyah!!! (jokes about being the stereotypical subcontinental Asian engineer were abound)

As per my agency, I had logged over 25 dives before starting my 2* with the S.A branch of CMAS.

Just saying, I can truly relate to the dive done by the OP. the subsequent dives did go better for me, hope the op gets better ones too.

 

[ajduplessis]

Don't understand why the instructor went for the car? The car is very small surface. There is a grid @ 30 just to the left from the entry point. This is what eveyone else uses. Who is your instructor?

 

[Atsbits]

There was a big group on the grid. We were a small bunch enough to fit on the car. 2 instructors, 2 students and one assistant sweeping. If 4 fit inside one, it's not too difficult to get 4 on top of one,

 

[EmJay]

I think that it should have been treated as a night dive. Every diver should have had a marker lights and other lights.

But maybe they did this.

We did have caylumes and torches. The torches are not very bright. As you can imagine, it's school gear, so it's not great quality stuff. A decent torch is next on my never ending list of stuff to purchase.

Unrelated to your question, I would wear gloves. If it's not cold enough for neoprene gloves, you can buy a pair of Atlas Fit gloves that don't offer thermal protection, but are tough and protect your fingers.

Outside of that, what these guys said. Kneeling on rusty metal is a bad idea. Not establishing neutral buoyancy is a bad idea. Doing a low-viz dive without the proper illumination is a bad idea. Wearing a 5mm wetsuit for a 60F dive to 100' seems like a poor choice depending on your endurance for cold.

I mainly dive in Sodwana Bay, which is warm water diving. Gloves are prohibited, so was never a thought. For quarry diving I am definitely going to get a set.

The water temp at around 10m/30ft was around 25c/77f. At the bottom it was 16c/60f. As bottom was planned at 8 minutes, I don't think anything more than a 5mm wetsuit is really needed. I just think the cold had quite an impact on how narc'ed I was.

Snip

Hope you don't mind me quoting like this. Don't want my post to get too long. As for your questions:

I am certified through Divetek South Africa. Their training is based on NAUI, but Divetek go into quite a bit more detail. I am very happy with the training I received and actually feel that the agency is charging way too little for what they provide. To give you an idea, for my AOW, we covered: Advanced Buoyancy (also got to play around in a harness) Dive Planning, Dive Leadership, Dive Tables and Computers, Regulator Design, Search and Recovery (including a host of search patterns), Drift Diving, Navigation (compass and natural), Night Diving, Deep Diving and Rescue Revision. Our dives were: night, deep, search & recovery, navigation (we did a bunch of dry runs on land, used a compass underwater and natural navigation) and some more rescue work. On the navigation and search & recovery dives, we used ropes, an SMB, lift bag and rescue sausage.

I am happy with my weight and we did recheck weight after each dive. To give you an idea, I am using a brand new 5mm wetsuit with 3kgs/6.6lbs of weight, very streamlined and low volume BC with a 10L AL cylinder. I am not overweight, but I am pretty tall (6ft), so I think my weight is almost spot on. I am purely responsible for being too overweight at the bottom. I was not putting enough air into my BC. I should have slowed the descent down until I was happy I was going to obtain neutral buoyancy close to the bottom.

My 4th dive was done in Sodwana Bay and that dive went down to a max depth of 21.5m/70ft, our average being 18m/60ft (viz was about 25m/82ft). I will never forget that dive as it was done on 7 Mile (apparently the best reef in SA) and was very blessed to snorkel with a whale shark. I never felt uncomfortable or out of control on that dive; although I will never know if I was narc'ed. I fully understand and appreciate the dangers of deep diving, and we have been constantly lectured about it at length. After what I experienced this weekend, I realize that I have quite a bit of experience to get before I even consider diving in Malta.

I have run out of time, so will respond to any other questions later.

 

[ajduplessis]

Divetek is an agency on their own, the training is not basd on NAUI. Its like saying PADI is based on IANTD.

 

[EmJay]

Did you get the opportunity to see that blood looks green at depth or did you have lights?

Yeah. That is the first thing I noticed. :cool2:

Hahahaha! Did this exact dive for my first deep dive. We had lights though.

Wanna start off by saying miracle waters is definitely not the miracle it promises. It's green, mucky and has a sulfurous odor at the bottom. The mk1 vw golf we had to kneel on is very old and rusty but I didn't touch it with anything but my knees.

It was cold and dark and I got pretty narcced on my first time down there too, when I rose back to the warmer depths, realized the intensity caused me to bite through a mouthpiece.

Got my sums right though! Booyah!!! (jokes about being the stereotypical subcontinental Asian engineer were abound)

As per my agency, I had logged over 25 dives before starting my 2* with the S.A branch of CMAS.

Just saying, I can truly relate to the dive done by the OP. the subsequent dives did go better for me, hope the op gets better ones too.

After my deep dive, I was chatting to one of the employees at Miracle. Apparently they are arranging for SAPS divers to remove the car and sink another object in its place. Was relieved to hear it as there are some very sharp and large edges on the car now. It is an accident waiting to happen imo.

I noticed that odor as well, you actually can't miss it. Took two washes to get it out of my wetsuit.

As for experience before AOW, there is no set dive minimum. More dives are recommended, but some people advise doing AOW straight after OW. Personally, I wanted to do it before winter sets in. I can't imagine diving at Miracle Waters in winter. I am glad I did it as just the rescue portion of the course added a ton of value and I believe that I will be a bit more competent in self rescue because of this course.

Divetek is an agency on their own, the training is not basd on NAUI. Its like saying PADI is based on IANTD.

I don't want to name the instructor, as I think it's unfair that the instructor is not here to give their version of the story.

I have not read any of the different agencies standards as yet, starting with GUE first. Once we qualify with Divetek, we can also get a NAUI card in addition to our Divetek card. I could have worded my previous post a bit better. Does that not mean Divetek at least comply with NAUI standards?

 

[tphelps]

I don't want to name the instructor, as I think it's unfair that the instructor is not here to give their version of the story.

Agreed. It does no good to "out" a professional for a mistake in judgement. The important thing is learning from the situation.

It's unfortunate that you cut yourself on the car. Personally when I teach a wreck class, or any class for that matter... it's "no touchy!" Ironically it's for that exact reason why we don't touch wrecks, so we don't hurt ourselves!

For future dives practice buoyancy checks so you have the proper amount of weight before a dive. Play around with trim weights too so that you are balanced and comfortable. Be mindful of fragile aquatic life and other hazards when they are present. Lastly, wear the appropriate exposure suit and accessories. If you are likely to be doing something with your hands, gloves are a great idea.

Thank you for sharing your story, happy safe diving!