Today, I must admit, was one of the scariest times of my life. As we began to dive Jupiter was in alignment with mars and the moon… no just kidding! The high tide meant that the water was choppy which meant very little visibility underwater. As I got ready I noticed how a lot of the divers before me were coming up covered in Jellyfish. After getting dressed and lowered into the water, I had to walk 20m to the wreck which lies at 75 feet underwater. I was making my way across the seabed when my mask got all fogged up and despite my best efforts I could not clear it. Adding to this was the fact that every time I took a step, the silt on the seabed would stir up and reduce my visibility even more. Thirdly, at 75 feet there is not a lot of light so I had to move around in darkness (except for a crappy flashlight) trying to find the wreck which I finally walked into. To top it all off my comms began to fail and I could not hear what the surface was trying to tell me. During all this, my right eye began to burn. As I struggled to get my bearings, I began to breathe heavily and think of my wife and kids.
This picture I found online can give you an idea of little visibility
Truly this job is harder than I thought. After telling the surface that I could not see anything, I made my way back to the diving bell by pulling on my umbilical and found myself surrounded by a smack of jellyfish. As my eye continued to burn on the way up to the surface I had a quick loss or air exercise. A final spell in the decompression chamber on 02 and the dive was over. I found out later that a jellyfish tentacle had managed to get into the hat and caused my eye to burn.
1 comment:
Don't do this to me! Is this really worth it?
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