New diver, near miss

A few years ago, before I was a dive professional, I went for a dive with a local dive club in Mukilteo WA at the T-Dock. This is a popular diving site in the Seattle area and is used regularly by dive classes and recreational divers. At the time I had a few dozen dives under my belt and had recently completed the PADI rescue diver class  - but had no experience as a dive professional or supervising other divers.

A group of us met up for the dive, and the host briefed us on the site and conditions. The first dive of the day was uneventful for me. I was familiar with this site, we descended down the main slope - following a line of rocks, did our dive and came back up. The biggest challenge is that the visibility was very limited - maxing out at no more than a body length due to the summer plankton in the water. 

After a surface interval three of us opted to stay and go for a 2nd dive. Kendra* was the most experienced diver among us. She has hundreds if not thousands of dives and grew up around a dive shop. Farhan* was almost a brand new diver. He had gone through his Open Water Diver class (4 dives), and a drysuit class (2 more dives) and the first dive of the day - this was dive number 7! Farhan seemed a bit nervous but also excited about diving and having a great time. He was in a drysuit and had completed the first dive of the day in shallow water (~30 feet max) with Kendra.  I had dove with Kendra once, but had never met Farhan before.

We made our dive plan to go down the rock line to take a look at the geodome (the main underwater feature at Mukilteo - usually at a depth of about 60 feet depending on the tide) and come back. This was significantly deeper than Farhan's first dive and right at the limit of his certified depth limit (60 feet for Open Water divers). Kendra, having the most experience and knowing the site better than either of us, led the dive. 

As we descended I noticed Farhan kept bumping along the bottom, even dragging his knees instead of swimming. I signaled to him to encourage him to add some air to his drysuit or BC to compensate and get neutral. He did add air but still struggled to stay off the bottom. This was problem one.

Also, while I was touching distance from Farhan so as to not get separated, Kendra was swimming ahead of us, and we did not always have each other in view. This was the second problem. 

As we descended past the point of Farhan's first dive he signaled that something was wrong with his mask. We stopped while he dealt with the issue. It was not flooded so I was confused as to what could be wrong. After a while he gave a half-hearted OK - indicating that he had either accepted or fixed the problem. This was the third problem. 

Reaching the geodome where it is dark (due to the low visibility even though this was a dive in plain daylight), Farhan was still dragging on the bottom and struggling to establish neutral buoyancy. In fact, he was so negatively buoyant that as he went to his knees he started to slide down the slope until he was almost starting to dissapear from view. He seemed upset and at this point I was getting very uncomfortable with our accumulating list of problems. I grabbed his BC to keep him from sliding further and at this point Kendra noticed something was wrong and asked if we should turn the dive and start our gradual ascent. Yes!

Had I not noticed Farhan starting to slide down the slope into the darkness, this dive could have ended very badly - with buddy separation leading to panic leading to a fatality, or an inability to establish positive buoyancy resulting in Farhan running out of air at depth without being able to ascend. 

Luckily however, we ended the dive without incident. We returned up the slope with me maintaining contact with Farhan to help him overcome his negative buoyancy and we debriefed on the surface. Farhan thanked me for the assistance in grabbing him before he slipped away - and amazingly - was excited to go for another dive soon!

Here's a summary of some of the things that went wrong and what we can learn from it:

1. Farhan had very little experience - going on a relatively deep dive in sub-optimal (very low visibility) conditions was not a conservative dive plan. Planning a shallower dive or skipping the dive due to conditions would have reduced risk. Consider your experience before going for a dive that pushes your limits.

2. It turned out that one of Farhan's problems as we descended was mask squeeze. We all learn about this in our dive training - as you descend, particularly if you go deeper, you will feel pressure/suction in your mask if you don't add air to it by breathing out through your nose to equalize the space. Many of us breathe out of our noses a bit without thinking. If I had more experience - or if Farhan had been to ~60 feet on more occasions - he or I would have probably recognized the problem and fixed it. He was not fully able to fix the problem at depth. Having an un-fixed problem is task-loading which can distract you from diving safely - and eventually too many problems can lead to panic, accidents and fatalities. Ideally we should have fixed this problem, or if we couldn't fix it, ended the dive and headed back to shore. 

3. Perhaps the biggest problem was that Farhan was severely overweighted. Many divers do not learn how to properly carry the correct amount (just enough!) of weight during their Open Water or Drysuit classes. You should never be so heavily weighted that you struggle to establish neutral buoyancy when you add air to your BC and drysuit. As we saw with Farhan - this can lead to uncontrolled descents (and, ironically, ascents). Learn how to weight yourself properly and don't dive overweighted!

4. Farhan and I relied on Kendra's experience to keep us safe - when we should have relied on our own limits and training to keep ourselves safe. Kendra had hundreds of dives - but she was not attentive to us as dive buddies. She was either unaware or uncaring about Farhan's overweighting and mask squeeze and did not do a good job of staying close enough for us to stay together as a buddy group. Don't assume that because a diver has more experience than you that they will keep you safe - if you dive with a buddy who does not give the proper care and attention to your safety as a buddy - have a conversation, and if they don't adopt safer behaviors find a different buddy. 

5. Dive accidents almost always result from not one primary issue, but a combination of issues (often small by themselves) that lead to a bigger problem and result in injury or death. We should have noticed the mounting list of concerns (poor bouyancy control, poor visibility, poor buddy contact, mask problem, Farhan's inexperience) and considered ending the dive sooner than we did. If a dive feels like it is not going well and you can't fix the issues contributing to the problems - end the dive. 

*The names and some identifying details of this story have been changed to protect the privacy of the divers involved.