Mistakes, errors, and poor judgment in scuba diving

Mistakes. Errors. Poor judgment. Who never does them, step aside.

Well, I guess, we all, at a different level of impact, did some mistakes during our diving careers. As professionals or non-professionals. We have all been in the yellow-orange part of the above chart.

What is important is to learn from our mistakes (even better, from others’ mistakes) and to not repeat them!

See Gareth Lock and his “Incompetent and Unaware: You don’t know what you don’t know…” blog. Good read about what we know or what we think we know!

In the following few blogs, I am intending to reveal a few of my past experiences, for your general knowledge and a “don’t do it at home” list. If you can pick up some ideas and apply them to your diving activities, it will be great! It means, I reached my goal.

I will start, with my last interesting and unexpected experience.

2022, January 2nd. We usually ran an activity called “New Year Dive” (in the 1st week of January) in which, we gather together, have some good talks, drink some soft drinks, have some good sweets, cookies, and Christmas cakes, and yes… dive. The easy dive site, 6-8m depth max. Is our “house reef”, the underwater sunken city Tomis (the wall and archaeological treasures). In the summertime, is rich in sea life. Gangs of seahorses, pipefish, schools of baby fish, and so on. Sometimes, is quite impressive!

In the wintertime… not much sea life. But the water tends to be clear, due to the lack of algae and of course, low water temperatures. From the +25… 27degC in the summertime (with huge and sometimes brutal thermoclines at the depths – in differences of 15-20degC between the top & bottom water layers), is dropping down to 4..7degC during the wintertime. Anyway, the latest research says that the winter the Black Sea average temperature increased by +3degC during the past 70 years. Not sure if I would really like to have tropical waters around or I will rather stick to our old Black Sea…

Anyway, long story short… We gather together, have some good chats, and finally, got dressed and ready for dive. Most of us in drysuits, few “macho mans” in wetsuits…

For this dive, I chose to let rest my beast rebreather JJ-CCR and dive recreational OC with my lovely Oceanreef Predator.

Is a beast in its sector. Not the latest (as the Oceanreef Neptune III, launched September 2021), but still… top of the line. Great for cold waters, contaminated water, underwater comms, SAR operations, underwater research, guiding groups, etc!

So… here I am. Well dressed and equipped (drysuit SFtech with hood and dry gloves, RBS, good OMS Slipstream fins, underwater camera…)

part of the team, the others already by the seaside…

So… ready to go. After about 150…200mtrs of walk (good testing of cardio & overall fitness level 😈), we reached our destination and were ready to enter the water and dive. Water temperature… 6-7degC. In fact, not so cold.

And from here onwards, starts my droplist of small misjudgments.

Firstly, I miscalculated my ballast weight by about 1.5 kgs. Tropical undergarment, polar undergarment, double ten liters, stage(s), rebreather CCR, recreational configuration… sometimes, we forget the exact weight we need for each configuration. Not end of the World as the shore entrance is full of various sizes of rocks. Problem solved. Not in the most elegant (technical) manner but… I filled up my drysuit pockets with a few rocks and… problem solved. I was able to descent. Hooray!

Secondly, I did not ask for sufficient assistance prior to diving. Adjusting a full face mask, with dry gloves and a thick hood, may be challenging. Therefore, my Predator did not seal properly and I had a very small but continuous leaking of air (thru the top side of the mask). I thought I could manage this small inconvenience during the dive so, I kept diving. Well… of course, my plan did not work as planned. Therefore, after about 10 minutes into diving, I decided to switch back to my backup regulator (attached with a bungee at my neck) and use the spare mask (placed in my drysuit pocket).

And here it comes the moment (and feeling) I did not expect that much. As already mentioned before, one of the greatest benefits of diving an Integrated Diving Mask is the fact that, is sealing the entire face from the cold (and possibly contaminated) waters. Your lips, eyes, cheeks are sealed from the unfriendly & hostile outside cold environment. Which is really good! Imagine, diving in +6degC water, and in fact, your face is sitting in almost +30degC air (body temperature is between +36… +37degC, as you may already know… “thanks” to the covid19 temperature readings).

So, here I am. Spare masked removed from my pocket and getting the last good breath from the IDM and start the changing procedure. IDM removed and… shock. #%$&#*$*ˆ*#ˆ%ˆ&&*… Of course, the cold water shock. From +30degC over all your face to +6degc in a matter of seconds… is bad. So uncomfortable that almost I could not breathe properly, despite my good quality cold water regulator set (Scubapro C370). Being in full mental control, I did try to regain breathing control and fit my tiny (low volume) spare mask. Not much luck… my brain was heavy fighting the freezing status of my face… Did some (many) cold Black Sea water dives in the past, when at the end of +1h dive could hardly speak and move my lips due to the anesthetic feeling… but this thermal shock (+30degC to +6degC) was quite something! So… did a slow and controlled ascent to the surface, enjoyed the dry (but still cold 7-8degC) of the air, a few breaths, and back to the depths with my 2nd configuration, and continued my dive for the next 45minutes.

Moral of the story?

My errors? And solutions?

Miscalculating the ballast weight. I keep tracking my diving weight. In my logbooks. And memory.

Maybe a separate checklist file (as I have checklist/splash-list for the CCR, OC Tech & Sports activities) to take a note of the diving configuration, gear, water & weather condition, and weights used.

2. Spare mask… way too low volume. Very good as spare in my drysuit pocket but obviously, bit too tiny for my face… especially when the thermal shock was pressing me to move fast. Used this low-volume mask in the past (in various drills), when I was always switching from a standard diving mask to another standard diving mask or from an IDM to a standard diving mask in temperate waters… but not in so cold water!

Having a spare mask adequate for the face size. The space saved in the pocket by a low-volume mask vs a regular size mask… does not worth it.

3. Not asking for proper assistance to adjust the mask and hood prior to commencing the dive. I have been asked for but did not take full advantage and attention. When somebody is there to assist – use that help. If not, take an extra minute to make sure you are up-to-speed.

4. Not taking into account, while diving a (very) cold water, the huge thermal difference between the inside of IDM and the classic diving mask. Well… that is something which, I guess is hard to predict unless you experiment with it…

Always plan properly your dive. Take carefully into consideration all possible alternative options (plan B, plan C).

Coldwater diving… is a serious activity! Most of us, when we think and talk about cold diving, we focus solely on undergarment protection and electrical heating (if applicable). Plus hood and gloves. And we almost never take into consideration face protection or what if something is going wrong with the drysuit sealing or electrical heating, especially if the dive is requiring and long trip back or decompression stages till we safely reach the safe haven.