That $600 dive in zero vis last Thursday was the worst day I've had on the job

We were pulling mooring lines in Charleston harbor and I couldn't see my hand six inches from my face, got tangled in an old fishing net for twenty minutes. My comms went dead halfway through and I had to rely on rope pulls to tell the tender I was stuck. Has anyone else had a day where everything went wrong underwater and you just had to fight through it?

2 comments

2 Comments

keith_henderson13d ago

That net scenario is rough. Your comms dying is the worst part. When you can't talk and you're tangled, your brain goes straight to worst case scenarios. I've had a few close calls with line entanglement in low vis, and it always comes down to staying calm and working through it systematically. Cutting yourself free is a last resort move but sometimes it's the only option. Glad you got out of that net intact, that could have gone real bad real fast.

betty_fisher513d ago

My buddy had a similar mess up in the Gulf last year, got hung up on a piece of wreckage from an old shrimp boat and had to cut his own line to get free. He was down there for forty minutes, breathing off his backup the whole time, and his tender thought he was just checking the bottom. He still talks about the feeling of that net wrapped around his fins, says it was like swimming in molasses with a blindfold on.