Scary or embarrassing moments

[deeptechgnome]

Has anyone had any scary moments or embarrassing moments whilst diving ?

I will get the ball rolling embarrassing moment was jumping into the water whilst assisting on an open water course with out my fins on to this day i still get ribbed about it.

The most scary moment to date was a few years ago after passing my exstended range course I desended down the shot line to 55m and stared my dive about 5 mins into the dive I got my first ever freeflow was quiet stressful but is nice to know I could keep it together in a stressful situation.

[scubapro25]

Was recently diving the submerged Canadian warship Yukon at 100 ft., here in San Diego, recently--at night.

There are strong winter currents that sweep over and through the ship during all hours of the day and night here.....and I was passing one of the cut-out areas in the superstructure [cut-outs made for divers to enter], when a sudden 'updraft' sucked me into the ship about 6 ft. [ a couple meters], followed by an equally strong 'downdraft' which promptly 'spat' me out.

This is quite common on this wreck, by the way.

Only problem was, on my undignified way out, my fin strap caught on a metal flange in the opening, preventing me from fulling exiting and unfortunately, the power of the downwelling current rushing by me prevented me from from reaching over to my fin to un-stick it.

I was stuck there, in the cold and dark, for a scary couple of minutes, caught like a bug in amber :eek: , before the current finally 'released me' and let me go on my way.

Luckily, my dive buddy was close by and had been watching the whole thing, so I was in no 'real' danger......but, you know: in diving danger is 50% what you perceive it to be......and those were a couple uncomfortable moments, I can tell you.

Next! :D

[Zero]

Ok ill go for the embarrassing one.
Got a drysuit and took it away and through the trip felt like i could use a bit of relief but being a drysuit had to plug it. Came home from the trip with a shiney new pee valve and had it fitted. Went out got the external catheters and everything was set for a weekend livaboard trip.
Got up on the first morning and decided i was gunna test it out for all its worth. Started drinking heaps of water early so i was well hydrated and brimming. Got all fitted up and suited up and thought why not id have a coke just to make me pee a bit more. About 30 minutes into the dive i got the urge so undid the little screw and went. Noticing the little bubbles that came out of the hose that connects everything made me feel safe that everything was indeed connected. Went a few more times as the dive progressed and all felt good. Got out after the dive for a quick surface interval so didnt even undo the suit just lazed about at the back of the boat and had another big drink. Got in for the second dive and all was going well on the same plan until i thought my foot felt a bit squishy. Now comes the embarrassing bit. I decided to find out why it was squishy and how much by inverting myself. My feet all of a sudden felt airy but there was something running down the legs of my undersuit and my neck felt a bit warmer all of a sudden. Alas to say i was diving in my own pee. And not just one little trickle. I decided to call the dive at this stage. I got out and undressed and then unzipped the suit. The stench was bad so i got out very quick. I dont know if luck was with me or against me but the undersuit had soaked most of it up so there was only about a cup full to tip out of my notsodrysuit. :eek: :(
Embarrassing enough? Whos next?

Matt

[Ascend]

I had my first real scare diving yesterday at a place here in Saipan called Lau Lau Bay. We went out with some very cautious and experienced Russian divers who were wonderful company. Prior to this dive, the deepest we had gone was 90 feet. We were out in search for a World War 2 gas tank.

We found it and it was 140 feet below the surface. Our party of 5 descended to the tank where we had 4 minutes of air to use. I started to feel a bit looney right away but it was taking me a very long time to process any information that my mind was taking in. I signaled to my husband that I felt "crazy" and the next thing I knew, my eyes rolled back and I passed out at 140 feet.

It was probably the scariest thing that has ever happened to my husband and we ascended immediately and as we did, I came to and had no knowledge of ever passing out as it only lasted a few seconds. I suppose since I was pretty much confused the whole time, it was scariest for my husband more than it was for me!

Needless to say, we know our limits now as they always say to dive within your own limitations.

As for an embarrassing story... probably when we were getting certified in Mexico in the winter season. The water was so cold to me that I had to wear two wetsuits and could barely pick up my own legs! I looked pretty ridiculous!

Jamieleigh

[Zero]

WOW pretty scarey stuff and a bad way to find your limits but good all the same that you did find them without to much hurt.

Matt

[scubapro25]

I had my first real scare diving yesterday at a place here in Saipan called Lau Lau Bay. We went out with some very cautious and experienced Russian divers who were wonderful company. Prior to this dive, the deepest we had gone was 90 feet. We were out in search for a World War 2 gas tank.

We found it and it was 140 feet below the surface. Our party of 5 descended to the tank where we had 4 minutes of air to use. I started to feel a bit looney right away but it was taking me a very long time to process any information that my mind was taking in. I signaled to my husband that I felt "crazy" and the next thing I knew, my eyes rolled back and I passed out at 140 feet.

It was probably the scariest thing that has ever happened to my husband and we ascended immediately and as we did, I came to and had no knowledge of ever passing out as it only lasted a few seconds. I suppose since I was pretty much confused the whole time, it was scariest for my husband more than it was for me!

Needless to say, we know our limits now as they always say to dive within your own limitations.

As for an embarrassing story... probably when we were getting certified in Mexico in the winter season. The water was so cold to me that I had to wear two wetsuits and could barely pick up my own legs! I looked pretty ridiculous!

Jamieleigh


Jamieleigh:

That's a pretty serious incident, in addition to being scary.

Any time you have a loss of consciousness at depth, I would recommend having a complete physical exam by a doctor knowledgeable in diving medicine.

You were lucky to have survived and don't want to take a chance on that happening again, when you might not be so lucky.

Please.....take my advice. That's nothing to mess around with.

Mikey

:-|

[deeptechgnome]

I agree with mikey you really should go and see a diving dr to give you the ok

[santelmo]

embarrassing:

jumped out of the boat and suddenly realized that the boat man had closed my tank/air. i had to ask a new found friend who just came along for snorkeling to open my valve. and to think the other divers were already submerged.

scary:

1: got lost during compass navigation. all i could see is green...murky green...when i looked at my dive computer i was sinking/descending deeper and deeper 50feet...60feet...70feet... that's when i decided to abort the exercise and ascend slowly...

2: already posted it "reverse block at 90feet" Reverse block at 90 feet - ScubaMagazine.net Forum (http://www.scubamagazine.net/showthread.php?t=379)

[seasnake]

I signaled to my husband that I felt "crazy" and the next thing I knew, my eyes rolled back and I passed out at 140 feet.

Jamieleigh

Wow, that is a scary story! I know there are still many divers out there who advocate deep air diving, but this is a good illustration of what can happen ... So glad to hear everything turned out okay, it could've been very bad ...

Embarassing for me: a couple times jumping in below freezing water with my drysuit zipper still open an inch ... self-entry drysuit ... the equivalent of pouring ice water into your underwear

Scary: Anytime I've ever been working too hard underwater and start breathing too heavy ... that's when I've noticed you start to feel the panic start building in the back of your mind. You have to get a grip on it fast before it gets out of control.

I think my scariest moment was having a new diver put with me and my buddy by an instructor that I "trusted" on a dive that new diver didn't belong on, I wasn't that experienced myself at the time, but I had AOW. A wreck, low viz, 90'. We had agreed on a turn pressure, but when we reached the stern of the wreck, the half way point, the new diver showed me his guage: 500 psi! Because of the currents we had been instructed to ascend on the mooring line, so started trucking back. But like a lot of new divers, he wouldn't swim "with" us, he wanted to stay behind us. After just a couple minutes he was not only behind but above me, his gauge showing only a couple hundred psi, and I couldn't entice him down to me with my octo. I remember thinking I would have to go up to him, so I looked away for just a second to grab my power inflator, and when I looked up he was gone. We started a controlled ascent after him, all the way up I'm figuring he made an out of control ascent. The worst part was breaking the surface ... and the new diver was nowhere to be seen ... my mind went straight to embolism and then he sank bank down and was now somewhere at 90' in the murky viz. I was saying over and over to my buddy, "this is not good, this is not good!" ... Then I went to signal the dive boat and saw him climbing up over the gunwhale ... he had decided to swim back to the boat once he surfaced instead of waiting for us. I was really scared for those few minutes ... I decided to make a lot of changes in my gear and my diving procedures from that experience.

[santelmo]

a silmilar thing happened to us (well almost). we were at 80-90 feet by the cathedral rock and this other diver (a korean and not my buddy) showed me his gauge. it was under 700psi and to think that we just got there. our instructor asked me to escort this diver back to the surface sharing my air. it turned out that this diver forgot to change his tank after the 1st dive... :rolleyes: :D well it was not scary for me...more like pissed because he ruined my dive...hahaha :)

[Zero]

My scariest would of been on the USS Aaron Ward in The Solomons. Did a dive on the stern and everyone was diving star burst so get back to the mooring and ascend. After about 5 minutes everyones back but theres one extra deco bottle with no one attached. Sent a bag to the surface to get them to check for anyone on the surface but no one had come up yet. After about 10 more minutes one of the boys come down and got the spare tank. The other diver had come up the bridge mooring instead of the stern. Everything worked out fine but for the minutes that passed waiting to know where he was it seemed like hours.

Matt

[butch103]

[QUOTE=santelmo;1913]embarrassing:
1: got lost during compass navigation. all i could see is green...murky green...when i looked at my dive computer i was sinking/descending deeper and deeper 50feet...60feet...70feet... that's when i decided to abort the exercise and ascend slowly...
QUOTE]

How did you get lost with a compass?

[Sarah]

Butch, maybe he lost the compass! ;)

[SoCalDiveGirl]

I'd say it was a bit embarrassing on my first doubles dive when I went to the back of the boat to enter the water... and I got stuck in the gate.. Crew was pulling from the frontside, pushing from the backside... and finally my buddy gave me a boot to the rear and off I went :D
I learned that when a gate is narrow, and you are in doubles, then you MUST turn sideways... :cool:

[Zero]

A very funny site is seeing people sit on the gunwhale with a set of twins and do a backward roll after they have done up their crotch strap around the bar. You just dont know how strong webbing is till your hanging upside down in a rolling swell.

Matt

[lars2923]

I've read the post. First, I am happy to read that everyone returned.
I read some talk about fear. It's natural, I've had it.
"I've never do that again" Thats good, what did you learn?
I mean what did you really learn?
For example, the lady who passed out at depth. Have you ever gone back down to 140'? What did you learn? Was it a one time case? As you descend
and you begin to reach that 100' mark, do you begin to feel the apprehension, the fear of what happen that day? Do you continue to decend?
Why or why not?
Some other interesting stories, like diving with the newbies. I feel it's my responsibility, as a seasoned professional to to that. I owe it to them and
their future buddy. I like teaching and don't mind helping on the surface or underwater. Prevention is worth a .....
As for a story or two, I have some. One that comes to mind is when I was
at depth, oh maybe 130 and I enter a hole on a reef. This hole was almost 50
feet long. Another diver just enter before me. I was in maybe 15-20 feet,
when I felt the warm flush run through my body. I knew what that sign meant. I've had it before. It was narcosis. Now, I'm in a hole, it was leading upwards, but I was in a hole. I knew and said, I've got to ascend to eliviate the narcosis. I was a bit concerned, because I do not like narcosis. I new that if I could ascend, it would go away, but I had a person in front of me.
All I could think of was please move a little faster, I'm not feeling too good.
As soon as I could begin to see the end of the tunnel I noticed that I could exit one of two ways and they stop at the fork. I'm like please move NOW.
I still had my wits about me, but all the same, this hot flush of something was running through my body. I exited at about 80', layed faced down on the bottom until I got control. Ahhhhh. I felt better and continued the dive.

My worse experience, and in 28 years of diving, this is my personal worse,
I have been on a 7 day dive trip. I has doing a minimum of 4 - 5 dives a day.
Some down to 150 but most around the 90-100 foot range, with 50-60 in the late morning and late afternoons. I was on my 24th dive of the week. It was the first of four dives on my last day of diving. I was on Nitrox and down around 70-80 feet. My buddy was may 20 feet below me and 50 feet behind.
(an example of what not to do) when my whole body began to Zzzzzzzzz.
It was humming all over. I've never experienced that before. I signal to the DM that something is wrong but I"m OK and I'm going to ascend a bit. As I ascended, the humming, buzzing subsided. Kewl, I'll hand here, I'm still diving!
Then here it comes again... Bzzzzzzz all over my body, tingley all over..
i ascend some more, it stops.. Kewl, I'm still diving... Bzzzzzzzz, ***?
OK, time to get out. I signal the DM, that I'll attempt a safety stop then head to the boat. At the 15 or so foot mark, Bzzzzzzzzzzz, ***? I'm still breathing and I'm still diving.. to the surface I go. Only a 20 minute dive..
OK, I'm still alive...but I'm not diving..
The boat picks me up, I tell them what happen, we get to the dock and there they are, waiting for me.. to take me to the recompressional chamber
for a checkup and observation. That is when I got my lession on O2 toxicity.
I remember they mentioned something about it during my nitrox course... but
I just got first hand experience. I went on to learn more about it, understand it, how to use the formulas, and realized, there is more to time underwater than timing your No Decompression limit (nitrogen load) there Oxygen load too and one can reach it's limit before another.
It took that even for me to experience another phenomena of gases under pressure and time. Now I really like diving because it excited me in to learning more..
Because of the way the dive shop conducted themself, I was impressed and have been diving with them every year for over 10 years now.
Well that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

[SoCalDiveGirl]

One that comes to mind is when I was
at depth, oh maybe 130 and I enter a hole on a reef. This hole was almost 50
feet long. Another diver just enter before me. I was in maybe 15-20 feet,
when I felt the warm flush run through my body. I knew what that sign meant. I've had it before. It was narcosis.


Yup- thats always my first obvious sign of narcosis too... That oh-so-familiar, yet unwanted warm flush- I've experienced it twice (in about 325 dives)... Funny feeling to be in 53F water in a drysuit, and suddenly sweating.. Miserable feeling, but it's much better to feel hot than to experience any significant mental impairments...

[wetwillie]

I was in the gulf of Mexico doing a deep air salvage job removing debris from a scrapped platform in 180'. It was hard hat diving and I was wearing my superlite 17 B tethered to the surface... I had a steel plate the size of a sheet of plywood and 1" thick laying flat on the bottom. I had a down line to the site from the barge and they sent a crane line down to me with a couple of nylon slings. I got the bad boy slung up and had the tops side crew add a little tension to it to make sure the slings wouldn't slip.... then I backed way of the side behind a big steal trash basket while the crew tried to bring up the load.....Mud suction held the plate on the bottom and they kept adding force to the line...finally the suction broke loose and the plate came free.. as it did it planned out in the water and spun around it chased me down to my safe spot and hit the side of the hat shearing off the valve assembly....the hat started to flood. I couldn't reach the surface because my umbilical and down line were tied together by the spinning plate....about four breaths of air were in the "dead space" of the hat and I could feel the water rise inside with each intake.. I told tops side what had happened on the com and they were trying to life everything.... after that last breath the saltwater came in and filled my lungs...after the fist gulp that burned a little it wasn't so bad and for a few seconds I was "breathing" water ..pretty cool I thought. I knew I was done and made my peace with the water spirit and lost consciousness... The next thing I knew was waking up in a decompression chamber on the barge( doing deco dives) and the emt in there had just shocked me the third time and got me started again....They flew me out after my chamber time and sent me to center in New Orleans... I was treated for pneumonia in the lungs with antibiotics and after four weeks off I was cleared to dive again no permanent damage done....I went back diving for 2 more years....
a year almost to the day I was down 40' cutting a "flushed" six inch line left over from Hurricane Andrew and hit a gas pocket of o2 and hydrogen( residual from other divers cutting) that was in a rise of the line... this one blew my hat off my head and knocked me out. I woke up in the Hospital they had to bring me back in the chamber again but after they got the heart pumping I didn't regain consciousness until I made the Hospital... pneumonia again and ruptured ear drums..... out for six months and the Dr. cleared me again...... dove another year and decided to change professions... became a cop it was safer..lol..

[SoCalDiveGirl]

dang... thats scary just to read about :eek:

[seasnake]

OMG! That is an amazing story! All it makes me think about is the wannabe commercial divers out doing "working" dives without proper training, support, or equipment! You must love it if you kept coming back for more. What is your diving like now? Any long term affects?

[wetwillie]

no long term affects other than a little loss of hearing, but it helps with the other half, not really a bad thing,lol... I guess I am just not in my right mind but being in the water is somehow just natural... and drowning wasn' t so bad.. friends and family said I should have sued the company but I wouldn't...**** happens and It was an unforeseeable accident in my book... made hundreds of dives like it before and hundreds after.. back on the horse kinda thing..

[CaptainBing]

I backrolled without my fins. I couldn't figure out why I was having so much trouble moving. The DM motioned to me "where are your fins?" Everyone on the boat called me "flipper" for the rest of the trip.

[seasnake]

lol ... I remember once a while ago jumping in on a snorkel ... I guess the full foot fins were a bit big for me and I stepped right out of them ... there they were on the edge of the platform like slippers beside my bed ...

[SoCalDiveGirl]

I guess the full foot fins were a bit big for me and I stepped right out of them ... there they were on the edge of the platform like slippers beside my bed ...

This is why we check gear fit BEFORE jumping in the water :D

[DeepThinker]

Many years ago, I went night diving in a Florida spring...back in the day when I used to wear a snorkel. I did not know it, but there were a lot of fresh-water eels in the spring. Upon ascent, I managed to snag a rather large eel between my snorkel and head. Imagine being unable to see or know what this snakelike thing is whipping around your head at night, 50 feet down! Only thing I knew to do was stay as calm as possible, pray that it was not a poisonous snake and keep going up---. When I surfaced, it escaped. My buddy thought his dive partner had become Medusa!