Wreck Diving & its dangers

 Over the CNY weekend, I was off in Tioman to take the PADI Deep Diver Specialty & PADI Wreck Diver Specialty.. since both are inter-related, both can be taken as a combo course. 

Each specialty requires 4 dives, but however, since I already had taken both as an adventure dive during my Advanced Open Water, one of the dives from AOW can then be credited to the specialty, thus, I only require 3 dives each.. 

Deep & Wreck  are usually taken together as wrecks are usually located deep, below the reach of Open Water divers.. 

In Deep Diver Specialty, divers dive to about 36-38metres, up to a maximum of 40metres.. 

I would strongly recommend to use Nitrox to allow longer bottom time.. Nitrox is also a specialty by itself.. 

I was using EANx28% for my deep dives training, which allows me to go to a maximum operating depth of 39.9metres.. 

The descend was pretty straightforward.. It was a straight drop down to 36metres and then swim around at that depth, paying close attention to the NDL (no decrompression limit) as well as how fast air consumption was..

Standard practise was to test your judgement and how fast you can perform simple task at depth, as the effect of narcosis is always there.. 

For me, I felt light headed, like a drunk feeling..

Upon ascending, at 50bar of air left in my cylinder, I was then taught to switch over to using a "pony bottle" to breathe.. A pony bottle is a smaller independent tank that was either brought as a sidemount or hang at 5m from the bouy/boat.. 

This is to ensure enough gas supply to safely surface as there are multiple safety stops that needed to be done.. A deep dive would require multiple safety stops, for obvious reasons.. A 1-minute safety stop at 15metres and a 5-minutes safety stop at 5metres.. 

The pony bottle has about 100bar of air, but at the rate I was using the pony bottle to ascend, I used around 50 bar just to do the safety stops and ascend.. At 30m, the maximum bottom time was just 16 minutes, using EANx28%, hence including the descend and ascend, it comes to about just below 30 minutes for the whole dive.. 

In Wreck Diver Specialty, there were several things to accomplish..First is to sketch out the wreck, in my case, I use KM Sipadan as my training wreck.. From the sketch, I know I am a terrible artist.. 

As Wreck Diving involves going inside the wreck, the next fundamental thing to learn is to lay out the line from the entrance of the wreck to the exit.. 

I never really expected the insides of the wreck to be so dark and filled with silt! Even a fin kick or bubbles from breathing can stir up the silt and cause zero visibility! 

Like they say, every experience is a teacher, and I get to experience first hand what it feels like to get stuck inside the wreck.. 

Obviously it was not a good thing to get stuck but shit happens sometimes..

I got caught in one of the doors as we were aware there are things that have become loose or disintegrated and obstructed the path partially.. I wanted to avoid the protruding steels as I lay the reel line, but I was wedged in between, I suddenly find myself stuck, unable to move forward or backwards or sideways..  Then I stopped, and put my training to test.. 

Think.

Breathe. 

Relax. 

Then I decided not to wait for my instructor which was way behind me, so I used some force on my arms to push myself ahead to set free, by that time, I have no choice but to also kick on whatever things to free myself, stirring up a soup of silt!

My instructor asked me when at the surface why was the visibility so bad, what did I do! Hahaha... then only I told him I got stuck and need to free myself ASAP.. turn around and abort penetrating deeper..

And lastly, on the last Deep+Wreck dive, one of the divers was nauseous at the surface due to choppy waters, and began throwing up.. Sensing she couldn't make her way back to the boat on her own, my rescue instinct kicked in..

I grabbed her tank from behind and started to pull her along, she began throwing up more, and there I was, together with her vomit.. 🤮 

 

Not a good sight, and not something I want to remember, but it's real and it happens.. 

I then descended a little and did what we call, the tired diver tow using the underarm tow. I held her hand and tow her back to the boat.. yeah she threw up more once she got on to the boat.. 

But it was a good real-life first hand experience for me to practise what I've learnt, to perform a simple rescue.. 

Because shit happens, and when it does, oh boy someone better know what to do..

And that is why, being a rescue diver is very important..