Scuba Diving Stories With Lessons To Be Learned

Scuba Diving Stories With Lessons To Be Learned

Hi Guys and welcome to Simply Scuba. There are some great stories on the internet, but not the ones you write about me Cheryl, and some about scuba diving. A few of these guys get quite expressive in their stories and swear so I may replace some words below with the word puppy. We’ve cherry-picked some slightly scary stories with a moral to each that some divers have regaled.

So here some scuba diving stories with lessons to be learned
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[simplyscuba]

It’s that time of year again; the Diver awards are now open. If you’re a regular customer to our website, watch our advice and review videos we would love to have your vote.


This year is also a first for us, not only can you vote for us in the retailer of the year category but also if you have purchased our MK1 dive torch you can also vote for that in the product of the year category.

[jackg.]

As a IDC Staff Instructor and Master Instructor for many years I would say to any new Divemasters, AI’s or OWSI’s...Never let your guard down with new or unfamiliar students. Many years ago I was assisting as a farm fresh Divemaster on my first OW class. I had assisted my Instructor throughout the entire class including all of the pool sessions. I was very familiar with all of the students and knew who had some problems and who were more comfortable in the water. I’ve seen it too many times to count the students who seem to be “Naturals” to Scuba and those who are going to need a little more work. One young lady in the course did very very well in both her academics and the pool. One of those students that any Instructor can tell is going to do very well at the OW checkout and onward as she progressed into the sport. Or so I thought. We go to the lake to do their checkout dives and all is fine. My Instructor always liked doing smaller classes with multiple assistants. Close to a 1:1 pro to student ratio. We are also diving in land locked North Central Texas in lakes that look more like mud puddles than lake. We were lucky as we had about 12-15 feet of VIS (Exceptional VIS for us). So we always kept a close eye on the students and maintained body contact. As DM’s and AI’s our job was to watch the students as the OWSI conducted the skill assessment with another student. I was paired with the “Natural” young lady as she was by far the best student in the class and I was the newbie. Right up until she panicked. We briefed and headed out to our buoy and descended 30 feet to our platform. I descended with her and I put her on the platform and faced her on the other side of the rail. She was doing fine then all of a sudden she bolted for the surface. She had jerked right out of my grip. I instantly grabbed her fins to slow her down but she had filled her BCD to capacity. She was headed to the surface like a ballistic missile climbing an invisible ladder the whole way up. She had spit out her regulator and was in full blown panic mode. I shoved her reg back in her mouth and dumped her BC’s air as fast as I could. I was behind her when we got to the surface. As I turned her around she was spitting and coughing. Then she through up on me...Twice. One of the AI’s also ascended. They went back to let the Instructor know what had happened and the entire class followed us back to shore. We monitored her closely and luckily she was OK. It was then that she told us that she had had a near death drowning experience as a child and she had a deathly fear of the water. She was taking the course to overcome her fear. She couldn’t contain her fear anymore and simply panicked. I was like WTF!!!! A scuba class is NOT therapy for overcoming water phobias!!! My Instructor would not allow her to finish the class that weekend but he did counsel her on what to do if she wanted to come back at a later date. She did come back a month or so later and finished one on one with my Instructor, myself and another assistant. She did just fine the second go around. Moral of the story is treat every student as if they’re at the same (lowest) level of comfort and ability and never ever let your guard down. Not for a single second.

[lmlmd]

Solo diving... without an SMB.... in a drift...in an area with loads of sharks... with some dead fish strapped to you...


And that, boys and girls, is how you get a darwin award.

[MrPodolle]

I totally agree that the number of dives and the quality of the gear does say puppy nothing about the skill of a diver. I once was on a diving safari in Thailand. On the boat were two dudes (a buddy team) with excellent and expensive gear. The first thing one of the guys said to me was: "Listen kid, I'm a pro". Apparently the guy was a dive guide at some dive shack at koh tao island and had a divers log as big as his puppy ego - I remember him saying that he had beyond 1000 dives. The other guy was a wealthy Russian tourist with something about 150 dives and an array of go pros with him. At the time I had about 30 dives and my only own gear was a mask and cheap diving computer. My buddy had about 50 dives and owned only her mask.

When we hit the water chaos break loose. It began at the surface, where the "pro"-diver would decent without signaling "ok" to the boat or our dive guide. We checked with the dive guide and started to decent to meet with the guy under water. I looked at my buddy and we started to coordinate our decent so we would have the same speed and have visual contact. At around 5 meters I looked up to check where our guide was. She was still close to the surface, trying to pull the Russian guy down. Apparently the guy was too buoyant and could not deflate his BCD properly. The "pro" was out of sight at the bottom - out of the depth limit of this dive. Eventually our guide could help the Russian to deflate his BCD. The guy sank like a rock. Apparently the dude had no idea how to control his buoyancy. Somehow me managed to meet at the bottom, where the guide had captured the strolling "pro". After energetic signaling from our guide that everyone should stay close to his/her buddy and that we should stay within visual range to the guide, we continued the dive. Immediately "pro" and Russian dude separated from the group in different directions. Russian went to pick up starfish and swim through small openings (still without being properly bouyant and crashing into everything). This forced our guide to call the dive. We ascended to the safety stop. Where the guide would check for our remaining air for the first time. "Pro" had only 20 bar left - after barely 15 minutes into the dive. He had just a crazy high air consumption.

This buddy team kept diving for the rest of the safari - but they where kept under close surveillance of the guides. They had a combined experience with far beyond thousand dives and gear and cameras of the worth of a new hatchback - but those two where the most puppy divers I have ever seen.

[iaov]

I often dive alone in freshwater lakes. I have 2 rules for this. I never go deeper than 25 feet and I never am farther than an easy swim to shore. I never had a problem in 20 + years of doing this. Last summer I had my secondary regulator start free flowing 20 feet down. It was no big deal because I follow those 2 rules!!

[kzalaska]

Lesson learned for me, always bring a back up light on a night dive. Looking back it should have been obvious. I was on a night dive in San Diego in the kelp beds. 1/2 way through the dive my buddies light failed. Luckily we were close enough to each other that we could make physical contact because, sure enough, my light failed soon after. We ended up using the glow from our gauges to find a small bubble to follow to gauge our ascent speed and thankfully came up near the boat. This could have easily gone very badly.

[dharmapunk]

I surfaced from a dive after having gotten a bit lost, and was over very deep water. I was a bit rattled from having gotten lost, and not focused like I should have been. I started handing my gear to my partner on the dinghy. I passed him My BCD, and didn't realize at the time that I still had my weight belt on. I'm here to type this because I didn't let go of the rope on the dinghy. What I learned is BWRAF works in reverse too. B make sure it's inflated, W give your weights to the person on the boat, then Release your BCD and pass it to the person on the boat, (A and F) don't really apply here.
UPDATE:
I just completed my Rescue Diver Course on November 25th 2018! Wanted to mention that I made a discovery about my buoyancy with the weight belt. My weight belt has 14 pounds of lead on it, and that alone is not enough to make me sink with all of my exposure gear. I was floating with no problem. This does not in any way change the importance of the above comment, it remains important to stay focused and BWR from above still applies.

[simplyscuba]

So, yes this video is a long one.... but PUPPY! it's a really good one! Lessons definitely were learned from these stories.

[fbxlzne]

that last one.... what the puppy were they doing at 30m if they only had OW....

here is my story; I was doing the search and Recovery specialty in a fresh water lake at about 15m. I was in the middle of a search exercise near the bottom when a couple divers swam passed me in the opposite direction. suddenly I found my self in what seemed like a HUGE cloud of debris, unable to see the palm of my hand in front of me. for a fraction of a second I thought about shooting upwards but quickly mentally slapped myself.... i then recalled I took compass heading near the shore line. so i decided to swim in the opposite direction of where the shore is making sure i remained at the same depth using my computer....I eventually swam clear of the cloud of debris and got a good lesson on how to stay "cool" in an uncomfortable situation.

[makeyourday]

You guys are hilarious and I love your stories. :)) Thank you for sharing!

[Andizu]

"'as we are independent divers'" hmm hmm'! 🤣🤣🤣

[kyrancressey]

Interesting stories!!, I had a bit of a scary run in a few days ago!, me and my buddy partner was diving with a divemaster and a group of 6 just a bit away from Broughton Island Australia, the dive there consists of swimming between a huge crack straight through an island, it only goes about 19 metres down, but the scary part is, on the way back I notice my tank is down to 100psi, I signal my partner that I'm low and signals me to grab the attention of the divemaster, I turn around and notice where at the back of the group and cant locate the divemaster, so we carry on, there was a bit of a surge underwater and due to myself not being super experienced and slight panic I try swimming forwards regardless of the surge, which as you can guess, burns through the little amount of air I have left, we get through to where we began our dive and notice my dive master, i look down at my gauge and i have 20 psi left, I signal to him im out of Air, because of the surge my dive buddy was a bit further back so the only option i had was to get to my divemaster, I got to him just in time as the last of the air left the tank, luckily we where at our saftey stop and we hovered there for 5 minutes sharing air. I understand this was to me, in my lack of experience and poor choices and my panic, but I can definitely tell you I'm never kicking into a surge like a fool again and practising my breathing techniques. they teach you it in the training how to deal with low air but i never thought id get put into that situation, I certainly learned the hard way!

[noslover]

On my last dive a few years ago ( busy life and low on money) my instructor/friend asked me to body up with one of his new students that had some "difficulties" compared to the other students. The plan was to do a check on top and again at 30ft and as soon as we started descending I noticed his first stage was leaking but the guy wasn't paying attention to me at all, going head down like it's a race to the bottom 😩. I grabbed him by the fins at around 19ft ( not so bad I thought its better than 30ft saving a bit more air while I get it to stop leaking). So I gived him my octo which he started sucking on like a hungry child on his mother's breast 😐. I thought ok he is nervous, to him its scary. and I noticed he was trying to infalt his BCD, but I had his first stage off by then, so no harm I thought and focused my attention on fixing the leak. Took me a few moments/ trys but finally bubbly free at last 🥳. I take his second stage pull my octo from him and pushed his 2nd into his mouth and purged it . I ok him he oks me back. All good now 😌 nodded him to check me and he gives me OK . I check the depth and we are 90ft 😱 . That guy was really something else it turns out he was pushing his inflation/ deflation and when nothing happened he grabbed mine and deflated the shit out of it 🤯 . How do I know he was holding on to it 😒. Does the story stops here, No it doesn't. Looking around for the others and looking up i saw it . A string of bubbles coming from my 1st stage 😓 and the guy was off like a rocket swimming away from me as fast as he can 😰( perhaps making up for the time I made him hold still which he didn't in the worst way possible) . I don't remember what my air read this was a few years ago but things where miserable that I remember very well. Anyway I started calming my breathing, took off my BCD flipped it around, kept focusing on depth and some how managed to fix the leak without going up or down. The story doesn't end here but I guess you know that already 😆. I'm alone now and low on air . So I go in the general direction that guy went to, and luckily I find the group and the guy with them . I come up to the instructor and signal him I'm going up and showed him my air . He was shocked I could tell 🥴. I signal the instructor with two fingers to keep both his eyes on that guy and I go to hold the boats anchor line at 15ft to do my deco now I'm well in the red but its fine now I was going to do as much as I can and if I can't get air I will go out. But yes the story doesn't end here. I was breathing deep and slow and after 3 minutes or so started it be difficult to breathe and boom 💥 out of no where the instructor and guy are next to me and something was wrong the instructor was panicking. And when I saw it I panicked too . The guy, ... his mask was filled with blood and his movement was everywhere. WTF . both of us took him up and I remember my heart was racing and on the top some yelling happened. But it turns up that the guy has a condition that he gets nose bleeding and just didn't clear his mask 🤬.
Lessons learned. No1 A type 1STs are shit, no2 never trust no body, no3 always pay attention to your depth and finally no4 always be nice to you mother 💯 .
I miss diving although the last one was a memorable one lol.

[roryestarks]

I was on a dive trip to Grand Cayman. I was diving alone so the dive master asked me to buddy dive with a married couple. By the way, the dive master only dove for half the dive, then went back to the boat. The problem was that this other couple was more concerned with exploring than making sure that their "buddy" was safe. I have an advanced certification, but that doesn't mean that I'm that great a diver since I only dive once a year. On this dive, I was careful to check my gauge and decided not to stray too far from the boat, wanting to end the dive with 500 PSI in my tank. However, this couple wanted to wonder off to who knows where. When we got back on the boat, the male diver made a critical comment to the dive master that he didn't want to dive with me if I constantly checked my gauge (I didn't constantly check my gauge, but I was aware of the status of my air). This experience has caused me to feel apprehensive about going on dive trips where I have to buddy up with someone else. Kind of a bummer.

[bill]

The world needs more videos like this.

[alisak]

My first real wreck dive was an interesting one. I needed to do this dive in order to get my advanced certification, it was the last out of all the 5 dives. In the morning I alreaded felt a little nauseous but decided to go on the boat anyway. My instructor was training another couple for their first deep dive on the same dive. I was feeling comfortable once we were descended to about 30m. However after like 15 min. into the dive I literally got a little sick into my regulator. I signaled to my buddy/instructor that I wasn't feeling well so we shallowed up as she thought I was uncomfortable with too many people around. As one of the other divers was going through his air faster than I do through my underwear we ascended shortly after.
I ended up skipping the 2nd dive of the day, however I still successfully received my AOW certificate. End of the stroy: just do not go diving when you#re not feeling 100%

[markgiltner]

Been diving 33 years, man I could tell you some stories lol. Many are other divers but some are mine.
Like the day I got the nickname roadmap.
Forgot to hook up inflator whip to my dry suit. At 70 feet the squeeze was unbearable. Later at the motel room it's a holy S ! Moment, just picture that vulcanized suit being squeezed at 70 feet, yea my skin showed every crease and wrinkle of that suit. They called me roadmap the rest of the trip. Lol

[kelgale]

On my rescue course (as a part of my divemaster internship) as a crew we were doing liftbag skills and quick search patterns (total dive time was supposed to be 40mins at 8-10m)

I (along with a few others) took a 7L cylinder which I would often do for guided customer dives or fun dives without any problems lasting 50mins and coming up with a reserve of 70bar.

After our skills the instructor signalled that we would be going back to a specific mooring line, to ascend to the boat. When we arrived at the mooring there was a school of leopard sharks just off line and as a crew we stayed for another 10 minutes prior to ascending.

At our safety stop (not reqd but procedure) I ran out of air (initially thought a buddy was playing with my cylinder) and had to buddy breathe with another candidate to the surface (where I then orally inflated)

Best possible scenario on the best possible dive, but an awesome lesson in monitoring your air and not being complacent, will not be running out of air EVER again 🤙🏽

[kennethpang]

very entertaining stories and nice footage of the dive

[rvhbour]

3 person buddy team is actually pretty good if the divers are familiar with team diving