What's the most idiotic thing you've have witnessed divers doing?

[tinman]

Tis a glorious thing to be able to laugh! My shears are the most versatile tool on/in my BC . I usually pull them first because they are not dangerous to another diver that I need to release from an entanglement vs a knife - except I guess if that diver happens to be a nudist diver or intent on underwater interaction with a non-consenting companion. Perhaps a 12-14' knife could be put to good use after all... Great stories. This is one of the most entertaining threads I've ever read. I guess I'm just afraid, I'll star in one of them - the absent minded professor was my brother!

 

[BMETdiver]

When I did my second OW certification dive we had a guy on the boat who had all the gear and looked the part. Well we got to the first dive site and every one starts gearing up and my instructor had me wait on the boat as I was part of a 1 person class and he wanted to let all of the other divers off first. So this guy gets up and head to the back of the boat for a stride entry. I had noticed that something didn't look right but didn't catch on at first, he went off of the back of the boat leaving his fins and weight belt sitting on his bench. He actually tried to descend before realizing that he was missing some gear and they had to throw the fins and have another person enter to give him the weights.

 

[PapaBob]

I dont want to get off the track of this thread, but nondivers also produce some curious events. Several years ago I was carrying the flag on a drift dive when all of a sudden I felt a strong pull on the line that started lifting me to the surface. I thought I had snagged a buoy in the strong current or got tangled with a fisherman. When I broke the surface a suprised boater stopped hauling me in. I admit my demeanor and language was not very polite. Seems he thought my flag was abandoned and just drifting and he would claim it and whatever was attached to the other end. He claimed he did not know what a dive flag was.

---Bob

 

[gstroupe]

On a recent dive trip to Aruba I watched a new diver (I'm assuming new...actually, I'm praying she was new) put the first stage of her regulator on backwards and turn the air on...not once but twice until the DM came over and asked if there was a problem. She said "I always seem to get this part mixed up."

 

[ArthurGerla]

Well, I've walked into the water without closing the zip on my drysuit. That's one mistake you don't make twice. :errrr:

The other day off Ras Mohammed, in the Red Sea: We plan to dive from Anemone city to Yolanda reef. This involves crossing the blue over a 700 meter abyss. This guy (he has only 60 dives but is already carrying a HID light, BP/W, and a reg on a bungee around his neck, and diving nitrox all week) insists on buddying up with his mate (OW, 7 dives). Despite repeated signalling by the guide to stay shallow and close together they keep drifting apart. Before we know what is happening the novice diver has sunk to 40 meters, oblivious to the consternation above, and there's no way his buddy can retrieve him from that depth being on nitrox. Eventually someone on air goes after the OW diver and drags him back to legal depth.

With hindsight I think it's a good example of bad judgment all around. The dive isn't suited to novices without close supervision, the wannabe tech diver didn't realise in time that his buddy was going beyond reach for his particular gas mix, the more experienced divers in the group were slow to interfere when it became clear the two weren't acting on the instructions signalled to them.

Art

 

[plankspanker]

Next time you might consider just bringing back the equipment.

your posts never fail to deliver!

 

[radinator]

a very long story but i will jump right to the dumest thing part

an instructor on the surface, no mask, no hood, panicked, flooded drysuit and drowning.

six students circling him and watching him drown all the while sitting there with that deer in the head lights look on their face.

I had to swim about 200 yards and puled him up from about 20 feet under by the time i got to him, his students still circling were he was with that same dumb look on their face

I don't mean this as a hijack, so make a different thread if you think it is needed. But I'd really be interested in hearling the long version of this story. It jsut seems like so many things have hit the fan at this point, I'd like to hear the sequence.

Edited: Oops, old post.

 

[Furner]

In Coz, a diver got a very mild snag on the anchor line during descent, he just had the line wedged onto his first stage. Instead of letting his buddy continue to undo the tangle, he pulls out a very impressive dive knife and starts to hack at the line. Had he cut thru the line, he would be very surprised when he is now attached to the boat, and now that the boat is no longer anchored, it will start to rock in the swells, and drag him with it. Not to mention he would have created a VERY pissed off crew.
Luckily, our guide caught him in time and gave him a good staring at before we continued our dive.

 

[limeyx]

I once heard and AOW student ask the instructor how to vent air from his BCD.

Had the opposite problem. I spent two dives swimming behind a girl who was scared as hell of having *any* air in her BC whatever. She spent almost two hours essentially on her hands an knees, pulling herself along the bottom.

Even worse. It was a DM-led dive, and periodically the DM would look back, see what was going on and add air for her. Immediately, the girl would dump it out again as "she was scared of shooting to the surface."

Right. Especially dangerous since we spent the whole dive at 15 feet
for dive 2, the DM insisted she remove her gloves so she could get a taste of how the coral felt when she grabbed it. Oddly, she didn't seem too keen to vent the air out on that dive...

 

[Louie]

Time - a few years ago

Place - Southern Red Sea

Scenario
Was on liveaboard out of Marsa Alam. During a dive, I'm stationary along with my group, watching for hammerhead sharks at 30M.

A group from a rusty tin tub of a liveaboard moored next to us appears. Two men from that group suddenly decend like lead. I lose sight of them. A few minutes later, they reappear and judging by their gestures, they'd seen or done something amazing.

Back on the boat, our dive leader who'd witnessed this strange event informed us that the two guys had been having a contest to see who could go down deepest and the winner's computer registered 78 metres and he was showing this off to the rest of the group (who were oblivious to the hammerheads and the other marine life but concerned solely with who could perform this deep-diving feat).

I don't know what became of this lot - and I don't think I care.