the most surprised you've been on a dive

[100days-a-year]

1.GWS x 2 while U/W.

2.My buddy and I being rolled at dusk by dolphin,3 of them came in at full speed and cut a sharp turn right over us causing us to tumble like a washing machine.

3.Drifting Crystal River during a heavy thunderstorm,lightening was like strobes going off and you could hear thunder occasionally.

 

[BubbleMike]

Night dive. Large sea turtle head suddenly appeared one foot in front of me.

 

[Dr. Lecter]

the incredible stupidity and blatant disregard for personal safety by some divers never ceases to astonish me!

Oh, do tell

 

[Chugwhump]

I have really enjoyed the postings by everyone.
Sooper Neeto to read the different things that happen in different parts of the world.
And here mine.

While I live and dive often in SoFla, will all manner of Turtles, sharks, eels, West Indian Manatees , and the very occasional ocean going Alligator, my most surprising event in the water was in the Turks and Caicos in 1990.
I went down there to work on a surveying and mapping project for a few weeks.
After flying in from Mee-yam-ee, and on my very first afternoon there in Providenciales, I grabbed my mask fins and schnorkel, and ran down to the beach from the then brand new Ramada Resort
(It's gone now I understand).
I asked the beach/cabana crew where the best place was to snorkel out for a quick look around, and was told to head up the shore to the left and go to the contemporary looking white houses, and kick out.
I was also told that there were definitely some Reefies around, but I would be fine, as I was not fishing or spearing.
As I was swimming out in the warm clear water, I looked up ahead of me at surface level and saw what I thought was very large gray shark fin breaking the surface.
It scared the crap out of me.
I was easily 200-300 yards off shore at that point, and it was long way back.
I turned, as I was all of a sudden feeling very uneasy, and was making my way back to shore.
I was turning behind me about every 5 seconds or so expecting to have a large Bull or even a Tiger Shark "swimming up my six" at any moment and eat me.
After about 2-3 minutes of what might be described as near panic, and certainly the high anxiety of being in an unfamiliar place, I began to calm down.
I stopped, hovered over a small coral head, and decided to stop wimping out and resume my kick offshore.
And then I saw it.
It was BIG!
(Sharks are big)
It was gray.
(Sharks are often gray)
It was about 1 foot from my face.
(Sharks can come very close to your face)
It had a big damn eye that was looking right into my soul.
(Sharks have big damn eyes that look into your soul)
It had a huge dorsal fin.
(Sharks can have huge dorsal fins)

It was...

A DOLPHIN!

"Jo-Jo the Dolphin" to be precise.

I had never heard of this Dolphin prior to this chance meeting.

It stayed with me for about 20 minutes or so, and we played around.

It was AWESOME!!!


Chug
Met Jo-Jo.

 

[KathyV]

I just thought of another surprising "non-diving" dive encounter. I had to check my log book for the date because this happened long ago in October 1994 - I can't believe it was 20 years ago! Several months earlier we had joined a group of friends in making plans to charter a dive boat for a fall vacation. We were planning to depart from Florida (Miami or Fort Lauderdale - I can't remember) and then cross over to the Bahamas. I think the original plan was to dive the Cay Sal bank.

But before we left home relations between Cuba and US suddenly flared up. There were many refugees exiting Cuba and trying to get to the US and lots of military presence in the waters around the Bahamas.

The Captain said that he would move the boat down to Nassau and we could fly in and join him there and then we could dive the Exumas. He felt that area would be more "out of the way" of any possible trouble.

It was a great trip but we did see a number of Coast Guard and US Navy ships and I remember that once 2 military jets zoomed right overhead and they were pretty close.

One morning after coming back from a dive on a wall I went up on deck and noticed a naval boat just kind of hanging around. A crewman was watching it with binoculars and I asked "do you know what kind of boat that is?" and he answered "it's a sub tender".

I said in surprise "there's no submarines around here!" which was a dumb thing to say as we were sitting on top of a wall but I had just been diving a small part of that wall and I hadn't seen any subs - duh! Right after I said that a submarine suddenly surfaced! It seemed like it just exploded out of the water - quite impressive! It was between us and the tender so it was fairly close. That was certainly a surprise!

 

[Frosty]

The most "suprised" Ive been was on a recent night dive. one buddy team had gone through a nice easy swim through and I was leading my buddy a few seconds later. The tail diver of the other buddy team had hooked his tank strap on the roof somehow and popped the tank free (don't ask I still can't figure out how)
im heading out of the swim through and my torch catches a very big white solid object swinging towards my head.-For the record--an AL 80 aside the head HURTS.

 

[Simon J Rogers]

I Stopped to point out a cuttle fish to another diver and I felt something below me, I looked down and an Angel Shark had popped out of the sand 30 cm from my face. I had absolutely no idea it had been there and it gave me a bit of a shock because it was a decent size! Makes me wonder how much I just swim by and miss!

 

[tmacdiver]

In Bonaire, 06, dive buddy was stung by a scorpion while putting his booties on. The scorpion had climbed into his booties as they were drying overnight on his porch. After the sting, the scorpion ran along the deck of the boat until we squished him. I now, always shake my booties out before putting them on!

 

[victorzamora]

I was diving in an area called "Shark Ray Alley." We were told it was called that because it was ALL rays by night and ALL sharks by day. We had done a night dive there, and the bottom was literally carpeted with ginormous rays. Day dive the next day, back at Shark Ray Alley. I guess I can say I wasn't surprised that we were surrounded by sharks. The "official" count was somewhere in the neighborhood of a "crapton" (standard, not metric. Equivalent to about 2.5 metric boat loads). All of a sudden, the DM signals "shark." I'm like yeah, cool, shark. There's a nurse shark, there's a nurse shark, there's a nurse shark. He signals "No, no, BIG shark." As he says this, a Reef shark (or something, I'm not sure) swims by. I'm like, cool....big shark. He hunkers down behind a big head of coral in the middle of correcting me a second time. Now I'm like, "What the heck's going on??" I look to my right, and like 6" away from me is a redonculously huge Bull Shark. Easily 50ft long. Well, maybe that was a slight exageration....but it was big enough for me to pull a Warhammer just before nearly passing out.

Another one: My dad and I were following a guide when a turtle FELL in front of us. We followed it for a minute, played with it, then it got bored and swam off. We rejoined with the group, and at the bottom was the DM on his belly on the sand reaching under a coral overhang......where he grabbed a shark's tail. The shark was annoyed, frustrated, but swam off a few seconds later. Watching a DM PURPOSEFULLY grab a shark wasn't something I expected to see, especially because that was the first time I had seen a shark, and I hadn't seen it until he grabbed it. It was like an evil magic trick.

---------- Post added June 16th, 2014 at 11:04 AM ----------

Story 3: I was doing my safety stop in NC after a wreck dive when a gray blur blew by me. I thought it might have been my fiancee. I looked at her, and she was as puzzled as I was. Turns out there were 3 or 4 snowflake dolphins in the area.

In Bonaire, 06, dive buddy was stung by a scorpion while putting his booties on. The scorpion had climbed into his booties as they were drying overnight on his porch. After the sting, the scorpion ran along the deck of the boat until we squished him. I now, always shake my booties out before putting them on!

I grew up in El Salvador. That was VERY common there....to the point where you checked all shoes at all times, no exceptions.

 

[violamama]

I love these threads.

We did the DUI days at our aquarium this week and were shocked to have the sturgeon (longer than I am!), rays and sundry others swim right up and bump into our newby-drysuited selves. I didn't really pay all that much attention to the suit (don't tell DUI) because it was just so completely awesome.