07.12.08
Crabbing. Lessons Learned.
I went crabbing today. My buddy (Adrian) and I both got our limit. This particular day started out fraught with errors:
- We started off later than planned—we were supposed to leave Seattle at 9:30 for Mukilteo, but left closer to 10:45. I also made a couple wrong turns, despite having been to this dive site before.
- Adrian forgot a large portion of his gear. Fortunately the mobile dive shop (i.e. Matt P.) had enough gear to get Adrian in the water. Hurray!
- I lost my dive light ($60) and crab gauge ($2) on the way to the dive site. Went all the way back to the car to look for it. It’s a good thing, too, because I’d left one of my car doors wide open (locked, but open). My shorts with the keys were sitting somewhere in the back, along with a scuba tank. Never found the light or gauge. I’m bummed about the light.
So, we *finally* get out to the dive site after a long surface swim. Adrian and I just barely got our crab limit before having to head back to the surface. We ascended to 15 feet and waited there for 3 minutes for our safety stop (helps off-gas any nitrogen—probably not necessary for a short 40 foot dive, but can’t hurt). I thought I had about 400 psi left when we started going up (plenty for breathing 3 minutes at 15 feet). During our stop Adrian showed me his computer, which indicated his air time as “0″. I didn’t know this, but his computer apparently calculate a 750 psi reserve automatically. So I’m keeping an eye on Adrian since I think he’s pretty close to running out of air.
After we completed our safety stop I gave Adrian the signal to go up, and he signaled OK. I give a few kicks up and…”hmm, that breath felt kind of funny, in fact, I don’t think I got a full lungful out of that one…oh !@#$. I’m out of air.” So I start swimming for the surface (15 feet, no problem). My regulator managed to find another half breath for me or so, and I stopped for a second to look down at Adrian, wondering what he was doing down there, and if he was OK. I finally decided “screw him, I need to breathe” so I swam the rest of the way to the surface.
Since I was out of air, I needed to orally inflate my BCD (surface flotation). This normally wouldn’t be much of a chore but my legs were cramping from the long surface swim and chasing crabs down (they’re fast). So I was briefly kicking my head above the water, taking a breath, inflating my BCD as I sank back (resting my legs), and repeating this process until I had enough air in my BCD to float. Hurray! Disaster averted. But I was a little nervous there for a minute. The legs cramping up and having trouble staying afloat was alarming.
While this wasn’t an emergency along the lines of “I almost died”, it could very easily have gone the other way (sinking/drowning diver or lung expansion injury). This event would have been less of an emergency if my legs hadn’t been cramping up, but then that’s always what gets people killed–multiple things going wrong (the so-called “error chain”).
So, in the grand tradition of, “coulda, woulda, shoulda”, I’m outlining things I could have done different, should have done different, and will try to remember to do different in the future.
What I did wrong:
- Didn’t monitor my air supply well enough. Either I read the gauge wrong at the beginning of my ascent, or it is inaccurate around 400 psi or so. Having air would have avoided this entire scenario.
- I don’t remember breathing out while I was swimming up. Perhaps I was, but I definitely wasn’t thinking about it. If I wasn’t breathing out, this could easily have resulted in a lung expansion injury, which would at best have landed me in the hospital. I may have been saved by having less than a lungful of air on my way up, but I can’t say for sure.
- At the surface, I was having a little bit of trouble establishing buoyancy, but I wasn’t quite sinking yet. Ditching my weights never occurred to me. Maybe it would have if I had been sinking.
Other choices I could have made:
- I could have dropped back down to my buddy and shared air with him. I thought he was out, or nearly out of air, so this didn’t occur to me. It also is couterintuitive to go *down* when you’re out of air.
things to do next time:
- Ascend *with* my buddy, not before him. That way he (and his air) are there for me if I have a problem.
- Make sure I breathe out during an emergency ascent.
- Know my buddy’s equipment…since he showed me his computer saying “0 air time” I thought he was nearly out of air, too.
- Consider dropping weights if I’m having trouble establishing buoyancy.
All in all, I am thankful that, as I am so fond of saying, “God looks out for stupid people”.