Mark Ingrassia
Registered
I was on a live-aboard this summer one beautiful week off West Palm Beach. There were about a dozen divers aboard, paying customers and a crew of 5.
To make a long story short, one of the divers brought his girlfriend along. This person insisted on making a dive to a twin prop aircraft somewhat out of the way and at a depth of 130'. No one wanted to go, but his one diver insisted so, we sat it out.
At the dive site the diver's girlfriend was struggling to get her gear on. We asked if we could help, but the boyfriend responded that she was a little nervous at diving below 100' but that she'd be okay.
The woman definitely did not look okay and said something under her breath about having dove only to 40'. The two argued briefly before jumping off.
Less than ten minutes later, a diver popped up off the bow waving their hands. It was the woman and she was in trouble. the captain and crew did an amazing job getting the woman onboard. We could see there was something wrong with her as she shuffled across the deck, bowed over and looking very frail.
The crew applied oxygen immediately and after a few moments, the woman regained her composure. She said her equipment was not working and she was not getting enough air. The crew questioned her a bit more and learned that as she was making a slow decent, her boyfriend and the other divers went fins up and power dove down to the plane to offset the strong current, leaving the woman behind. She tried to follow but at 90' she could not find him, any of the other divers, the plane....or the bottom.
And never having been that deep before added to the fear of being alone coupled with her nervousness before she got in the water caused her stress level to skyrocket to panic mode.
Hyperventilating, the woman was building up dangerous levels of Co2 at an alarming rate. Her brain was reading oxygen starvation which, is why she thought her equipment failed. Many people in this terrible state spit out their regulators. The woman kept hers in but did the next worse thing. She bolted to the surface without a safety stop.
Meanwhile below, the dive master saw he was missing people and came to the surface. Seeing the woman, he realized he was missing the boyfriend and went back down to search. The boyfriend, it turned out took off looking for his girlfriend without notifying anyone. They picked him up almost a mile away, out of air and exhausted.
Back onboard the boyfriend had a moment of rage because his GF failed to tell him she was going back up. "How could I, you were gone?"
Lessons learned...........
To make a long story short, one of the divers brought his girlfriend along. This person insisted on making a dive to a twin prop aircraft somewhat out of the way and at a depth of 130'. No one wanted to go, but his one diver insisted so, we sat it out.
At the dive site the diver's girlfriend was struggling to get her gear on. We asked if we could help, but the boyfriend responded that she was a little nervous at diving below 100' but that she'd be okay.
The woman definitely did not look okay and said something under her breath about having dove only to 40'. The two argued briefly before jumping off.
Less than ten minutes later, a diver popped up off the bow waving their hands. It was the woman and she was in trouble. the captain and crew did an amazing job getting the woman onboard. We could see there was something wrong with her as she shuffled across the deck, bowed over and looking very frail.
The crew applied oxygen immediately and after a few moments, the woman regained her composure. She said her equipment was not working and she was not getting enough air. The crew questioned her a bit more and learned that as she was making a slow decent, her boyfriend and the other divers went fins up and power dove down to the plane to offset the strong current, leaving the woman behind. She tried to follow but at 90' she could not find him, any of the other divers, the plane....or the bottom.
And never having been that deep before added to the fear of being alone coupled with her nervousness before she got in the water caused her stress level to skyrocket to panic mode.
Hyperventilating, the woman was building up dangerous levels of Co2 at an alarming rate. Her brain was reading oxygen starvation which, is why she thought her equipment failed. Many people in this terrible state spit out their regulators. The woman kept hers in but did the next worse thing. She bolted to the surface without a safety stop.
Meanwhile below, the dive master saw he was missing people and came to the surface. Seeing the woman, he realized he was missing the boyfriend and went back down to search. The boyfriend, it turned out took off looking for his girlfriend without notifying anyone. They picked him up almost a mile away, out of air and exhausted.
Back onboard the boyfriend had a moment of rage because his GF failed to tell him she was going back up. "How could I, you were gone?"
Lessons learned...........
