HEY DUDE, WHERE’S YOUR ASCENT LINE?

Pic of later dive in Cozumel yellow can is Spare Air, breathing redundancy woulda come in handy on this dive

‘’I LEARNED ABOUT THAT” is a feature in a scuba diver magazine I used to subscribe to. It was composed of cautionary tales of divers writing about close calls they have experienced while diving. I think if we dive long enough we will all have a ‘’I LEARNED ABOUT THAT” moment. I have had a couple, which will come to no surprise to my family. One such dive took place in the early 90’s. Don’t know the exact date because I don’t have my logbook with me. Anyway I had only been certified a short time and had not had a lot of open water dives in the gulf under my belt yet. I was a single diver and they buddied me up with another diver who was also buddy-less (no diving alone, not smart and not allowed on a dive boat). He was from New Orleans and had been diving approx. 20 years, a good pairing for me and I was definitely going to let him take the lead on the dive. I was vacationing with my mom and family at Gulf Shores Alabama. I had brought all my gear down, as there was a nice little shore dive about 150 yards offshore in about 15 to 20 feet of water. It was a natural wreck that had occurred in the 1906 hurricane and was called the “Whiskey Wreck” because there were a lot of whisky barrels found in the wreck.

 I had worn out this shore dive after about 3 days and decided to book a dive boat. That is how a came to be buddied up with a diver named Buddy! Weird I had been trying to remember this guys name since I decided to blog about this and it just now came to me. Funny how the mind works huh? I remember thinking now I won’t forget this dive buddy’s name cause it was Buddy. So this dive was a two tank, two-site dive. The first dive was on an artificial reef wreck, it was a Liberty ship named the USS Wallace. The deck of the ship was 90 feet deep; the vis was pretty crappy about 30 feet. We knew, but were reminded anyway to be back on the boat with at least 500 psi left in the tank, if not they threatened to pull our second dive. That meant that when the gauge hit 700 psi our ass better be on the anchor line to give enough air for a five-minute safety stop. Buddy and me started our descent, the dive master had warned us all to stay on the line all the way down and make sure we came up on the line due to the extremely strong current in the gulf that day. I wanted no part of the current, I knew it would pull me harder than I could kick my fins. The boat is anchored and they have 8 or 9 other divers to worry about, so they can’t just pull anchor and chase you down right away. So we make our way down the murky water watching the depth gauge looking down waiting to see our destination. At about 60 feet we began to make out the hull of the wreck and continued down the line until we reached the deck.

 Our dive profile called for 21 minutes at 90 feet with a 3 to 5 minute safety stop at 10 feet. We let go of the line and I followed Buddy as we began to explore the wreck. Having an experienced diver like Buddy took the pressure off of me so I felt like I could relax, follow his lead enjoy the dive and not worry about keeping my bearings. It’s real easy to get disoriented at depth and get confused about your direction and your start and end point, even with a compass. Even though I was wearing a nice Dacor wrist compass, I didn’t bother to fix my position I was relying solely on the experience of Buddy. Seemed like every couple of minutes I was checking the air gauge on my console to see how fast I was burning through my air. The length of the dive for both divers is governed by a couple of things such as the dive profile (the deeper the dive the shorter the dive) most importantly the first diver to run low on air ends the dive for both divers. Trust me nobody wants to be that guy who burns thru their tank before the allowed bottom time is maxed.

Dive table chart, determines depth, time and surface inteval, unless you have a dive computer

 The proficiency of my air management back then was not great as I was fairly new to the sport. My first dive ever was in Cancun on a resort course dive a couple of years earlier and on that dive, I was that guy! It didn’t end just my buddies’ dive, because it was a resort course where none of the group was certified, it ended the dive of the entire group. I caught a few dirty looks and I didn’t want to be "that guy" ever again.

Buddy and me kept comparing psi’s and I could see I was going thru my O’s lots faster than him. I just kept trying to stretch it and didn’t alert my buddy Buddy when I was getting close to the cutoff limit. When it got to 700 psi and I know I should be on the anchor line I got Buddy’s attention and made a fist and hit my chest a few time (low on air signal). If I would have made an open handed slashing across my upper chest, that means I’m out of air and I’m coming for your regulator. Fortunately things weren’t that dire and he looked at my gauge and made the signal to head for the line. I started to feel just a little nervous and told myself, this is not the time to panic, we have plenty of time and more than enough air between him and me to get to the surface.

 So I’m behind Buddy and after seemingly long time I see Buddy do one of these numbers. We have all been there before, where were following a friend out to a big parking lot heading to his car and your just shooting the shit and not paying attention and all the sudden your buddy starts turkey necking around and you say “hey dude where’s your car?” Well when we got to the point where we should be close to the line, I see Buddy turkey neckin looking for the line! No line in sight Buddy thinks we passed it up so we double back for a ways. Nope no line there so we double back again, still no line in sight and he gives me the sign for I don’t know where the hell the line is!  The next sign was him pointing up asking, should we make a free assent? I’m thinking now is a great time to panic!

I hadn’t logged many dives back then and the idea of a free assent from 90m feet, low on O’s, and in strong current was more than a little daunting. I have made several free assents since then doing a lot of drift dives in Cozumel with no problems, but in that situation it was not a good option.

I was no longer on a free ride dive, now I really had to pay attention.

Here are the things that can go wrong now;

Ascending too fast and getting decompression sickness (the bends)

Ascending too fast and not breathing properly and getting an air embolism

Getting to the surface and having the current pull us too far from our boat or getting hit by one of the other boats

Taking too long to get to the surface and running out of air

I nodded my head to Buddy and partially inflated my BCD jacket and we started to the surface. I felt the panic take hold of me, it’s strange I can remember feeling it in my face; I know that doesn’t make sense, but that is how I experienced it. I just kept telling myself to calm down and remember my training and it those thoughts helped me tremendously. He offered me his spare regulator but with my ego still in control I declined. As we were ascending I kept an eye on my console, which contained a thermometer, pressure gauge and depth gauge.

Example of tank & octopus with only one reg. most have two

When we had ascended about halfway to the surface, we drifted close enough to the anchor line where we could see it and we both pointed to it and headed that way. We got to the line and continued with our controlled assent till we came upon a couple of divers who were hanging at 10 feet doing a safety stop. I look at my console and decided I couldn’t afford the safety stop so I went around them and headed straight to the dive boat. When I got on board I quickly depressurized my own gear. I didn’t want the crew to see how critically low on air I was.

It worked because I was allowed to make the second dive after the surface interval.

In keeping with the “I learned about that” theme of the Skin Diver magazine it’s time for me to access my mistakes and the possible consequences.

My first mistake was relying on another diver for my safety and not taking responsibility for my own well-being. No matter the difference in experience levels it’s a bad practice to put your life in someone else’s hands.

Second mistake: never let your ego become more important than diving safely. You not only risk your life, but also the life of anyone who tries to save you, there are more than a few stories of a diver screwing up and one or more divers who lose their life trying to save another. The fact of burning through my air so quickly because I hadn’t yet developed good air management techniques and leaving some good bottom time down there wasn’t my mistake; letting my pride get the best of me and not wanting to “be that guy” again was.

The third mistake was; skipping the safety stop. I’m sure I exceeded the 60 foot per minute ascent rate (now it’s 30 foot per minute) and passing up the safety stop increased the risk of decompression sickness aka the bends or caissons disease. Nasty things can happen to the human body if this occurs. At depth, nitrogen is squeezed into solution due to the pressure of surrounding weight of the water. The deeper you dive, the more effected you are. If you ascend too fast the nitrogen can come out of solution faster than your body can remove it through breathing. When that happens, the nitrogen, bubbles or foams in the tissue or blood stream. Trust me the last thing you want is foamy blood. This can cause many different types of injuries that can be permanent, or death! A diver may ascend this type of dive with no ill effects only to become ‘bent” if he leaves sea level too soon. Either by climbing a mountain or hopping a plane before the 24 hour wait time. The reason why your not supposed to fly home the same day as your last dive is;  Although an airliner has a pressurized cabin, it’s not the same as being at sea level. It’s pressurized to about 8000 feet above sea level and there have been many divers who didn’t heed this warning that have had a really bad flight home, some finished the flight in a body bag.

When we got back on the boat we found out the reason why we couldn’t see the line. At the beginning of the dive, the anchor line was running diagonally across the bow. During the dive, the strong current had shifted the dive boat’s position and pulled the line away from the wreck taking it out of the range of our limited visibility. The boat captain should have been aware of the current direction and anchored the dive boat so the line stayed over the wreck; we should have been more aware of our situation and kept track of our position and our exit point. I should have done several things differently as I have already stated.

 The point here is sometimes little mistakes made by multiple people can add up to a cascading series of events that culminates in someone having a very bad day.

Hyperbaric chamber not a great place to spend your vacation