Archives > My Shallow Water Blackout
Although in two minds about writing this article, I feel the need to blow any misconception that some may have. I must also add, that actually being here to tell the story is not the norm. In my opinion the most vulnerable diver is the intermediate diver who has enough skill & physical practice to make a deep dive, but not experienced enough to know their boundaries. This only comes with time in the water. I have been diving for about nine years give or take the occasional change of job location. It was the early days when I was trying to keep up with the boys. Let me go through this event as it happened. I dived down after breathing a bit fast. On the way down my heart rate was not relaxed. But completely inflated, I started my decent. As the backpressure increased against my lungs I started to feel more comfortable. By the time I made it to the bottom, I felt absolutely euphoric, spending quite some time just looking around. At the time of the incident I was not overly experienced & took the feeling as novel . Trying not to make this a tick list of the do's & don'ts of diving, more so giving a few indicators of a bad dive. The dive was only 15metres, no tide, the water was warm & the sea conditions were very tame. Eventually feeling the need to make an ascent. As I got closer to the surface, the urge to breath became very strong in a very short time. The tingles in my leg began, & for this to be happening means that I'm already in trouble. Looking straight up I still had about five or so metres between the me and the surface. I'm thinking, "This is not good". And that my friend, was my last conscious thought that went through my anoxic head. I will have to take a third party point of view for the rest of this tale. For a short while there were strange erratic dreams. With no idea where I was or what I was doing. So far gone infact I didn't even know who I was. Then there was kind of a hard spastic feeling, which was the "physical" me coughing but still no idea of who or what. Then a buzzing sound followed by my sense of hearing came back. Then a small widening tunnel of light. Still coughing & gargling my consciousness came back, only then realizing my predicament. Shocked & scared, I rushed to the nearest rock, pulling myself almost completely out of the water. Still realizing just how close I came to death. The misconception a lot of us have thought is the same thing "if I feel something is wrong, I will undo my weight belt". What we must remember is the oxygen in the brain is depleted, which means the brain cannot think anymore. The time between tingles in the legs & passing out was maybe four seconds & in that time I was not really thinking straight. I cannot emphasize this enough, if you think that you might be in trouble, you are already in trouble. In my case I was not particularly relaxed, but even when the preparation for a dive is good, things can still go wrong. Ron Bakker