Ok. Some porn then!

I don't dive but I find these to be fun at night.

Tag.

Did my open water cert at Dutch Springs. I got paired with the worst student in class because I was doing well and learning quickly. Kid probably should not have even been in the water, he was just that bad.

Anyway, we do our first dive and the instructor says he will be religiously checking our air for this is the first time any of us would be in a real diving environment. He planned that we would go down a rope to a platform and demo our skills, then go down a rope to a platform at like 40’, turn around and come back to the dive rope and surface. I could be a bit off on my memory since it’s been years.

So, we go down, do our skills, go to the bottom platform and start going back up to the shallow platform. Going up the connecting platform rope, I see my dive buddy staring at his gauge, off rope and sinking. He has no idea. So for like 5 sec I’m like, he’ll figure it out and come back up, but he doesn’t. We were over a part with depth like 120’. I decide, damn I have to grab this idiot. So I kick hard down and grab him. He’s a big guy too. I show him the depth gauge and everyone above us, start kicking up and get him back to the rope, the upper platform and the group. The instructor asks us all about our air and everyone says good to go. The instructors helper writes a note about what happened, so the instructor grabs my buddy to surface with him. They start going up the rope and I’m next. As I come to the safety stop, I’m looking at my depth gauge and all of a sudden, a fin kicks mask, regulator rips from my mouth and a body is on top of me. Before I can figure out what’s happening as I get my reg in my mouth, my ears feel like they’ll burst. I quickly untangle myself from the mess on top of me and move away into open water. Ears screaming. Check depth, back to 40’, we were at 15 when I got hit. I see the mess of divers trying to get out of all of this. I see my buddy now coming up with the instructor on his pony bottle. I surface and get ashore.

We debrief and I find out what happened. Well, my genius dive buddy sucked his air like mad on the dive. When the instructor asked everyone about air before surfacing, my buddy was basically out, but forgot the hand signals and thought the instructor was asking if we were ready to surface, so he said okay. Going up the bouy rope, he ran dry and panicked. He tried climbing the bouy rope, it sunk along with him and the instructor, who was trying to get the pony regulator in his mouth. They sunk into me, and I sank into everyone below me. Luckily, no one got hurt bad, just ears were beat a bit.

3 dives later, I learned quickly that if people are deeper than you, do NOT get into their bubbles. Shot me to the surface in a few seconds from about 50’. I went right back down after clearing the bubbles and was fine.

The pump tower there is really cool for big fish.

I was diving a wreck on Lake Superior and tapped my dry suit inflator @ about 120 ft.. The thing stuck and I watched my partner disappear as I started to rocket up.. I flared out to slow my ascent, pulled my neck seal dumping air, then Disconnected the inflator hose.. I think I leveled off at about 30 ft or so..

I dumped air from my BC, and dropped back down to the wreck. My partner didnt even notice my absence. I finished the dive with a shrink wrapped dry suit..

A good read... Playing Chicken with a Submarine.

I'm not a diver but I read the post you were referring to and couldn't help but think (and believe the poster was trying to convey) how small problems become big problems.

Every failure analysis story I've ever read about an airplane crash or other major preventable disaster starts with some small problem that was overlooked, and snowballed.

You may be correct and I just didn't see where he was laying that out as the final determination.

@garbageman

Talk to me before you visit that dive shop. More later on my way home from cave diving the mine up in WI.

@Bud

I have my solo diving certification. I can dive without a buddy at a local quarry. Lot of places don’t allow solo diving.

The Arabia is an awesome wreck. Got two dives on her last year.

Wow, that looks like an awesome dive. How deep?  Nevermind, I failed reading comprehension

@marie  IM sent

I dove on a rescue / recovery team for a while and have some stories from that.  One was when we went down to do a vehicle recovery that was supposed to be a simple 20/20 dive.  20 Feet / 20 Minutes hook up the car to the tow truck and get out.  We would do a check of the vehicle and found a body in it that had been there a while.  I won't even lie puked through my regulator which led to the uncomfortable decision of breathe puke or rinse regulator out in "body water" learned how to very lightly breathe a regulator until I got away from that car.

We would also do some commercial work for funding and ended up using a firehose to remove mud out from under a riverboat casino that didn't actually move.  It was going well till we realized we had made a little silt cave that we were in under the boat that could collapse on us.

I'm lucky I didn't die a few times on that team.

Yep, it was a humbling experience. I got a little arrogant, a little cocky, and the cave bitch slapped me back to reality.

When you get you AN/DP cert go back and dive the Forest City, it blows the Arabia out of the water.

Maybe for you single tank folks.

I did my solo class sidemount with LP50s. Lovely little tanks. I dive LP85 for cave.

Don’t forget Helitrox!

I actually did the Forest City the same trip. Down to about 90ft. Was like diving a damned escalator the way she was at an angle on the escarpment

Not a diving story, but a funny fishing story. Dog days of summer in '19, me and a buddy out on the boat fishing crappie. I had enough of the heat, so I stripped naked and leapt off the back of the boat. My buddy didn't know what was going on till he heard the splash, then he saw my shorts and underwear by my seat. So this fucker stomps the trolling motor and proceeds to circle me for 10 minutes, laughing and saying he's going back to the ramp. Now all our fishing trip plans include the phrase "as long as you keep your clothes on"

I would love to dive the wrecks in the great lakes, and I hate cold water. I would have to suck it up for a bit.

This thread does bring back a lot of recoveries that were creepy.  I could write a book on Florida man adventures with water.    We had this missing guy once in a trailer park on a canal that ran to a river. We looked for him on land mostly and with the air unit, I had the airboat on the canal for about two or three days,
we really had no sign. last time he was seen was running out the back door when the cops pulled in to arrest him on drug charges, we figured he was hiding out somewhere.  After 21 days he pops up in the canal near where was last seen, it's only about waist deep and totally full of milfoil. He was still holding a crack pipe in one hand and a lighter in the other. The weird thing he was looked like he had only been dead a few hours.
no sign of decomp, the water was in the low 60s. even when it gets cold here it only last a few days and then it warms up, its almost like he was pickled, to try to describe it.
.
Underwater bodies don't bother me really, except for kids, especially after you have kids.   Cars with bodies are not bad, everything comes up, goes on a flatbed wrecker to the lab and they deal with the victims inside. Plane crashes are the worst, you never know what you will find if anything. The first person I found in a crash once was still in his seat, had the lap belt on and had bitten his lower lip off, like he saw what was coming. That was a silent boat ride back to the dock.
I try to think of everything on the bottom as a crime scene and there is a process for everything, there is a lot of work to do on limited time. You don't have time to think about the people or the human part of it.

Thanks gents.

The way it was worded, “we lost...overhead”, made me think it was reference to some sort of cave diving that added another complex or dangerous component.

Same timeframe we lost the scorpion.

If I can cave dive, any guy should be able to do it. I was fucking scare of the deep end of the pool when I started four years ago. Look at me now!

Super cool read on that submarine article

Here's an off topic story I have about that... I went with a recovery crew from our base to help the feds pull a crashed plane out of a field with a HEMTT wrecker. There were a few catholic priests on board who were turned to burger in the crash. Just absolutely annihilated. My old CW5 and I were standing there next to some FAA guys, FBI agents, state police, and some others, silently looking at brains all over the place when my CW5 pipes up and says, "looks like dip. Who brought the chips? Hehehe"

They looked at us like they wanted to shoot us on the spot. I was embarrassed as all hell. Guys who have been in the Army for 35 years generally don't have a lot of tact and decorum left.

https://www.wearethemighty.com/mighty-history/1968-was-the-deadliest-year-for-submariners-post-wwii/

Props to you. I'll live vicariously through reading your adventures.

He sounds like any number of my friends.

Did my first post-intro to cave class dives today. Mine in SW WI. 20 degree air temp. Water is 50 year round. New drysuit.

See? I'm living vicariously already

Was diving off of St. Thomas with beautiful clear water, easily 100'+ visibility that just kind of trails off into a bright blue.

Had plenty of small reef sharks all around me. Little guys, maybe 4-5' long. Didn't bother me any. Seemed like curious goldfish with teeth. They were skittish and swam away if you tried to close on them. Plenty within 3-4' of me.

About halfway through the dive the sharks weren't as interesting as the other fish and crustaceans to be seen. Until I saw it.

Out in the distance I saw a shadow silhouette of a shark. Didn't look terribly different than the reef sharks or much bigger. Then I realized how far away it was. A gigantic Tiger shark decided to swim parallel to our group about 50' away from us. Hung around until safety stop then left. Scared the crap out of me.

Makes you realize how low on the food chain you are.

I was doing my first ever quasi penetration dive on the  USS Spiegel Grove off the coast of Key Largo.

It was a deep dive in extremely strong currents. Damn near lost my mask both going down the mooring line and when we were hanging onto it for dear life during our safety stop.

After we got into the shadow of the boat, things calmed down a bit. Then the instructor decided we should go inside.

I was getting more and more uncomfortable with the tight spaces and the open doors that just opened into to blackness. Mind was definitely on edge. We were about to head out of a main passage way to the landing craft deck when I looked into yet another open door only to see a Goliath grouper just chilling out, having a look at me from what felt like 6” away.
Scared the fuck out of me.

Got done with the bottom time and headed back up, hanging off the mooring with the rest of my group  pendants in high winds.

Spent the boat ride home huffing the remainder of my nitrox tank from a dive earlier that day to help calm down lol.

No more penetration dives for me

I had the same thing happen to me on a sport bike, and I have the scars and the pain to serve as a lifetime reminder!

Awesome read, I read the entire thing you could not stop once you started. I have a childhood that used do do this. He just said he was a driver on an oil rig. Said he saw all kinds of weird things. He did it for 3 years and quite. Said it got to him and was to dangerous. We never really talked about it anymore. But I could sense a change in him though. It ended up costing him his married too.

I did not quite understand exactly what a sat diver was exactly until I took time to read this post and article. He's a farmer now in Plant City a really good guy. He and brother before he was killed were great friends.

Myself I do not like swimming in the ocean period. I've done it though and enjoyed when younger. I use to want to learn to scuba dive. But both ear drums got ruptured and were repaired. But I still have a hard time equalizing pressure in them sometimes and have had problems a few times when going down just snorkeling.

That said, If I believed in reincarnation  I was eaten by something in a past life in the water. LOL I remember in RANGER SCHOOL in Florida phase when they took us out in the gulf for water training. I was last out of the rb-15 and first back in. They asked if I wanted to go to halo or scuba school in batt. Guess which one I picked?? it was not the one that required running on the beach.

I live on the ocean now. Will kayak, boat ect. I'll wade in ocean. But that's it. I watch for gators here too during rainy season because they will come out of the river here into the bay if we get alot of rain. But I always carry a gun when kayaking. I'll shoot them in a heart beat if they get frisky with the kayak. Them and those mean ass bull sharks.

I do believe this is the best post I've seen here in a long time. Thank you OP this is fantastic.  A really great read and really entertaining

Night fishing for Opelu south of Lania's big cliff.

Whale shark passes directly under me.

Scared the hell out of me, it was huge.

Took a couple minutes to recognize the distinct pattern on it and to realize that there was never any danger.

Fortunately I didn't release anything, cause I never would've lived it down with the crew.

I was on the Sheriff's Office dive team...where to begin.

My friend, Dan, was snorkeling. He got tossed around in the surf and his pants went down. I saw his ass. It was creepy. But then his nickname became danatee.

How big was your boat. I'd flipped. My brother in law and I was going out of Sand Key just south of Clearwater Beach early one morning. About 5 miles or so from shore. My lower unit on my motor hit something hard enough to shatter it. Of coarse we were dead in water. But right behind the boat about 30 ft I guess there was a V shaped wake about a ft high.

Water was like glass. It had to be hugh. Going vertical right where we crossed paths. There is no sand or oyster bars out there either.

Water was about 20-30 ft. I mean to that lower unit housing on my motor was litterally shattered into several pieces too. Had to call sea tow to come and get me.

But there was no blood or anything in the water either from where the proper would have cut whatever it was. You'd think there would have been blood and other stuff from getting chopped by a stainless steel prop. None Could not make out what it was either because the sun was reflecting just right to keep us from seeing it. My prop blades were bent too on the tips.

I always wondered if it was cartel sub running drugs maybe. Because it did sound metallic. It smacked what ever it was hard as Hell too and it just keep booking along and did not even phase it.

Unidentified Submerged Object aliens ??????

Had a girl that cleaned sail boat bottoms here locally several years back. She was not thinking and used a metal scraper while removing barnacles from the bottom of a hull. Sure as hell a cuda nail her arm or hand can't remember. Fortunately for her, I do remember she did not loose anything. Just alot of stitches.

Baracuda are so fast that if you blink you miss them. We were in the key's Islamorada fishing. Caught a small fish. BIL again said hey a small shark followed your fish up. I was at the back of boat next to motor. The transom and then splash guard then me.

Looked into water and there was a shadow about I don't know 30ft down. Clicked bezel dropped fish back into water to try and catch what I thought was a shark.

Nope...the second that fish touched that water. A baracuda came out of the water. Slide up the transom of the boat right past my hands. Headed right for my face, but within inches of my face it hit the splash guard and was pushed away from face. But it's jaws was inches away and snapping to me what looked like 100 mph before it flipped back into the water.

But in the mean time I'd dropped my new reel it went out the back of the boat as I stumbling backwards away from it. I almost scrapped my pants. I have never seen anything move that fast in my life. The second that fish touched that water. That baracuda was inches from my face/neck.

My F up BIL was laughing and thought it was funny that I almost got my face ripped off and dropped my new reel over board. I hated the SOB. He's dead now. Oh btw my reel was laying across the motor and dive steps. Like I said there's too many things that can eat you that lives in the ocean.

People have been biten in knee deep water before. Been at Daytona on the 11th or so balcony in the morning having coffee. Watching the surf. Sure all get out. Right there not more than 6 ft from shore shark fins popping up.

By noon people right there where the sharks were. Wading right amongst them. People get biten on their ankles calves ect here sometimes often. Then the flags go up.

At Sebastian Inlet we call it monster hole. They keep the shark flag up. Or DANGEROUS to swim here flag. Yet fools do.

You weren't alone by any stretch.  I remember a few of the guys in my class struggling at Victory Pond and test in the pool at Benning, but I don't remember anyone having any real difficulties when we were down in Eglin.  Seeing gators cruising around right before a river/stream crossing.  Good times.  

Things that make you go hmmmm

Awesome Marie

You're welcome!

I thought I knew about saturation divers a lot then I found that article and blew my mind. It's very rare to read an actual journal piece online anymore than makes you completely enamored with the story.

Hope we get some more cool stuff in this thread

@starman27

with one story at a time

You have a large audience...

This! Never get out of the boat!

Caves never interested me.

I was working towards diving the Doria when my son was born, things slowed down after that.

Sometimes I wish I had gone, most of the time I am glad I got out when I did.

Attached File



One must be careful what they say when they are within earshot of those not in the same career field..

What he said. Over 19,000 views; this is a good thread.

 

Ah Ft Sherman and Colon brings back some memories. ??

That's a lot of grouper nuggets right there. They need to do a goliath grouper season. These monster are making a hugh come back and stripping reefs from what I've been told.