Northwest Dive Club

As we were hungrily chowing down on Jeremy's world famous chili at the entrance to the T dock a diver surfaced about three quarters of the way to the buoy over the deep boat. No SMB was noticed before his appearance. He then spent the next few minutes flailing around on the surface in a most unnatural way while slowly drifting towards the ferry that was loading. After just a minute or so a couple of us were debating what was going on and if he was in trouble. You could see his arms and complete fins thrashing about. My money was on him being in trouble. It just didn't look right and he wasn't behaving normally. Once he drifted close enough to the concrete fishing pier that someone could ask him if he was in trouble he replied yes. Once that was relayed back to the group I took off my coat, donned my drysuit which was just around my waist, and entered the water to render assistance. Upon reaching the diver I established communications and asked what his situation was. He said that his suit inflation valve had stuck open and his dump valve wasn't functioning. Indeed his suit was drum tight and he had been stuck on his back since reaching the surface. I checked that his dump valve was open and depressed it to no effect. He asked me to push his feet down so I spun him around to face me and did so. Then I asked if he could get to his neck seal or did he want me to do it? He managed to get it open and let enough air out to be vertical in the water again. I asked if he needed help getting back to shore from there and he said he was good to go. I swam back and went back to enjoying my now cold chili.

The story we got from the diver was that he and his partner had been down deep on a tech dive and had turned around because his partners computer had a battery failure. Their max depth is still a mystery to me but the number 200 had been mentioned a few times. The only solid number I did hear was that his suit inflation valve had stuck open at 100 feet and that is where he came up from. He had been able on the way up to get the hose unhooked but too late. Once he was on shore multiple people offered him O2 but he refused. He even had his own AL40 of O2 but didn't use it. After another 30 minutes or so his partner finally surfaces after completing his deco. They then proceed to have their own debriefing after which the diver was breathing his own bottle of O2.

I have critiqued my own actions and found room for improvement. First, I should have gone out sooner when my gut was telling me he was in trouble. Second, I was not geared up properly when I did go out to help. I swam out in my drysuit and rock boots. No fins, mask or hood. Had he needed to be towed to shore I would have been very ineffective. There was a second diver ready to enter the water just as we got his situation rectified but with more surface current it would have been too late.

There were several other people from this board that were there and helped with this incident. Please feel free to correct the details or add to the critique of the response.

Matt Regan.

P.S. I believe this diver could have opened his own neck seal much sooner and by pushing his own feet down while doing it righted himself in just a minute or two. I am going to practice recovering from this position the next time I am in the water. He was in doubles with two stage rigged AL40s'.

From my own recent drill, opening a neck seal will indeed let air out, also water in. I would advise practicing this at the end of your last dive.
Congrats on jumping in and helping!

Good lord. I don't know what to say about that, other than to praise your actions. Good job. Sounds like somebody might not be cut out for technical diving.....or maybe just any diving....

I call bunkus on the suit valve. I (and my wife) have had MANY of these leak over the years. They never leak in any faster than the dump will vent. So its pretty hard (impossible) to have a runaway suit take you to the surface if the dump valve is open.

Dump valve closed or if your body inverts, yes you can have a runaway ascent. That's not the suit inflator's problem though.

IMHO, buddy of victim = lame.

Good for you for taking action Matt!

After another 30 minutes or so his partner finally surfaces after completing his deco.

So this guy then omitted 30min of deco, (I'm assuming his buddy was exiting expeditiously after seeing the victim headed for the surface) and refused 02 at the surface???? I think I'd be huffing all I could lay hands on missing that much deco.

Nwbrewer wrote:Good for you for taking action Matt!

After another 30 minutes or so his partner finally surfaces after completing his deco.

So this guy then omitted 30min of deco, (I'm assuming his buddy was exiting expeditiously after seeing the victim headed for the surface) and refused 02 at the surface???? I think I'd be huffing all I could lay hands on missing that much deco.

Agreed on the huffing of 02 after a shot up from 100 feet. missing 30+ minutes of deco, not good, not good a'tall

So you found his dump valve non functional? You would almost wonder how that could be??? Something sealing it up on the inside? I would have no hope of finding my neck seal quick enough to stop an ascent. Anyone else had a dump valve fail closed? I had one break and fail open. Good job on the help. I can understand you forgetting your fins. When I get focused on something like that it's hard to do the checklist.

Nwbrewer wrote:Good for you for taking action Matt!

After another 30 minutes or so his partner finally surfaces after completing his deco.

So this guy then omitted 30min of deco, (I'm assuming his buddy was exiting expeditiously after seeing the victim headed for the surface) and refused 02 at the surface???? I think I'd be huffing all I could lay hands on missing that much deco.

I never asked any questions of the buddy but I will say I didn't notice a back up bottom timer or computer on his arm while talking to him and the victim so he may have gone the more cautious route of extra deco for lack of information.

One of the things I've learned is that, when you are experiencing a major problem, you can get so focused on trying to cope with it that a) you don't think of all your options, and b) you don't think of trying to get help. As a result of that (and working with students) I'm REALLY hyperaware of anybody, either underwater or on the surface, who appears to be behaving erratically. It's always better to make unneeded efforts to help than to be too late.

I think one of the lessons from this story is that runaway dry suit inflation (or wing inflation) is a big risk, and can be hard to deal with. I know I am guilty of not maintaining the ends of my inflator hoses as often as I ought. We should all be thinking, if we have a connector that is hard to get on or off, that this is a potential MAJOR hazard and needs to be dealt with. It's also a darned good idea to soak your dry suit exhaust valves in clean water periodically, and ensure that the diaphragm in them is easy to move. I can't imagine one getting sufficiently stuck so as not to vent with the suit tight as a drum, but they can stick long enough to cause buoyancy control problems, and once you have gone up a certain amount, you cannot vent the suit fast enough through the valve to get things back under control. Although opening a neck seal is an option, I think for most of us, with heavy hoods and thick gloves, by the time you've dug down to the neck seal and identified it and gotten a finger under it, you're on the surface. And if you have gotten feet-up, the neck seal won't help you much, anyway.

Once you are on the surface and fully inflated, it can be hard to get your feet down well enough to turn yourself. I had an embarrassing event the other day when playing with my sidemount gear, where I simply couldn't reach the dump valve on my wing, and ended up corking from about 20 feet. Once on the surface, I was prone, with a very full wing and a mildly full suit, and I just couldn't get enough purchase with my fins to right myself, until I had tried quite a number of times. (By that time, I was contemplating just swimming in on my stomach until my knees hit the ground!)

It sounds as though this diver really needed help, and it's great that someone recognized that before he was really in trouble. WHY he would refuse oxygen after blowing off significant deco baffles me . . . if that had been me, you could BET I'd have been on my O2 bottle as soon as I got sorted. If you have it, why on earth not use it?

From what you describe, there are a lot of both basic and technical skills this diver should reexamine before attempting dives like that in the future.

Glad to hear everything turned out alright.

I haven't been inside every dump valve out there but SiTech is very common and it's nigh impossible for them to fail closed. Leak -sure, but not fail to open.
There is some talk of issues plugging them up on the inside with suit material but the valves I've seen all have a baffle that would mostly prevent this. I think most 'normal' undergarments simply would not do this. They might not exhaust as well as they are able but they should still work.

OTOH, suit and BC valves are a couple of the most ignored critical items on a diver's kit. People take care of their regs (life support, eh?) but often ignore those items. I've seen more dives ruined by stuck valves than reg problems. I overhaul mine every year, and they generally need it. I won't buy a BC inflator that cannot be overhauled easily. Some are essentially disposables as the cost of overhaul is similar to the cost of replacement.
Having said that the little hose O-ring won't cause a stuck valve. It'll leak as it wears but often this is a small leak and more of a nuisance than any real danger.

The inside connector hose O-ring is one of the harder working O-rings in your system. It's exposed to outside contamination and is put on and off a lot which wears off the lube. It's good to hose that out once in awhile and re-lube it. I have some tiny tiny Q-tips with a polyester tip that doesn't fray or shred that is perfect for swiping a little bit of silicone grease on them occasionally. If nothing else get some pure silicone spray and give it a shot of that occasionally. Very useful.

Microbrush applicators - http://www.ebay.com/itm/Microbrush-type ... 4897.l4276

Mateo1147 wrote:I never asked any questions of the buddy but I will say I didn't notice a back up bottom timer or computer on his arm while talking to him and the victim so he may have gone the more cautious route of extra deco for lack of information.

I recall that the diver who surfaced first said his buddy's computer ran out of battery at depth. You can speculate if that in itself led to some panic or urgency to ascend.

O2 is cheap, people!

YellowEye wrote:

Mateo1147 wrote:I never asked any questions of the buddy but I will say I didn't notice a back up bottom timer or computer on his arm while talking to him and the victim so he may have gone the more cautious route of extra deco for lack of information.

I recall that the diver who surfaced first said his buddy's computer ran out of battery at depth. You can speculate if that in itself led to some panic or urgency to ascend.

O2 is cheap, people!

Buddy has computer, follow buddy, follow backup tables, live to dive again..........

CaptnJack wrote:

YellowEye wrote:

Mateo1147 wrote:I never asked any questions of the buddy but I will say I didn't notice a back up bottom timer or computer on his arm while talking to him and the victim so he may have gone the more cautious route of extra deco for lack of information.

I recall that the diver who surfaced first said his buddy's computer ran out of battery at depth. You can speculate if that in itself led to some panic or urgency to ascend.

O2 is cheap, people!

Buddy has computer, follow buddy, follow backup tables, live to dive again..........

YEP. That's my "absolutely everything broke" plan.

Joshua Smith wrote:

CaptnJack wrote:

YellowEye wrote:

Mateo1147 wrote:I never asked any questions of the buddy but I will say I didn't notice a back up bottom timer or computer on his arm while talking to him and the victim so he may have gone the more cautious route of extra deco for lack of information.

I recall that the diver who surfaced first said his buddy's computer ran out of battery at depth. You can speculate if that in itself led to some panic or urgency to ascend.

O2 is cheap, people!

Buddy has computer, follow buddy, follow backup tables, live to dive again..........

YEP. That's my "absolutely everything broke" plan.

Pretty much anything OTHER than... "Staying on ambient air after missing nearly all deco" would be better.

Drop back down and redo some shallow deco, huff O2 on surface then huff whatever other deco gas they had (50%?), call for ambulance and ride to chamber, pretty much anything is better than what he did (once on the surface).

After the whole buoyancy event there was just no attempt to salvage the deco/dive at all. As far as I can tell maybe Mateo sees it differently. I have heard and read about people giving up in the past, but nothing so recent and local. Guess there was a whole lot of luck here or the 200ft dive was very very brief.

Whoa there captn, I did not mean to speculate about anything these two did or why. The only thing I mistakenly speculated about was the time it took for the buddy to surface and if it was influenced by a loss of deco obligation information. Everything else was just passing along known info or the numbers that had floated around as what someone thought they heard the victim say.

Is there any follow-up? Maybe the guy had problems later.

Mateo1147 wrote:Whoa there captn, I did not mean to speculate about anything these two did or why. The only thing I mistakenly speculated about was the time it took for the buddy to surface and if it was influenced by a loss of deco obligation information. Everything else was just passing along known info or the numbers that had floated around as what someone thought they heard the victim say.

Well the buddy thought he had 30 mins of deco (since he surfaced so much later). So something about their plans is wildly disconnected. I have no idea but no redoing any deco after an ascent from 100ft, and refusing surface O2 while the buddy does 30mins of deco is pretty messed up.