Looking for the Truth

What's that saying, "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger?" I have always believed in that little saying. You know the saying that we learned as kids and have all repeated now and again but don't necessarily remember day to day. Other ones might be "do onto others as you would have them do onto you" or "know thyself." They are simple but for the most part true.

To me these are similar to the rules we follow in diving like, never hold your breath, always plan your dive, remember your MOD's, etc. I know them all well and yet I don't think about them every time I get into the water. Like driving a car you don't have to remind yourself of the location of the brake peddle every time you start your car, or how hard you may have to press it to stop the car.

You can apply the same to the mechanics of technical diving, like being able to turn off and on your regs and removing your tanks and replacing them in order to fit through small restrictions or in the case of entanglements. We need to be able to complete these without thinking about it. These are the emergency skills we learn right from our first diving classes and drill over and over again, in order to build muscle memory, similar to driving a car. If something happens to a piece of our equipment or our environment changes while in the middle of a dive we need to know how to respond. We train very hard to be able to make the right decision at the right time, and then to take that action.

For myself I have made this endeavour more than a hobby, I have made this a life long career. Understanding how a diver needs to respond within sometimes seconds, and if Plan A starts to fail then what is Plan B? So after teaching technical diving for the last 12 years with approximately 1200 decompression dives and 500 certified students, I feel that I have a good understanding of what I need to do to safely complete a technical dive. Knowing what to do as far as I was concerned was second nature. Well I have come to understand on more than one occasion that believing you know what to do in every case is what I call COMPLACENCY. This has brought me back from my pedestal on more than one occasion.

This story is one of those times and it happened about five years ago while I was diving with two friends on the Sunshine Coast. It was a nice day in November, the ocean was calm and the sun was starting to make its way over the tops of the trees. As the sun rose it started burning off the last of the fog that had settled in on the tops of the mountain earlier that morning. We had been up for a couple of hours, got dressed, ate and spent the last half hour checking over our gear. I spent some extra time going over my deco tanks, checking the regs and content one final time. I had decided to take three tanks not including the argon tank for suit inflation along on this dive. The extra tank would be used to make my deep stops from 220 feet to 70 feet. This is not something we need to do on most deep dives, so I wanted a final check to insure that I was going to be comfortable carrying it for the next 140 minutes. Most of the time my dives are made using only two sidemounts or deco tanks, but given the depth of this dive I decided to that a third would be smart, even though adding this tank would add considerable weight to my overall configuration. These deco tanks with their different mixes greatly speeds up the time we will need to stay in the water due to their high O2 content and lack of inert gas.

The dive was planned to be 410 feet for 8 minutes, thus making my first decompression stop 290 feet and a total run time of over two hours! Two to three times deeper than most people will ever dive! As we prepared to get in the water our boat captain yells over that there's some current running from north to south along the channel. The three of us have a quick discussion about how this might change our plan. The decision is made to go ahead and we splash in. The plan was for the three of us to descend together to a depth of 350 feet, and that is where I planned to go it alone for the last 60 feet.

We have set a meeting place on our ascent at the 180 foot mark along a small ledge; this means that I'll be spending about 25 minutes alone below 200 feet. The Viz was 100 feet plus and we all knew the site well so we weren't worried about finding each other during the ascent. As we started our descent the wall was at about an 80 degree down angle. It was important for us to use the angle of the wall to our advantage and gain some speed in order to get to target depth as quickly as possible and away from the surface current. If you have ever had to make quick descent down a vertical wall you know it's a bit disorienting. You almost have the feeling that you are ascending up the wall but your brain knows this is not the truth and you feel the sensation of free falling upside down.

As we pass 150 feet the wall comes alive as we power up our canister lights, scaring some of the nearby fish. The wall starts to slope out now to a 75 degree down angle; we are passing a number of coral fans and larger sponges as we pass 200 foot mark on our gauges. At 250 feet the world has now become shrouded in darkness that closes in around you with just the beam of your light keeping it at bay. The wall is made up of a series of ledges that fade away to either side of us. As our bubbles leave the regulator with a rush they are making a loud twanging sound due to the pressure that is now 7.5 times that of the surface. At 320 feet the wall starts to flatten out and at this depth the rock strewn slope is devoid of most life. I still come across small groups of very large rockfish. They seem to be coming out to have a look at this noisy thing passing them by. The bottom is now a slopping shelf at a 20 degree angle that is littered with rocks about the size of small cars. To my right a larger group of black rockfish eye me as I pass, holding their position in the water column with little effort. I leave my buddies behind as they start to fill their BC's in order to stop at their 360 foot target depth. Their lights now becoming dim as I fall away leaving them, I carry on. I still have some way to go. The slope keeps dropping; I dodge back and forth as I move to avoid the minivan-sized rocks. I am noticing a slight current on my right hand side pushing me to the left. As I come on to a group of rocks I'm forced to start swimming instead of gliding to avoid hitting this rather large rock. This action puts a fair amount of stress on me and is in retrospect my first mistake.

I'm also very focused on getting to depth, this mindset has made it more difficult for me to take in my surroundings and thus I forget about the current and decide to pick a path around the rock to the right. This action puts me right into the current! This is my second mistake. As I round the rock I notice that my speed has slowed down and I start to feel a little out of breath. If I had been more aware I would have turned left instead of right and away out of the current. I doubt any of what was about to transpire would have happened if I hadn't been so fixed on depth. This with the current and the depth, (at this point I'm passing 400 feet, which is 12.5 times the pressure at the surface) I start to feel light headed as well.

At first I think this is a little narcosis along with a fast descent, but as I round the rock I realize that I'm also starting to pant like a dog! It hits me, this is not right! It's then that I really have my first wake up call. My feet start to tingle -- the feeling starts to move up my body quickly. It feels like heat along with weakness. I know that I'm in trouble, that I'm in danger and my brain starts to say to me as if we are two different parts of a whole, "get the hell out of there" and "you need to get out of here, MOVE." As I turn left and swim around the rock I still can't comprehend what's going on. I'm moving around the rock, back and against the current, now to my left pushing me right. I notice it's becoming hard to see. My vision is starting to shut down! All along the edges of my vision things are getting darker, start to go black. It's like looking through a small keyhole, I recall later. I'm now feeling weak and tingly all at the same time. My mind is yelling at me to GET OUT OF HERE or you're going to DIE!!! I realize that I'm starting to panic and it's taking all my will, strength and training to fight the urge to swim for the surface as fast as I can. I need to GET OUT OF HERE.

I'm still moving away from the rock field and towards the wall all the while trying to think through the yelling in my head "get out, get out of here", and I'm trying to calm myself, as I say to myself "DON'T KICK use the BC and get out of here now!" As the wall starts to move by me I say to myself you "need to get moving, you need to get up and get to the first deco stop!" I'm still fighting the yelling in my head, I say "you're going to stop at 300 feet no matter what!" I realize that I'm hyperventilating and I try and slow my breathing down. I'm saying to myself "don't kick, don't kick or your going to pass out and DIE if you kick!" As the BC starts to take over and pull me up the wall I realize that I don't have much vision left. The wall is but a large greyish thing running passed me as I look through a keyhole, I know I must be ascending way too fast but I need to get out of there. If I don't I will DIE. I feel my body is still trying to take over and I'm fighting it as hard as I can to stay calm, I say again to myself "don't kick!" After what feels like forever I look down at my depth gauge and see that I'm passing 300 feet -- my first stop was to be 290 feet and I need to stop. By this time my vision is starting to come back and I have my breathing under some control for the moment. I realize the wall has angled away from me a bit so I let myself slowly start to fin towards it. I want to stay close to the wall. Somehow being close to it is making me feel better. The tingling feeling is still very strong and I'm aware that the weakness is taking its toll as I gently fin for the wall. The best news is that the yelling in my head is finally gone.

At my next stop at 230 feet, my vision is back to normal and the tingling is mostly gone. Because of my rapid ascent I have messed up my window and my buddies have had to move on without me. The next 60 minutes are spent alone while I think through what has just happened to me. The weakness lasts the rest of the dive and for some time afterward, but I'm alive! I never said anything to anyone even after I'm safely back on the boat. I just grin and keep my mouth shut. A couple of guys on the boat asked me how deep I had gotten. I lie and say "not too deep, just 260 feet."

This took place five years ago. It has taken me some time to think about what was happening at that time and to remember the course of events. I found writing about a near death experience harder than I first thought it might be.

After that day for about a year, whenever I would start to feel the sensation of even a little narcosis, my brain would start to try and take over with a sense of pending doom. "You need to get out of here" came racing back. Never the same as before, but it was there. Remember to listen to those little lessons and don't ever think you have all the answers to what diving might bring your way. The truth is you need to have an empty cup in order to learn.