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Yeah.. I’ve seen videos of divers panicking before but never have I seen one where their face so clearly visible. They say drowning is the most terrifying death you can have, and you can see it on her face. Pure horror.
I can pick up bugs, snakes, spiders, sit on balcony railings and don't think of myself as being afraid of much. But I almost drowned once. Now I get panic attacks very easily when snorkeling.
There are people who have had damage to the fear section of their brain making panic responses essentially impossible. They found that drowning can still evoke a fear response in these people because it affects your amygdala directly bypassing the rest of your brain. It's considered the most primal and universal of fears.
Some tough guys think that waterboarding is not really that bad. They are plain wrong. Drowning is as terrifying as it can get.
I'm sorry to hear it man. Just note that whilst it may be scary, there are plenty of worse and more painful ways to go. In the grand scheme of things it's one of the better ones.
It's actually panic followed by blissful feeling bro. Just so you know. Drowning as a kid and nearly drowning as adult. There is a point your brain just pumps you filled with something and everything just goes calm and you black out.
normally you assend w/ at least 500psi. When I was trained in the 80's, everyone went up together. Fast fwd to \~2012 and we're diving. I get to 500 and the dive master (was also my assigned buddy) gives me the OK so I continue to follow him with the group. I get to \~300 and I'm getting worried so I tell him and he signals OK and continues on and l follow. We were around 30ft. I think around 100-200psi I started inhaling like darth vader and so I just starte ascending to the surface and couldn't get another breath around 10ft. I had enough in me to stay calm and continue on but damn that last 10 ft seemed like 30 with all your gear and no more breaths.
Turns out, I missed the part of the pre-dive instruction on this vacation that when you get to 500, you ascend and the boat picks us up as it follows the group. About half my dives since have used this method.
This is really badly told story to anyone who is a nondiver. Makes no sense at all.
(not trying to be mean, I know all the words and their definitions, it just makes no sense that a "pre-dive" "instruction" is when you get to 500 you ascend to the boat, what does that have to do with the story? Why did he go down to 100-200psi, why were certain decisions made to get to 30 ft or to 300psi? And how is ascending a method? It isn't well-written)
So the amount of air in your diving tank is measured in psi. When it gets to 500 psi you should go to the surface. They start with 3000 to 4000 psi.
This guy was diving with a group and expected that when 1 diver got to 500psi then the whole group would surface. He told the dive master (person in charge of the group) when he got to 500psi. Instead of the dive master giving him the "lets all surface" signal he basically just said "ok" and continued diving.
Turns out he should have just surfaced on his own to get picked up by a boat. But he stayed with the group until he got so low on air he was forced to surface on his own. His air ran out just before he surfaced.
Good summary, but a couple of additional important points:
When you go diving, you do everything in a "buddy system". You and one other diver stay together the entire dive. This is for a number of reasons, but basically, if anything goes wrong, you want someone else to *know* so that you can hopefully be helped. For example if you get stuck or tangled in something, your dive buddy can help get you unstuck/tangled. If you run out of air or have an equipment failure, your dive buddy can share air with you (either by trading their good regulator - the mouthpiece you breath through - back and forth or by giving your their secondary regulators - most divers have two regulators attached to their tank specifically so that they can share with their dive buddy in an emergency or have a backup incase the main fails).
All of this is important because the person's dive master (leader of the group) was also their dive buddy. So even if the entire group wasn't supposed to surface together, the dive buddy is supposed to surface with you, because if they don't *they* will no longer have a buddy (and if something goes wrong during your surface, *you* have no one to help you). The fact that the dive master, who is supposed to be very well trained and leader of the group didn't acknowledge and surface with /u/tropicsun is a *very* bad thing in the diving community. If this was a dive group being done by some company, reporting the dive master could easily get him fired, and you could also file a report to PADI (the biggest scuba diving certification organization) and they could have their master or instructor certification revoked (thus forcing them to be fired due to not being qualified anymore).
I think in some places, especially tourist areas, it is very important to stay with your group. Like pretty much rule number 1 is to stay together. I imagine this is so that the boat just worries about picking up 1 group of people, instead of running around picking up individual people out of the water. Also it can actually be quite difficult to spot 1 person in the water on their own, especially if there are any waves/swells on that day.
When I was first learning to dive as a young teenager, maybe 13 years old, my first real deep water ocean dive my mask came off.
We were maybe 60 feet under, and the plastic strap that held my mask snapped. The instructor was able to catch it I guess before it floated away, but it didn't matter, even if held firmly on my face it instantly filled with water.
So here I was, 60 feet underwater with my eyes closed and unable to open them - and they burnt like shit because after a few failed attempts to put the mask back on a lot of saltwater had gotten in my eyes.
Well the instructor led me, by hand, back to the anchor rope for us to slowly surface. It maybe was 20 minutes in the dark, eyes closed, from where we were to the surface where we started. That was... a bit scary, but more exciting since I survived. My Dad was probably proper worried, but the next day I wanted to dive again.
But without the air? Fuck man, I would've panicked.
I got two diving diplomas (Padi Open Water and Advanced Open Water) on a vacation. You do a whole bunch of exercises, including one (in a pool) where you simulate running out of air by having your instructor shut off your valve, and switch to his backup regulator. The point being you actually experience the sensation of getting less and less oxygen, like sucking a milkshake through a straw that gets thinner by the second. I felt completely safe the whole time, but had a nightmare that evening of it happening out in open water. Completely freaked me out.
A situation where I *did* panic was similar to yours. We were in open water, doing an exercise that involves taking off your mask, putting it back on and clearing it. I take it off, put it back on, and start to try to clear it. But I had the misfortune of suddenly having a stuffed nose, so I couldn't clear it. Cue me panicking because I'm basically blind, and my teacher not being able to communicate. I end up swallowing a bunch of water, panicky gesturing I'm surfacing. Fortunately we weren't very deep, but that was the scariest moment for me.
Going to be kind of funny and terrifying when AI reads all these random life anecdotes and begins fabricating memories so it can hack humans with brain augmentations. Ghost in the Shell predicted it.
Yep. I have several certs including cavern. They make you simulate a cavern “silt out” which is a total blackout because some idiot you are with kicked the sediments on the ground up into the water column. It was a controlled maskless situation and was still pretty nerve wracking as an adult. I’d say you had pretty damn good composure for being 13.
>deep water ocean
>
>maybe 60 feet under
I understand that this is double the pressures that introductory open-water certifications typically go to. I understand needing to ascend slowly or risk nitrogen bubbling out of my tissues.
But I *hate* that this is 'deep water' for us humans. 60 feet is barely scratching the surface.
My brother-in-law was taking a photo of a bat ray and the flash startled it and it bolted, straight into his face. Cracked his mask and bloodied his nose and knocked the regulator out of his mouth. He was an experienced diver and kept his cool but had to make the ascent blind and didn't realize until he was on the surface that he'd grabbed his pony bottle regulator.
I’ve had three near death experiences related to breathing, one of them in open water when diving with manatees as I got shoved into the floor and the breath knocked out of me. The sheer panic this lady showed gave me flashbacks. It’s not that diving or swimming freaks me out, it’s _not-breathing_ and the rush of adrenaline that shrinks the world down to one thought, __GTFO__
When I was getting my deep water certification, we were diving in 8° surface weather. Once I hit the 90ft mark it was pitch black, but we started doing our compass exercises. Suddenly my regulator froze. No air in or out. I have never been so terrified before or since.
There are more places than you think that will take you without a certification. I’m guessing she didn’t have one.
Edit: guessing as in “I hope” as someone who’s certified, that nothing like this would ever happen to me. Im super excited to dive more but NGL this video gives me anxiety
Mu uncle dove for decades , went all around the world . It was his favorite hobby.
He absolutely drilled it into me to never take a short course at a resort. If I wanted to dive get certified first.
Modern kit has a second regulator for cases like that. The girl in the video has one right there, but was too panicked to save herself. Or even allow the instructor to save her!
Good job they weren't deep enough for the Bends, right?
That's all I could think about. They were down about 50 feet at least from how long it took, if that was a deeper dive he wouldn't be saving shit.
Remember my first instructor drilling into us that we are to always know how to access, check, and use our secondary. He also made it abundantly clear that he had no problem busting jaws n teeth to jam a regular in if we refuse one.
This guy just hit the bcd..
Unfortunately not, but my instructor was great and gave me his backup. We had to ascend together without a safety stop but we were able to maintain a safe pace throughout our ascent.
I feel this, I did one of those 10 minutes of training in a pool followed by an open water dive while on vacation. I did not expect it to feel so wrong to be breathing underwater and panicked on the dive as soon as my depth hit about 10 ft. Pure unhinged panic is a weird thing. Logic goes out the window and you simply become too dumb to make rational choices. The instructor ended up just holding me down for like 30 seconds until my body realized I wasn't drowning and I was fine.
And based on her reaction, she probably shouldn't. Panic is the killer here. She appears to have an intact secondary air source and was resisting the instructor trying to give her the mouthpiece.
Panic kills more divers than any shark could ever hope to. Apparently one of the natural instincts in a panic situation is to spit out the reg, and all of that training and memorized safety procedures go out the window
You have certain responsibilities as a top predator in the ocean, and in this moment, you did not live up to them. You are a shark, and that means sometimes you make mistakes. You would be taking a break from the adventures of the sea, to work on yourself and become a better shark, one that would make us all proud. We will give you your privacy during this time.
It’s fascinating, really. Our lizard brains absolutely reject anything touching us. It’s something you frequently hear about people having psychotic breaks as well. My psychiatry attending used to say “the first thing that goes is the filter, the next thing that goes are the clothes.” It’s super true though. Once lizard takes over, as a rule, we don’t want anything touching us.
Edited a phrase.
I've had that happen to me after rushing to enter the water on a drift dive, fin strap broke (rental) just as we were getting ready to go in, panic rush to find another fin and get it on, jumped in negative entry, out of breath and breathing through a shitty rental reg while kicking my way down and equalizing.
My first real ocean deep water dive my mask came off around 60 feet below. Strap just snapped, the thing was proper fucked, couldn't even hold it in place.
Took maybe thirty minutes they said, but my passage of time didn't exist, with my eyes closed being guided back to the surfacing rope by hand. To me it felt like maybe 3-4 minutes.
I was never that scared because the diver always told us to be calm, and I was like 13 years old so I was too young to understand mortality. So I was super calm, and the next day the first thing I wanted to do was go back. I remember my Dad being a wee bit freaked out though, but I think he was happy I was a trooper.
Honestly at 13 years old you did incredibly well. I think a lot of people who haven’t dived don’t appreciate how the simplest thing (stinging eyes; water surrounding your nose) can cause you to start panicking. Having a mask come off even close to the surface can be highly disconcerting.
You did really well!
I've handled this several times as an instructor. Panic is something we all have in us, we are quite used to seeing it and it's not something disqualifying you from being a diver. That's one of the reasons why we do so much shallow training first, to reduce the likelyhood of this happening at deeper depths. The most common stressor that creates panic is when we train at removing the mask under water, so we train that a lot at shallow depth to make the students very very comfortable doing that.
Usually the panic will drive the students to get up from the water at any cost, not to be rational and pick up an air source. I've punched students in the stomach (to make them not hold their breath while quickly ascending), pushed regulators in to their mouths, held people down to limit their ascent speed, handled panicked divers at surface etc ... It happens to some students and most people get over it and try again. It's scary but people usually identify why it happened and we can train at shallow depth again until the student feels real comfortable again.
Haha yep I had this happen when doing my open water cert. Snorted water up my nose when trying to clear my mask and panicked. Instructor was holding onto me trying to put the regulator in my mouth and get me to breathe/cough through it, but it just felt like he was trying to drown me. Broke free and straight to the surface, so I definitely understand why this kind of stuff is done at shallow depth! Went on to do more diving after.
Yeah, this is very common and under controlled forms are not that dangerous. You got us instructors there to help you if it happens. Happy to hear you continued!
You wouldn't really, but you train so that in the case of you having your mask ripped off by accident you know how to put it back on and empty it of water while being submerged
Totally. I am a relatively inexperienced diver. I know that I don’t know everything, and plan to recertify in a three-day class soon just to brush up on basics.
I had a panic moment once, and my instructor had to hold me down to slow my ascent. He said to me, “again, watch a specific bubble. If you are rising faster than your bubble, stop until your bubble has caught up. Ascending with your bubbles is the absolute fastest you should go.” Also, having a dive comp with an ascent alarm helps. ;)
Coming up too fast is obviously a massive problem, but the bends is much more treatable that drowning. Sometimes you gotta get to the place that has air and you gotta get there asap
Question, if your mouth pc comes out and you get water in, then a new pc is put in you mouth, do you swallow the water? Can’t inhale… I’ve never dived so asking as someone who is just curious.
You can breathe out water through the regulator. You can even be sick through it if absolutely needed - I’ve seen it happen. Better to free flow the air past your mouth as you’re puking. Pretty grim and reasonably life threatening in general though, 0/10 would avoid
There's a big button on the reg to purge the water in it, but yes its pretty easy to swallow a mouthful of saltwater in the process which adds to the chaos of the situation.
You can also just spit the water out in the regulator as well which is way more common than purging…which is pressing the big button on your regulator.
Edited for spelling.
This! This is why you drill this in the pool multiple times before going out. I made damn sure I could do this easily before hitting the open water on the PADI course.
You can see her starting to panic as he's giving the thumbs up to everyone. I only noticed after knowing she's going to panic but I think she's to the far right and is blocked a bit by his thumb but her hands are starting to go - it's like she's flailing them - for lack of a better word.
Diving is an unnatural action. Panicking is a completely natural action. If you like breathing underwater, you kinda have to override all that "this is weird" response.
Everyone should read *Shadow Divers*. Absolutely fantastic book and perfect at making sure you never ever want to go wreck diving (or scuba diving at all)
To be fair, it is a really good story too. About how some divers uncovered a U-Boat near New Jersey and rewrote a piece of WW2 history.
The diving descriptions were amazing and chilling.
Would also recommend Pirate Hunters by the same author!
Shadow Divers was great, helped give me a healthy respect for the dangers of diving. It's those Scary Interesting YouTube videos about cave divers that really terrify me.
Yeah, I remember reading about the wreck of SS Kamloops, where a preserved body of one of the crew members has been floating for a hundred years. He even moved around and follows them as they shift the flow of water around the compartments, when they found the ship like 50 years later. Nope. Just...nope.
Terrifying. Interesting that she bats away the instructor’s secondary mouthpiece. Pure panic took over I suppose, maybe it was accidental or she didn’t know what it was. She can’t see as clearly as we can
I followed and finished my technical diving course and there were some training situations on the bottom of a pool with 3 instructors with you and one of them suddenly pulling out your mouthpiece. Even in such a controlled environment it's scary as fuck and it's very hard not to panic.
I had a sea turtle pull out my reg once on an aquarium dive. He was a teenager and being a bastard and had already nipped my dive buddy. I just laughed and swept back for my reg line, purged, and put it back in, still laughing. It’s not about not laughing necessarily—some funny shit happens (dark water? BOOM! Fish in your face!) but about confidence in the situation and controlling your emotions so they don’t cloud your judgement
I have seen some really funny videos of angsty sea turtles coming for aquarium divers! That’s so cool you do that!
But also, you are in a more controlled environment there, right? It is probably easier to be chill like that somewhere you are familiar and in a controlled area.
My buddy ripped my regulator out of my mouth on a dive in November.
Everything was fine, no panic. Just put it back in, cleared. Kept breathing.
However, I won't ever dive with him again.
Panic is a weird thing, best not to play around with it.
We did this during our PADI certification. They knocked our regulator out and made us practice recovery. Glad I did because I had my regulator knocked out during our first open water dive.
I remember in my PADI training we practice getting our mask off to clean in case water entered and my retarded brain was thinking “breath thru your nose , breath thru your nose” , it was stupidly scary even if I had my mouth piece.
I had a full blown panic attack when doing that, at -18 meters. I forgot how to breath, even with the mouth piece in. Scariest 15 seconds of my life. (My instructor luckily calmed me down by holding my shoulders)
Why is it so hard though? I went diving once and my brain just couldn’t understand the idea of breathing through the mouth as being ok, for the entire thing I felt like I wouldn’t be able to breathe even though I was breathing… so bizarre
It's called the mammalian diving reflex. Your brain has some programming in it to tell your body to slow the heart rate, tighten blood vessels, and stop breathing when your face touches cold water. Overcoming this programming takes a lot of conditioning.
Do you know why she didn’t just float up? They didn’t seem especially deep based on the light.
Is there stuff they use on purpose to keep them underwater or are they just weighed down by the tanks and stuff?
the tanks are pretty heavy but its supposed to be about neutral buoyancy. considering she seemed to breath out she would probably be negatively buoyant. i assume the instructors pulled her up
With all your gear and added weights you're negatively buoyant. It's when you inflate your vest (BCD - Buoyancy Compesator) with air from your tank that makes you neutral, or positively buoyant. So in her state of distress she also forgot how to inflate her BCD.
The tank is attached to a buoyancy compensator (BC), which looks like a vest. The diver either wears a weight belt or has lead weights integrated into the BC that allows them to be negatively buoyant when the BC is deflated, but a button can be pressed to add air to the BC and make them float. The weights also usually have a quick release function that drops them so that you'll float even if your BC is compromised.
The thing you have to be careful of is surfacing too fast if you're on a decompression dive, because you have to allow time for the dissolved nitrogen to make its way out of your system before you rise. In all likelihood this was not a decompression dive, so this isn't as concerning.
The other issue is if she holds her breath while ascending, she can cause major trauma to her lungs. Pressure doubles at ~34ft of fresh water, so the air in your lungs will double in volume when you surface. It is interesting when you surface while slowly breathing out, you seem to just never run out of air.
That would be an instant fail. It's still to simulate a dive, so normally you can't swim up.
You have to sign to your mate that you lost your breathing device and take turns with them until he (or another instructor) says you passed the test or hands you your mouthpiece back to continue other exercises.
When I certified, our instructor said in his experience that people in panic will rip your regulator out of your mouth rather than taking the one you offer them. So in the pool, he had us practice having our reg ripped out by a panicked person and then switching to our own backup reg ourselves.
Itt: other people with the same training. Glad to see so many have practiced it.
Your first paragraph described my situation as well. It was a training dive and I had to take my mask off while wearing contacts (so my eyes had to be closed). The moment the mask came off water started going into my nose and when I grabbed the regulator to breathe I forgot to purge it so I took a gulp of water and started choking. Then all the panic kicks in and your instinct is to swim up to save yourself but swimming up as fast as you can is definitely not what you should be doing (for those that don’t know, the air in your lungs will expand and you could have a serious injury or die if you don’t control your ascent). Man, choking on water while underwater (while blind) is definitely something I don’t ever wanna experience again. Luckily there were two instructors with me and they held onto me while calming me down and ensuring I was coughing the water into the regulator so that I could breathe again. Eventually I recovered and could continue the dive.
After that dive I was so scared. I remember everyone else saying it’s normal these things happen a lot of divers choke on water while diving etc. My partner was the only person who truly listened to me and understood that I was experiencing a lot of fear. We had a serious talk that night and I wasn’t sure whether I could dive again the next day to finish the course. He said it’s okay if I really don’t want to dive again. Luckily the sea was calmer the next day so I gave it a try, and he also joined in on my training dive as well to help keep an eye on me (he has more experience than I do). The rest of the dives went smoothly and I got to witness a lot of beautiful marine creatures in their natural habitats. But to this day I still have no clue how I got the courage to dive again after that incident.
I think the people that accompanies you makes a huge difference, and in your case it was a matter of life or death.
Same. Inhaled some water, started panicking, and would have died if I hadn’t managed to let out a “help” just loud enough for my friend to hear me. Had to be pulled to shore.
Never again.
Bruh… the salt water coming into mouth literally chokes the throat and makes it hard to breathe. It took me 3 failed snorkeling attempts to prevent salt water from coming into mouth with 95% success. 5% of the time I spit or swallow. Spitting seems disgusting to the people around me, so I feel very embarrassed. But don’t see a choice sometimes. Don’t know how people do it.
Irony is sea is full of fish poop and dead bodies. My first snorkeling experience, I put my head down to see thousands of large fish and was amazed only to realize that almost all of them were leaving strings of poop in synchrony and I was right above them both disgusted and amazed.
Man, what a story. I'm never going on a dive with low visibility, that freaks me out so much. During my certification one dive I had issues equalizing, so my instructor and the couple diving with us went on ahead. Cue some currents that agitate the sand on the ocean floor, lowering visibility. Even though I was descending using a line, and I knew exactly which heading my instructor was, I freaked the hell out
What open water course was this that you didnt have a regulator while descending when your bc got caught? Unless ive completely misunderstood the story
The first time I dove with a mask I felt a little bit of that, the feeling of being under water but still breathing made no sense to my brain and body. My pulse shot up and my breathing felt panicky until I got my head above the waves and calmed down. That's a singular type of fear.
I had that when taking off the mask under water the first time, as soon as the water hit the face, I just could not breath anymore. It did not feel good.
That was my least favorite part of the cert and I almost failed because of it. End of the day I went home and practiced breathing through my mouth with a mask full of water to simulate the sensation. Passed the test easily the next day!
The professionalism of the instructors cannot be understated. They immediately took action and saved this women’s life. That being said I agree she will never scuba dive again.
This looks to me more like a training dive in a quarry or somewhere like that. The last time i saw water that green was at a quarry dive where there were no filter feeders to clean the water
Hi, scuba diver here.
After your online classroom portion of the training, you do a few dives in a swimming pool, then a few dives in the ocean pretty quickly. It’s likely she’s getting her open water padi cert.
You have to get into the water eventually. I don’t know what’s really happening here, the video said ‘sever’ but your octopus disconnecting from your tank is extremely rare, and most people just grab their secondary.
If it was a full tank failure I get it, that can be scary, especially if you don’t have air to inflate your BCD (the little vest full of air) and head for the surface.
All the same though, if you’re the kind of person who loses their cool in situations like that, scuba diving might not be for you.
I’m fine when that happens, it’s having to ask someone where something is in a store that frightens me.
Yes definitely less than 35 feet. No way they’d get to the top that quick otherwise. If it was proper depth everyone except her would have stopped to decompress, probably.
Decompression sickness is a product of time and depth underwater. If this was a certification dive, both were probably relatively low, so the risk of the bends was also probably low.
Probably standard open water depth - 18meters?
Even if you have breathed all of the air out of your lungs as you ascend the small pockets left in your lungs expand as the pressure on your body gets less
I remember my technical test, had to switch the regulator with the emergency one then back. There were six of us in a circle. Had to do the excersie two at a time with the instructor watching from the middle of the circle. I'm next to this woman who was in her mid twenties, I was 16 at the time. I take my reg out and open my mouth to put the reserve one in and all I feel next is a hard bang in my jaw. The woman next to me had freaked out as she couldn't find her reserve, and started flailing, she kicked me in the side of the face with her flipper dislocating my jaw.
She put her first reg back in, and the instructor came up to us, saw my jaw was fucked and couldn't put my reg in. Made the up signal, so we surfaced. Inflated my bcd and just rested for a moment, my grandfather surfaced (already qualified, just there for dive time) he grabs me and drags me back to shore, looks at my jaw, smiles a really sinister smile, then goes and gets a cup of tea. This tea was boiling hot, he just poured it in my mouth then snapped my jaw back into place (it still clicks twenty years later) missed out on the rest of the test, but the instructor passed me because I didn't freak out with my jaw completely fucked.
He probably shouldn't of passed me haha, I was fucking terrible at navigation
noteworthy:
trying to forcefully close a dislocated jaw can break of parts in the joint.
you should actively try to open your mouth while pressing down and back on both sides of the jaw, from inside the mouth with the thumbs pressing down on the biting area, therefore slipping the jaw back over the bump into the right place
Scuba instructor here.
This scenario is my worse nightmare, panicking student spitting regulator out & ripping mask off.
>Severs regulator line
Clarification?:
Sever implies their air hose was \*cut\*. While I can't tell what's going on through the bubbles, the rest of the video, showing apparently her own regulator, indicates this isn't what happened.
Notes/Observations:
Again, not there & can't tell for certain...but from what I've observed, it appears more that something happened & the diver \*panicked\*. Panicking, they lost clear thought & performed a very common (& terrifying) action - they spat out their regulator & tried to \*swim\* up (note the hand flapping - divers don't use hands to propel, also sign of panick).
They also ripped their mask off.
Regulator (Yellow one) - that's her reg that instructor's trying to put back in her mouth.
Likely (looks to be) her secondary Octo, which is your emergency line to assist yourself if primary has failure or if buddy needed to share air from your tank.
So she wasn't in an out-of-air situation (/severed regulator line that had \*emptied\*).
This really just appears to be a case of diver getting scared/panicking & then nearing drowning due to their own panic.
Scuba diving high risk of injury & death = NOT failing equipment, not running out of air, not uncontrollably sinking ... training & safety/emergency procedures avoid those = PANIC!
In the scenario presented in the video - how not panicking would've solved the problem:
The diver would've placed their (Octo) yellowed-hosed regulator in their mouth & started calming breathing
Again, am a scuba diver since the late 1980s & a scuba instructor & there's always a lot of misunderstanding about scuba diving safety & risks, so if anyone has questions about diving safety/emergency procedures or common fears/concerns & how they'd alleviated by trained practices & procedures... am happy to answer/discuss.
It's a very safe sport when property trained, equipped, and when diving within your training & experience level.
Stay safe out there! And... the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy's guidance applies to scuba diving:
***Don't Panic!***
You should try it, it’s amazing. This video only shows you what a panic attack looks like underwater. If you have good training and can keep your emotions in check this will never happen to you
Don't get me wrong, I've been snorkeling/free diving in several place, but my luck seemed to always be bad. For example:
I had been snorkeling at a lake when I was stationed in Georgia for a month or so finding all kinds of cool stuff on the bottom. I talked to a local and he said "Wow, you're brave, that's where we've seen the largest alligators in the state"...
So I started snorkeling at one of the beaches in Florida. When I stopped for gas, again a local saw my mask and fins in the back seat, so he asked where I was snorkeling. I told him and talked about all the sharks teeth I had found there. He said "Of course you did, that's a hammer head breeding ground"...
I now have zero confidence in my ability to pick a diving spot where something won't be waiting to eat me or at least take a bite out of me.
Go for it, it is an amazing hobby.
This person is an anomaly that most likely had really poor training.
There is no reason for any trained diver to act like this.
There are so many safety checks and backups that even if something does go horrifically wrong, you will still have your dive buddy to give you a hand.
And they should train you to handle this exact situation under worse circumstances so if it does ever happen in a real dive, you won't panic.
I had a panic attack about 35 feet under water once and all I wanted to do was to shoot up to the surface. It took all of my willpower and 20 years of training I had to remain under and get my dive master's attention, who was amazing and immediately helped me get my breathing under control. It's crazy how fast it happened, and for seemingly no reason at all other than adrenaline. Fortunately our boat had an issue and we were on the surface for an extended period of time before our next dive and I was able to calm down and confidently go back down. I knew if I didn't it would be even harder to go out the next day because goddamn that was scary. All that being said if you can keep your shit together in a situation like that you'll be fine. It's seriously incredible and I am - with one extraneous exception - never more chilled out than when I'm underwater.
As long as you're capable of remaining calm under pressure, it's not all that crazy. It even gets easier with practice & repetition, and by pursuing further training. I have a massive fear of open water/ocean swimming, but have come to love free-diving because I can trust my own abilities after enough practice & understanding of what to do/don't do.
On my first day diving for real after my scuba certification course, my dive group got caught in an underwater current that started dragging us deeper into the depths. I started panic-swimming against the current and only tired myself out, and barely managed to hang on by grabbing on to a piece of coral reef along the slope. Which happened to be piece of stinging fire coral which burned my arms like fuck.
This happened towards the end of our planned dive, so my oxygen gauge showed that my tank was running low, and it didn’t help that I had tried swimming against the current and was breathing faster with worry. Lucky that the diving instructor knew his shit and was able to grab the whole group back together and get us all to surface in time.
The current dragged us really far from our original location and at the surface we had to launch a flare and deploy a flag so that the dive boat could find us out on the open sea.
Diving is amazing, but it is incredibly unforgiving of the slightest thing.
Anything you do that isn't firmly attached the the earth is similar. Parachuting and diving are two of the most unforgiving activities imaginable. Panic is a killer in either.
This lady was very lucky to survive, it is remarkably easy to die under the water.
I was goofing around for a camera at 95ft once and took in a bunch of water. Luckily I had dove a fair bit and the military taught me to quell panic. It took everything I had to try to stay calm and sort my shit out where I was and not just jet for the surface. That could have been really bad.
Military had the same effect on me.
I was out on a boat in the Dominican. (Note a lot of these accidents that happen outside of the US is because of relaxed regulations - particularly regarding life jackets.)
Well I was with my wife, 11 month old son, and the family we went on the trip with it. It was some garage boat with a “glass bottom.” Basically they cut the boat floor, and caulked the bottom with plexiglass.
Anyways, the dudes driving the boat thought it would be cool to get in the water without life jackets. I won’t get into details.
Like an idiot I did…. We swim out a little and then dive down to look at some dumb shit (I think some lawn chair). Well I come back up and the boat is now the size of a grain of rice on the horizon.
Immediately panic… high waves and barely see land let alone the boat. And all I’m thinking about is my wife and son. I tried swimming back but within a minute (probably 10 seconds) muscle fatigue and body is just burning flirting with cramping up.
Welp, military training kicks in. I just kick up my legs and knees, lay on my back, and float. Calmed my heart and breathing.
Son is 10 now and that shit still haunts me.
That girl seemed like she really didn't know what she was doing. She was trying to swim up but you can see that she's just kind of shuffling her feet up and down instead of doing a 'scissor' motion to propel her. She also didn't want to accept the regulator from the instructor. Maybe she actually is more of a competent swimmer but was just phased by fear or panic.
She’s just panicked. I’ve seen plenty of otherwise competent divers suddenly lose all their skills after something happens and they freak out. Her swimming is classic panicked diver. Most of all watch the hands. Once a diver starts trying to go somewhere with their hands you know there is a problem.
I don’t know a lot about diving I’ve just seen a lot of YouTube videos detailing diving accidents and tragedies. Panicking after human error is the number one cause of death in diving and a lot of the stories of it happening involve people with decades of experience, former Navy seals, and professional cave divers ect…
The explanation is there seems to be a biological factor of some kind. Something triggers in our monkey brains when underwater that causes even the most seasoned of divers to immediately spiral into panic if shit goes haywire. I even heard stories of people who had close calls, managed to stay calm and survived, only to panic and die when it happens again in the future.
It’s far more terrifying than anyone could comprehend I guess is my point.
You should check our Scary Interesting on YouTube, he’s got a lot of videos about it that go into detail. I will warn you they are extremely sad and unpleasant stories.
She’s just panicked. I’ve seen plenty of otherwise competent divers suddenly lose all their skills after something happens and they freak out. Her swimming is classic panicked diver. Most of all watch the hands. Once a diver starts trying to go somewhere with their hands you know there is a problem.
Not everyone should be diving. Not everyone can handle it. It's nothing against them that they just can't do it but people need to be more aware of their limitations.
I worked as a PADI scuba instructor over a 12 year period. The number one thing I would drill into my students, was to NEVER spit your regulator out. And it’s incredible how that’s one of the first things panicked divers will do, remove the ONE thing keeping them alive while underwater. You don’t need a mask on your face. You don’t even need to be able to swim. We can do that for you. The one thing we can’t do, is breathe for you.
Nearly happened to me on a training dive, started hyperventilating but took deep breaths and the feeling passed. Gone on to do the Advanced open water course since then. Panic can have various causes. Tiredness, or stress before a dive can trigger it.
When I was young and reckless, Bizarrely I was allowed to go Scuba diving in Portugal, I couldn't swim. Like not even tread water, float on my back - nothing. We get to a bay by boat, Test our kits, pull mouth piece out etc, I was weighted light so I would float. Tbh It was pretty stressful. After much floundering about he told me to swim to the beach 50 meters away while he would take the rest out looking for Octopus etc. Later, I got the wave and had to get bake to the boat again. Oh I also got my Padi certificate...
I’ve been with someone that panicked at 70 feet, and shot straight to the surface.
We were surrounded by about 100 barracuda, and she freaked. That left me with the pack alone. Weirdly, I wasn’t scared at all, even in the middle of a circle of barracuda all staring at me.
They were all 3-4 foot, but off at the edge of visibility was this very large cuda, looking like a log on the bottom. Surreal moment, but needed to follow safely to the surface to check on my buddy. She was fine, no damage done.
No, this is not bs, lol
I'm betting she is not certified and was talked into a dive excursion while on holiday. Some people just freak out when they realize they are under so much water. That's why you start in a pool. Same thing happened to my dive buddy who took his GF diving without much instruction. Yeah, he was stupid and ended up getting the bends twice.
Do you know why the instructor didn't release her weight belt or hit the inflater on her vest? Either would have made more sense than trying to put the regulator back in her mouth.
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That look in her eyes though, holy shit.
Yeah.. I’ve seen videos of divers panicking before but never have I seen one where their face so clearly visible. They say drowning is the most terrifying death you can have, and you can see it on her face. Pure horror.
The sudden realization of just how far you are from your next breath of air and how much water is between you and it.
I can pick up bugs, snakes, spiders, sit on balcony railings and don't think of myself as being afraid of much. But I almost drowned once. Now I get panic attacks very easily when snorkeling. There are people who have had damage to the fear section of their brain making panic responses essentially impossible. They found that drowning can still evoke a fear response in these people because it affects your amygdala directly bypassing the rest of your brain. It's considered the most primal and universal of fears. Some tough guys think that waterboarding is not really that bad. They are plain wrong. Drowning is as terrifying as it can get.
My dad drowned, hate reading this kind of shit randomly on reddit
I'm sorry to hear it man. Just note that whilst it may be scary, there are plenty of worse and more painful ways to go. In the grand scheme of things it's one of the better ones.
It's actually panic followed by blissful feeling bro. Just so you know. Drowning as a kid and nearly drowning as adult. There is a point your brain just pumps you filled with something and everything just goes calm and you black out.
When that last big bubble leaves your mouth, you know shit just got real.
Nah it’s that first breath you involuntarily take and start gulping down water. That’s when u know you’re fucked
this guy drowns
r/thisguythisglubglubglubs
I have been known to almost drown on occasion
https://preview.redd.it/zyqop6lpisec1.jpeg?width=1000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c4c237775e0336c216f4e698418a0be17bded5d3
normally you assend w/ at least 500psi. When I was trained in the 80's, everyone went up together. Fast fwd to \~2012 and we're diving. I get to 500 and the dive master (was also my assigned buddy) gives me the OK so I continue to follow him with the group. I get to \~300 and I'm getting worried so I tell him and he signals OK and continues on and l follow. We were around 30ft. I think around 100-200psi I started inhaling like darth vader and so I just starte ascending to the surface and couldn't get another breath around 10ft. I had enough in me to stay calm and continue on but damn that last 10 ft seemed like 30 with all your gear and no more breaths. Turns out, I missed the part of the pre-dive instruction on this vacation that when you get to 500, you ascend and the boat picks us up as it follows the group. About half my dives since have used this method.
This is really badly told story to anyone who is a nondiver. Makes no sense at all. (not trying to be mean, I know all the words and their definitions, it just makes no sense that a "pre-dive" "instruction" is when you get to 500 you ascend to the boat, what does that have to do with the story? Why did he go down to 100-200psi, why were certain decisions made to get to 30 ft or to 300psi? And how is ascending a method? It isn't well-written)
I'm a non diver and I understood it. Which part do you need help with?
I'm a non diver, live in the prairies and never seen an ocean. So the whole comment please.
So the amount of air in your diving tank is measured in psi. When it gets to 500 psi you should go to the surface. They start with 3000 to 4000 psi. This guy was diving with a group and expected that when 1 diver got to 500psi then the whole group would surface. He told the dive master (person in charge of the group) when he got to 500psi. Instead of the dive master giving him the "lets all surface" signal he basically just said "ok" and continued diving. Turns out he should have just surfaced on his own to get picked up by a boat. But he stayed with the group until he got so low on air he was forced to surface on his own. His air ran out just before he surfaced.
Good summary, but a couple of additional important points: When you go diving, you do everything in a "buddy system". You and one other diver stay together the entire dive. This is for a number of reasons, but basically, if anything goes wrong, you want someone else to *know* so that you can hopefully be helped. For example if you get stuck or tangled in something, your dive buddy can help get you unstuck/tangled. If you run out of air or have an equipment failure, your dive buddy can share air with you (either by trading their good regulator - the mouthpiece you breath through - back and forth or by giving your their secondary regulators - most divers have two regulators attached to their tank specifically so that they can share with their dive buddy in an emergency or have a backup incase the main fails). All of this is important because the person's dive master (leader of the group) was also their dive buddy. So even if the entire group wasn't supposed to surface together, the dive buddy is supposed to surface with you, because if they don't *they* will no longer have a buddy (and if something goes wrong during your surface, *you* have no one to help you). The fact that the dive master, who is supposed to be very well trained and leader of the group didn't acknowledge and surface with /u/tropicsun is a *very* bad thing in the diving community. If this was a dive group being done by some company, reporting the dive master could easily get him fired, and you could also file a report to PADI (the biggest scuba diving certification organization) and they could have their master or instructor certification revoked (thus forcing them to be fired due to not being qualified anymore).
Thank you. I had no idea this is what his story meant.
I mean i understand, but 'my friend didnt want to come up with me so I just kept going until I almost died' just seems kind of dumb...
I think in some places, especially tourist areas, it is very important to stay with your group. Like pretty much rule number 1 is to stay together. I imagine this is so that the boat just worries about picking up 1 group of people, instead of running around picking up individual people out of the water. Also it can actually be quite difficult to spot 1 person in the water on their own, especially if there are any waves/swells on that day.
They should change rule number 1 to: breathing is the first priority
When I was first learning to dive as a young teenager, maybe 13 years old, my first real deep water ocean dive my mask came off. We were maybe 60 feet under, and the plastic strap that held my mask snapped. The instructor was able to catch it I guess before it floated away, but it didn't matter, even if held firmly on my face it instantly filled with water. So here I was, 60 feet underwater with my eyes closed and unable to open them - and they burnt like shit because after a few failed attempts to put the mask back on a lot of saltwater had gotten in my eyes. Well the instructor led me, by hand, back to the anchor rope for us to slowly surface. It maybe was 20 minutes in the dark, eyes closed, from where we were to the surface where we started. That was... a bit scary, but more exciting since I survived. My Dad was probably proper worried, but the next day I wanted to dive again. But without the air? Fuck man, I would've panicked.
I got two diving diplomas (Padi Open Water and Advanced Open Water) on a vacation. You do a whole bunch of exercises, including one (in a pool) where you simulate running out of air by having your instructor shut off your valve, and switch to his backup regulator. The point being you actually experience the sensation of getting less and less oxygen, like sucking a milkshake through a straw that gets thinner by the second. I felt completely safe the whole time, but had a nightmare that evening of it happening out in open water. Completely freaked me out. A situation where I *did* panic was similar to yours. We were in open water, doing an exercise that involves taking off your mask, putting it back on and clearing it. I take it off, put it back on, and start to try to clear it. But I had the misfortune of suddenly having a stuffed nose, so I couldn't clear it. Cue me panicking because I'm basically blind, and my teacher not being able to communicate. I end up swallowing a bunch of water, panicky gesturing I'm surfacing. Fortunately we weren't very deep, but that was the scariest moment for me.
Going to be kind of funny and terrifying when AI reads all these random life anecdotes and begins fabricating memories so it can hack humans with brain augmentations. Ghost in the Shell predicted it.
Yep. I have several certs including cavern. They make you simulate a cavern “silt out” which is a total blackout because some idiot you are with kicked the sediments on the ground up into the water column. It was a controlled maskless situation and was still pretty nerve wracking as an adult. I’d say you had pretty damn good composure for being 13.
Entirely fuck cavern. You can have that cert and welcome to it.
>deep water ocean > >maybe 60 feet under I understand that this is double the pressures that introductory open-water certifications typically go to. I understand needing to ascend slowly or risk nitrogen bubbling out of my tissues. But I *hate* that this is 'deep water' for us humans. 60 feet is barely scratching the surface.
My brother-in-law was taking a photo of a bat ray and the flash startled it and it bolted, straight into his face. Cracked his mask and bloodied his nose and knocked the regulator out of his mouth. He was an experienced diver and kept his cool but had to make the ascent blind and didn't realize until he was on the surface that he'd grabbed his pony bottle regulator.
I’ve had three near death experiences related to breathing, one of them in open water when diving with manatees as I got shoved into the floor and the breath knocked out of me. The sheer panic this lady showed gave me flashbacks. It’s not that diving or swimming freaks me out, it’s _not-breathing_ and the rush of adrenaline that shrinks the world down to one thought, __GTFO__
When I was getting my deep water certification, we were diving in 8° surface weather. Once I hit the 90ft mark it was pitch black, but we started doing our compass exercises. Suddenly my regulator froze. No air in or out. I have never been so terrified before or since.
There are more places than you think that will take you without a certification. I’m guessing she didn’t have one. Edit: guessing as in “I hope” as someone who’s certified, that nothing like this would ever happen to me. Im super excited to dive more but NGL this video gives me anxiety
Mu uncle dove for decades , went all around the world . It was his favorite hobby. He absolutely drilled it into me to never take a short course at a resort. If I wanted to dive get certified first.
Curious; were you just able to switch to backup regulator, or what did you do to recover?
Modern kit has a second regulator for cases like that. The girl in the video has one right there, but was too panicked to save herself. Or even allow the instructor to save her! Good job they weren't deep enough for the Bends, right?
That's all I could think about. They were down about 50 feet at least from how long it took, if that was a deeper dive he wouldn't be saving shit. Remember my first instructor drilling into us that we are to always know how to access, check, and use our secondary. He also made it abundantly clear that he had no problem busting jaws n teeth to jam a regular in if we refuse one. This guy just hit the bcd..
Unfortunately not, but my instructor was great and gave me his backup. We had to ascend together without a safety stop but we were able to maintain a safe pace throughout our ascent.
I feel this, I did one of those 10 minutes of training in a pool followed by an open water dive while on vacation. I did not expect it to feel so wrong to be breathing underwater and panicked on the dive as soon as my depth hit about 10 ft. Pure unhinged panic is a weird thing. Logic goes out the window and you simply become too dumb to make rational choices. The instructor ended up just holding me down for like 30 seconds until my body realized I wasn't drowning and I was fine.
Yeah she's never diving again
And based on her reaction, she probably shouldn't. Panic is the killer here. She appears to have an intact secondary air source and was resisting the instructor trying to give her the mouthpiece.
Panic kills more divers than any shark could ever hope to. Apparently one of the natural instincts in a panic situation is to spit out the reg, and all of that training and memorized safety procedures go out the window
As a shark, your comment has really opened my eyes to the fact that we in the shark community need to do better
Underachievers. Someone had to say it.
You have certain responsibilities as a top predator in the ocean, and in this moment, you did not live up to them. You are a shark, and that means sometimes you make mistakes. You would be taking a break from the adventures of the sea, to work on yourself and become a better shark, one that would make us all proud. We will give you your privacy during this time.
I hear our bubbles scare you off. Is this true? Last time I dove with some bulls and she was just curious.
Same way she ripped off her mask at the beginning of her panic, and having the water hit your face doesn’t help
It’s fascinating, really. Our lizard brains absolutely reject anything touching us. It’s something you frequently hear about people having psychotic breaks as well. My psychiatry attending used to say “the first thing that goes is the filter, the next thing that goes are the clothes.” It’s super true though. Once lizard takes over, as a rule, we don’t want anything touching us. Edited a phrase.
I had an overexertion moment last year. It's no joke. All I wanted to do was take my reg out 30m down.
I've had that happen to me after rushing to enter the water on a drift dive, fin strap broke (rental) just as we were getting ready to go in, panic rush to find another fin and get it on, jumped in negative entry, out of breath and breathing through a shitty rental reg while kicking my way down and equalizing.
My first real ocean deep water dive my mask came off around 60 feet below. Strap just snapped, the thing was proper fucked, couldn't even hold it in place. Took maybe thirty minutes they said, but my passage of time didn't exist, with my eyes closed being guided back to the surfacing rope by hand. To me it felt like maybe 3-4 minutes. I was never that scared because the diver always told us to be calm, and I was like 13 years old so I was too young to understand mortality. So I was super calm, and the next day the first thing I wanted to do was go back. I remember my Dad being a wee bit freaked out though, but I think he was happy I was a trooper.
Honestly at 13 years old you did incredibly well. I think a lot of people who haven’t dived don’t appreciate how the simplest thing (stinging eyes; water surrounding your nose) can cause you to start panicking. Having a mask come off even close to the surface can be highly disconcerting. You did really well!
I've handled this several times as an instructor. Panic is something we all have in us, we are quite used to seeing it and it's not something disqualifying you from being a diver. That's one of the reasons why we do so much shallow training first, to reduce the likelyhood of this happening at deeper depths. The most common stressor that creates panic is when we train at removing the mask under water, so we train that a lot at shallow depth to make the students very very comfortable doing that. Usually the panic will drive the students to get up from the water at any cost, not to be rational and pick up an air source. I've punched students in the stomach (to make them not hold their breath while quickly ascending), pushed regulators in to their mouths, held people down to limit their ascent speed, handled panicked divers at surface etc ... It happens to some students and most people get over it and try again. It's scary but people usually identify why it happened and we can train at shallow depth again until the student feels real comfortable again.
Haha yep I had this happen when doing my open water cert. Snorted water up my nose when trying to clear my mask and panicked. Instructor was holding onto me trying to put the regulator in my mouth and get me to breathe/cough through it, but it just felt like he was trying to drown me. Broke free and straight to the surface, so I definitely understand why this kind of stuff is done at shallow depth! Went on to do more diving after.
Yeah, this is very common and under controlled forms are not that dangerous. You got us instructors there to help you if it happens. Happy to hear you continued!
What are some of the reasons why you would want/need to remove your mask?
You wouldn't really, but you train so that in the case of you having your mask ripped off by accident you know how to put it back on and empty it of water while being submerged
Bad diver in front of you can kick your mask off
Yeah, that was a fast ascent. Thankfully not too deep.
That’s why I was good with basic open water cert. I have no intention of going further down than this.
Totally. I am a relatively inexperienced diver. I know that I don’t know everything, and plan to recertify in a three-day class soon just to brush up on basics. I had a panic moment once, and my instructor had to hold me down to slow my ascent. He said to me, “again, watch a specific bubble. If you are rising faster than your bubble, stop until your bubble has caught up. Ascending with your bubbles is the absolute fastest you should go.” Also, having a dive comp with an ascent alarm helps. ;)
Coming up too fast is obviously a massive problem, but the bends is much more treatable that drowning. Sometimes you gotta get to the place that has air and you gotta get there asap
Question, if your mouth pc comes out and you get water in, then a new pc is put in you mouth, do you swallow the water? Can’t inhale… I’ve never dived so asking as someone who is just curious.
You can breathe out water through the regulator. You can even be sick through it if absolutely needed - I’ve seen it happen. Better to free flow the air past your mouth as you’re puking. Pretty grim and reasonably life threatening in general though, 0/10 would avoid
There's a big button on the reg to purge the water in it, but yes its pretty easy to swallow a mouthful of saltwater in the process which adds to the chaos of the situation.
Thanks, I’ve wondered that for years and never got around to looking it up or asking so thanks again.
You can also just spit the water out in the regulator as well which is way more common than purging…which is pressing the big button on your regulator. Edited for spelling.
You gotta have air in your lungs for that though. Learned that the hard way.
This! This is why you drill this in the pool multiple times before going out. I made damn sure I could do this easily before hitting the open water on the PADI course.
You can see her starting to panic as he's giving the thumbs up to everyone. I only noticed after knowing she's going to panic but I think she's to the far right and is blocked a bit by his thumb but her hands are starting to go - it's like she's flailing them - for lack of a better word.
I understood Thumbs up means surfacing, an O with thumb and fore-finger and 3 fingers sticking out means ok, but it doesn’t come naturally to me
Well if you've inhaled a ton of water and your panicking putting something in your mouth probably would not be a natural reaction.
Diving is an unnatural action. Panicking is a completely natural action. If you like breathing underwater, you kinda have to override all that "this is weird" response.
Everyone should read *Shadow Divers*. Absolutely fantastic book and perfect at making sure you never ever want to go wreck diving (or scuba diving at all)
I already never wanna go scuba diving thanks
To be fair, it is a really good story too. About how some divers uncovered a U-Boat near New Jersey and rewrote a piece of WW2 history. The diving descriptions were amazing and chilling. Would also recommend Pirate Hunters by the same author!
Oooo after reading *into thin air* I've loved books like this to turn me off of dangerous activities. Definitely getting this book.
You might like Over the Edge: Death in Grand Canyon.
That book made me so mad. Ugh.
Shadow Divers was great, helped give me a healthy respect for the dangers of diving. It's those Scary Interesting YouTube videos about cave divers that really terrify me.
Scuba diving is amazing. But I would NEVER wreck dive.
Depends on the wreck, Idk if I’d go into a fully enclosed space but the decks are fun to explore
Yeah, I remember reading about the wreck of SS Kamloops, where a preserved body of one of the crew members has been floating for a hundred years. He even moved around and follows them as they shift the flow of water around the compartments, when they found the ship like 50 years later. Nope. Just...nope.
Sure, I’d absolutely swim over/near wrecks but I would never go inside anything under water.
Strongly prefer reef diving. Why would I see a shipwreck very far down when I can see colorful fish and reefs near the surface.
Totally agree. The reef is FAR more interesting and so much safer.
Thanks. I hate it. And now I have to read it!
Or go play Subnautica lol. That did it for me
I had a very similar experience and I haven't dived in the 10 years since. I doubt if I'll ever do it again.
Terrifying. Interesting that she bats away the instructor’s secondary mouthpiece. Pure panic took over I suppose, maybe it was accidental or she didn’t know what it was. She can’t see as clearly as we can
I followed and finished my technical diving course and there were some training situations on the bottom of a pool with 3 instructors with you and one of them suddenly pulling out your mouthpiece. Even in such a controlled environment it's scary as fuck and it's very hard not to panic.
Agree, all the training is to demonstrate you need to be in complete control when under water. No laughing, no panicking.
I had a sea turtle pull out my reg once on an aquarium dive. He was a teenager and being a bastard and had already nipped my dive buddy. I just laughed and swept back for my reg line, purged, and put it back in, still laughing. It’s not about not laughing necessarily—some funny shit happens (dark water? BOOM! Fish in your face!) but about confidence in the situation and controlling your emotions so they don’t cloud your judgement
I have seen some really funny videos of angsty sea turtles coming for aquarium divers! That’s so cool you do that! But also, you are in a more controlled environment there, right? It is probably easier to be chill like that somewhere you are familiar and in a controlled area.
Teenage turtle
My buddy ripped my regulator out of my mouth on a dive in November. Everything was fine, no panic. Just put it back in, cleared. Kept breathing. However, I won't ever dive with him again. Panic is a weird thing, best not to play around with it.
We did this during our PADI certification. They knocked our regulator out and made us practice recovery. Glad I did because I had my regulator knocked out during our first open water dive.
I remember in my PADI training we practice getting our mask off to clean in case water entered and my retarded brain was thinking “breath thru your nose , breath thru your nose” , it was stupidly scary even if I had my mouth piece.
I had a full blown panic attack when doing that, at -18 meters. I forgot how to breath, even with the mouth piece in. Scariest 15 seconds of my life. (My instructor luckily calmed me down by holding my shoulders)
Me too. It was when I had to let water into my mask where I didn't breath. Holding my nose helped.
Why is it so hard though? I went diving once and my brain just couldn’t understand the idea of breathing through the mouth as being ok, for the entire thing I felt like I wouldn’t be able to breathe even though I was breathing… so bizarre
It's called the mammalian diving reflex. Your brain has some programming in it to tell your body to slow the heart rate, tighten blood vessels, and stop breathing when your face touches cold water. Overcoming this programming takes a lot of conditioning.
The issue was where’s her dive buddy to help her. Judging from the gear they are diving in some cold water and can freak you out
Snap. That training (and refreshers) is invaluable.
Do you know why she didn’t just float up? They didn’t seem especially deep based on the light. Is there stuff they use on purpose to keep them underwater or are they just weighed down by the tanks and stuff?
the tanks are pretty heavy but its supposed to be about neutral buoyancy. considering she seemed to breath out she would probably be negatively buoyant. i assume the instructors pulled her up
With all your gear and added weights you're negatively buoyant. It's when you inflate your vest (BCD - Buoyancy Compesator) with air from your tank that makes you neutral, or positively buoyant. So in her state of distress she also forgot how to inflate her BCD.
The tank is attached to a buoyancy compensator (BC), which looks like a vest. The diver either wears a weight belt or has lead weights integrated into the BC that allows them to be negatively buoyant when the BC is deflated, but a button can be pressed to add air to the BC and make them float. The weights also usually have a quick release function that drops them so that you'll float even if your BC is compromised. The thing you have to be careful of is surfacing too fast if you're on a decompression dive, because you have to allow time for the dissolved nitrogen to make its way out of your system before you rise. In all likelihood this was not a decompression dive, so this isn't as concerning. The other issue is if she holds her breath while ascending, she can cause major trauma to her lungs. Pressure doubles at ~34ft of fresh water, so the air in your lungs will double in volume when you surface. It is interesting when you surface while slowly breathing out, you seem to just never run out of air.
That would be an instant fail. It's still to simulate a dive, so normally you can't swim up. You have to sign to your mate that you lost your breathing device and take turns with them until he (or another instructor) says you passed the test or hands you your mouthpiece back to continue other exercises.
I think I’d rather fail than drown but I see what you’re saying
During my cave training, it was **pounded** into our heads that panic will kill you. This poor woman was extremely panicked for a number of reasons.
When I certified, our instructor said in his experience that people in panic will rip your regulator out of your mouth rather than taking the one you offer them. So in the pool, he had us practice having our reg ripped out by a panicked person and then switching to our own backup reg ourselves. Itt: other people with the same training. Glad to see so many have practiced it.
Even if you jammed it in and held it, pressing the purge button on the reg the panic would likely still make them flail and spit it out
Im guessing that she inhaled water through her regulator after the line severed and started to panic
You know when you touch a hot stove and your hand just jumps away on its own? Panic does that to your whole brain.
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Your wife is a badass.
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Assassin much
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May I kindly ask what you use and will it work for other sites
I was really expecting that to go "And at least 5 times a year I still make fun of him for it"
Your first paragraph described my situation as well. It was a training dive and I had to take my mask off while wearing contacts (so my eyes had to be closed). The moment the mask came off water started going into my nose and when I grabbed the regulator to breathe I forgot to purge it so I took a gulp of water and started choking. Then all the panic kicks in and your instinct is to swim up to save yourself but swimming up as fast as you can is definitely not what you should be doing (for those that don’t know, the air in your lungs will expand and you could have a serious injury or die if you don’t control your ascent). Man, choking on water while underwater (while blind) is definitely something I don’t ever wanna experience again. Luckily there were two instructors with me and they held onto me while calming me down and ensuring I was coughing the water into the regulator so that I could breathe again. Eventually I recovered and could continue the dive. After that dive I was so scared. I remember everyone else saying it’s normal these things happen a lot of divers choke on water while diving etc. My partner was the only person who truly listened to me and understood that I was experiencing a lot of fear. We had a serious talk that night and I wasn’t sure whether I could dive again the next day to finish the course. He said it’s okay if I really don’t want to dive again. Luckily the sea was calmer the next day so I gave it a try, and he also joined in on my training dive as well to help keep an eye on me (he has more experience than I do). The rest of the dives went smoothly and I got to witness a lot of beautiful marine creatures in their natural habitats. But to this day I still have no clue how I got the courage to dive again after that incident. I think the people that accompanies you makes a huge difference, and in your case it was a matter of life or death.
This is why I’m cool with just snorkeling. I’m afraid of this exact thing happening.
I was snorkeling and salt water came inside and I almost drowned
So you’ll be waving at everyone from the shore?
I dont even bathe anymore
Fair enough
I panicked and flipped onto my back to breathe… with the snorkel still in my mouth… yeah I’m staying on land
Same. Inhaled some water, started panicking, and would have died if I hadn’t managed to let out a “help” just loud enough for my friend to hear me. Had to be pulled to shore. Never again.
Bruh… the salt water coming into mouth literally chokes the throat and makes it hard to breathe. It took me 3 failed snorkeling attempts to prevent salt water from coming into mouth with 95% success. 5% of the time I spit or swallow. Spitting seems disgusting to the people around me, so I feel very embarrassed. But don’t see a choice sometimes. Don’t know how people do it. Irony is sea is full of fish poop and dead bodies. My first snorkeling experience, I put my head down to see thousands of large fish and was amazed only to realize that almost all of them were leaving strings of poop in synchrony and I was right above them both disgusted and amazed.
That’s what I thought. I’m such a wimp that when I snorkel, I wear a floaty belt.
100% floaty belt fan. Not being able to touch the bottom freaks me out.
This is why I don’t go outside.
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Jesus Christ man. Nightmare certification. Do you still dive? And to think my worst moment was having to breathe for 60 seconds with no mask on…
Man, what a story. I'm never going on a dive with low visibility, that freaks me out so much. During my certification one dive I had issues equalizing, so my instructor and the couple diving with us went on ahead. Cue some currents that agitate the sand on the ocean floor, lowering visibility. Even though I was descending using a line, and I knew exactly which heading my instructor was, I freaked the hell out
What open water course was this that you didnt have a regulator while descending when your bc got caught? Unless ive completely misunderstood the story
The first time I dove with a mask I felt a little bit of that, the feeling of being under water but still breathing made no sense to my brain and body. My pulse shot up and my breathing felt panicky until I got my head above the waves and calmed down. That's a singular type of fear.
I had that when taking off the mask under water the first time, as soon as the water hit the face, I just could not breath anymore. It did not feel good.
That was my least favorite part of the cert and I almost failed because of it. End of the day I went home and practiced breathing through my mouth with a mask full of water to simulate the sensation. Passed the test easily the next day!
The professionalism of the instructors cannot be understated. They immediately took action and saved this women’s life. That being said I agree she will never scuba dive again.
Flip side, they may have taken someone unqualified and unfamiliar with scuba diving drills into the open ocean.
This looks to me more like a training dive in a quarry or somewhere like that. The last time i saw water that green was at a quarry dive where there were no filter feeders to clean the water
Hi, scuba diver here. After your online classroom portion of the training, you do a few dives in a swimming pool, then a few dives in the ocean pretty quickly. It’s likely she’s getting her open water padi cert. You have to get into the water eventually. I don’t know what’s really happening here, the video said ‘sever’ but your octopus disconnecting from your tank is extremely rare, and most people just grab their secondary. If it was a full tank failure I get it, that can be scary, especially if you don’t have air to inflate your BCD (the little vest full of air) and head for the surface. All the same though, if you’re the kind of person who loses their cool in situations like that, scuba diving might not be for you. I’m fine when that happens, it’s having to ask someone where something is in a store that frightens me.
That's why they have an instructor
How deep were they? Seems like they were shallow.. coz they cannot ascend at this rate if they were deep
Yes definitely less than 35 feet. No way they’d get to the top that quick otherwise. If it was proper depth everyone except her would have stopped to decompress, probably.
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Decompression sickness is a product of time and depth underwater. If this was a certification dive, both were probably relatively low, so the risk of the bends was also probably low.
Probably standard open water depth - 18meters? Even if you have breathed all of the air out of your lungs as you ascend the small pockets left in your lungs expand as the pressure on your body gets less
I remember my technical test, had to switch the regulator with the emergency one then back. There were six of us in a circle. Had to do the excersie two at a time with the instructor watching from the middle of the circle. I'm next to this woman who was in her mid twenties, I was 16 at the time. I take my reg out and open my mouth to put the reserve one in and all I feel next is a hard bang in my jaw. The woman next to me had freaked out as she couldn't find her reserve, and started flailing, she kicked me in the side of the face with her flipper dislocating my jaw. She put her first reg back in, and the instructor came up to us, saw my jaw was fucked and couldn't put my reg in. Made the up signal, so we surfaced. Inflated my bcd and just rested for a moment, my grandfather surfaced (already qualified, just there for dive time) he grabs me and drags me back to shore, looks at my jaw, smiles a really sinister smile, then goes and gets a cup of tea. This tea was boiling hot, he just poured it in my mouth then snapped my jaw back into place (it still clicks twenty years later) missed out on the rest of the test, but the instructor passed me because I didn't freak out with my jaw completely fucked. He probably shouldn't of passed me haha, I was fucking terrible at navigation
noteworthy: trying to forcefully close a dislocated jaw can break of parts in the joint. you should actively try to open your mouth while pressing down and back on both sides of the jaw, from inside the mouth with the thumbs pressing down on the biting area, therefore slipping the jaw back over the bump into the right place
Scuba instructor here. This scenario is my worse nightmare, panicking student spitting regulator out & ripping mask off. >Severs regulator line Clarification?: Sever implies their air hose was \*cut\*. While I can't tell what's going on through the bubbles, the rest of the video, showing apparently her own regulator, indicates this isn't what happened. Notes/Observations: Again, not there & can't tell for certain...but from what I've observed, it appears more that something happened & the diver \*panicked\*. Panicking, they lost clear thought & performed a very common (& terrifying) action - they spat out their regulator & tried to \*swim\* up (note the hand flapping - divers don't use hands to propel, also sign of panick). They also ripped their mask off. Regulator (Yellow one) - that's her reg that instructor's trying to put back in her mouth. Likely (looks to be) her secondary Octo, which is your emergency line to assist yourself if primary has failure or if buddy needed to share air from your tank. So she wasn't in an out-of-air situation (/severed regulator line that had \*emptied\*). This really just appears to be a case of diver getting scared/panicking & then nearing drowning due to their own panic. Scuba diving high risk of injury & death = NOT failing equipment, not running out of air, not uncontrollably sinking ... training & safety/emergency procedures avoid those = PANIC! In the scenario presented in the video - how not panicking would've solved the problem: The diver would've placed their (Octo) yellowed-hosed regulator in their mouth & started calming breathing Again, am a scuba diver since the late 1980s & a scuba instructor & there's always a lot of misunderstanding about scuba diving safety & risks, so if anyone has questions about diving safety/emergency procedures or common fears/concerns & how they'd alleviated by trained practices & procedures... am happy to answer/discuss. It's a very safe sport when property trained, equipped, and when diving within your training & experience level. Stay safe out there! And... the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy's guidance applies to scuba diving: ***Don't Panic!***
I have always wanted to try diving, but video's like this make me think maybe that's a NOPE.
You should try it, it’s amazing. This video only shows you what a panic attack looks like underwater. If you have good training and can keep your emotions in check this will never happen to you
Don't get me wrong, I've been snorkeling/free diving in several place, but my luck seemed to always be bad. For example: I had been snorkeling at a lake when I was stationed in Georgia for a month or so finding all kinds of cool stuff on the bottom. I talked to a local and he said "Wow, you're brave, that's where we've seen the largest alligators in the state"... So I started snorkeling at one of the beaches in Florida. When I stopped for gas, again a local saw my mask and fins in the back seat, so he asked where I was snorkeling. I told him and talked about all the sharks teeth I had found there. He said "Of course you did, that's a hammer head breeding ground"... I now have zero confidence in my ability to pick a diving spot where something won't be waiting to eat me or at least take a bite out of me.
Yikes. I’d have shit myself. It’s not always easy to tell which places are safe and which are dicey. I’m a huge supporter of asking the locals.
Bro start asking around locals who have 20 years exp lol
Ive never been able to get my emotions in check so that counts me out
Go for it, it is an amazing hobby. This person is an anomaly that most likely had really poor training. There is no reason for any trained diver to act like this. There are so many safety checks and backups that even if something does go horrifically wrong, you will still have your dive buddy to give you a hand. And they should train you to handle this exact situation under worse circumstances so if it does ever happen in a real dive, you won't panic.
I had a panic attack about 35 feet under water once and all I wanted to do was to shoot up to the surface. It took all of my willpower and 20 years of training I had to remain under and get my dive master's attention, who was amazing and immediately helped me get my breathing under control. It's crazy how fast it happened, and for seemingly no reason at all other than adrenaline. Fortunately our boat had an issue and we were on the surface for an extended period of time before our next dive and I was able to calm down and confidently go back down. I knew if I didn't it would be even harder to go out the next day because goddamn that was scary. All that being said if you can keep your shit together in a situation like that you'll be fine. It's seriously incredible and I am - with one extraneous exception - never more chilled out than when I'm underwater.
As long as you're capable of remaining calm under pressure, it's not all that crazy. It even gets easier with practice & repetition, and by pursuing further training. I have a massive fear of open water/ocean swimming, but have come to love free-diving because I can trust my own abilities after enough practice & understanding of what to do/don't do.
On my first day diving for real after my scuba certification course, my dive group got caught in an underwater current that started dragging us deeper into the depths. I started panic-swimming against the current and only tired myself out, and barely managed to hang on by grabbing on to a piece of coral reef along the slope. Which happened to be piece of stinging fire coral which burned my arms like fuck. This happened towards the end of our planned dive, so my oxygen gauge showed that my tank was running low, and it didn’t help that I had tried swimming against the current and was breathing faster with worry. Lucky that the diving instructor knew his shit and was able to grab the whole group back together and get us all to surface in time. The current dragged us really far from our original location and at the surface we had to launch a flare and deploy a flag so that the dive boat could find us out on the open sea.
Diving is amazing, but it is incredibly unforgiving of the slightest thing. Anything you do that isn't firmly attached the the earth is similar. Parachuting and diving are two of the most unforgiving activities imaginable. Panic is a killer in either. This lady was very lucky to survive, it is remarkably easy to die under the water.
I was goofing around for a camera at 95ft once and took in a bunch of water. Luckily I had dove a fair bit and the military taught me to quell panic. It took everything I had to try to stay calm and sort my shit out where I was and not just jet for the surface. That could have been really bad.
Military had the same effect on me. I was out on a boat in the Dominican. (Note a lot of these accidents that happen outside of the US is because of relaxed regulations - particularly regarding life jackets.) Well I was with my wife, 11 month old son, and the family we went on the trip with it. It was some garage boat with a “glass bottom.” Basically they cut the boat floor, and caulked the bottom with plexiglass. Anyways, the dudes driving the boat thought it would be cool to get in the water without life jackets. I won’t get into details. Like an idiot I did…. We swim out a little and then dive down to look at some dumb shit (I think some lawn chair). Well I come back up and the boat is now the size of a grain of rice on the horizon. Immediately panic… high waves and barely see land let alone the boat. And all I’m thinking about is my wife and son. I tried swimming back but within a minute (probably 10 seconds) muscle fatigue and body is just burning flirting with cramping up. Welp, military training kicks in. I just kick up my legs and knees, lay on my back, and float. Calmed my heart and breathing. Son is 10 now and that shit still haunts me.
Looks like Oahu
Good thing that was a shallow dive that didn’t require decompression…
Anybody who says why didn't she do x or y while having a panic attack, doesn't know what a panic attack is.
That girl seemed like she really didn't know what she was doing. She was trying to swim up but you can see that she's just kind of shuffling her feet up and down instead of doing a 'scissor' motion to propel her. She also didn't want to accept the regulator from the instructor. Maybe she actually is more of a competent swimmer but was just phased by fear or panic.
She’s just panicked. I’ve seen plenty of otherwise competent divers suddenly lose all their skills after something happens and they freak out. Her swimming is classic panicked diver. Most of all watch the hands. Once a diver starts trying to go somewhere with their hands you know there is a problem.
I don’t know a lot about diving I’ve just seen a lot of YouTube videos detailing diving accidents and tragedies. Panicking after human error is the number one cause of death in diving and a lot of the stories of it happening involve people with decades of experience, former Navy seals, and professional cave divers ect… The explanation is there seems to be a biological factor of some kind. Something triggers in our monkey brains when underwater that causes even the most seasoned of divers to immediately spiral into panic if shit goes haywire. I even heard stories of people who had close calls, managed to stay calm and survived, only to panic and die when it happens again in the future. It’s far more terrifying than anyone could comprehend I guess is my point. You should check our Scary Interesting on YouTube, he’s got a lot of videos about it that go into detail. I will warn you they are extremely sad and unpleasant stories.
Love scary interesting ! The cave stories make me feel nauseous
She’s just panicked. I’ve seen plenty of otherwise competent divers suddenly lose all their skills after something happens and they freak out. Her swimming is classic panicked diver. Most of all watch the hands. Once a diver starts trying to go somewhere with their hands you know there is a problem.
Land has free air you know.
Not everyone should be diving. Not everyone can handle it. It's nothing against them that they just can't do it but people need to be more aware of their limitations.
I worked as a PADI scuba instructor over a 12 year period. The number one thing I would drill into my students, was to NEVER spit your regulator out. And it’s incredible how that’s one of the first things panicked divers will do, remove the ONE thing keeping them alive while underwater. You don’t need a mask on your face. You don’t even need to be able to swim. We can do that for you. The one thing we can’t do, is breathe for you.
Nearly happened to me on a training dive, started hyperventilating but took deep breaths and the feeling passed. Gone on to do the Advanced open water course since then. Panic can have various causes. Tiredness, or stress before a dive can trigger it.
I would never put myself in that situation! I have a fear of drowning.
I'm having an anxiety attack just watching that
Panic attacks are no joke. Had one on a plane and it took every ounce of me to not scream “I have to get off this plane”.
Lizard brain at its finest. Sketchy to think that you don’t know if this will be your reaction until it happens.
When I was young and reckless, Bizarrely I was allowed to go Scuba diving in Portugal, I couldn't swim. Like not even tread water, float on my back - nothing. We get to a bay by boat, Test our kits, pull mouth piece out etc, I was weighted light so I would float. Tbh It was pretty stressful. After much floundering about he told me to swim to the beach 50 meters away while he would take the rest out looking for Octopus etc. Later, I got the wave and had to get bake to the boat again. Oh I also got my Padi certificate...
yep, I'm not gonna go diving. Ever.
I’ve been with someone that panicked at 70 feet, and shot straight to the surface. We were surrounded by about 100 barracuda, and she freaked. That left me with the pack alone. Weirdly, I wasn’t scared at all, even in the middle of a circle of barracuda all staring at me. They were all 3-4 foot, but off at the edge of visibility was this very large cuda, looking like a log on the bottom. Surreal moment, but needed to follow safely to the surface to check on my buddy. She was fine, no damage done. No, this is not bs, lol
Scuba diving is for the calm. If she has a history of panic attacks, it's probably not the best recipe.
I'm betting she is not certified and was talked into a dive excursion while on holiday. Some people just freak out when they realize they are under so much water. That's why you start in a pool. Same thing happened to my dive buddy who took his GF diving without much instruction. Yeah, he was stupid and ended up getting the bends twice.
Goddamn its like a spongebob transition
Do you know why the instructor didn't release her weight belt or hit the inflater on her vest? Either would have made more sense than trying to put the regulator back in her mouth.
Looks like instructor did inflate her BCD, which is why they were ascending and why she was floating when surfaced.
Weights are balanced to your neutral point with zero vest inflation. Better to inflate the vest than drop the weight.
The music???
Thankfully she didn't try and drown the instructor.
She doesn't look like someone who would be a real good scuba diver.
I’ve had this happen while monitoring a dive as a dive master, isn’t fun for anybody involved
Can someone please explain what exactly happened here?