The Fear Underwater

Cecilia and I had been in Raja Ampat, a remote archipelago in the far eastern part of Indonesia, for four days.  We had chosen Cove Eco Resort, situated on Yeben Island right in the middle of diver’s paradise, as the place we wanted to spend our first year wedding anniversary.  It was our first dive of the day and our 8th dive of the trip. We were at Anita’s Garden – a dive site known for its technicolor corals and huge sea fans — staples at many of Raja’s dive sites.

At this point, Cecilia would still be considered a beginner diver with only 13 dives under her belt — six from her PADI Open Water course in Zanzibar and the seven previous dives in Raja.  She was fully bought into diving, hooked right from the start (and incredibly lucky that her second place to dive was arguably the best place in the world to dive). On the other hand, I was a seasoned veteran holding certification as a PADI Rescue Diver, with well over 100 dives under my belt at various types of dive sites around the world.

For the first 20 minutes of the dive, we drifted with the current along the edge of the downsloping ocean floor at approximately 15 meters depth, following our beloved guide, Wena, as he searched for different underwater marvels to point out (like the pygmy seahorse pictured here).  We came to a junction in the sea floor — we needed to make a 90 degree turn if we were to keep following the corals; otherwise, if we stuck with the current, we’d drift out into deeper waters with nothing but the dark depths of the ocean to peer into. Wena made the left turn and was greeted by a strong current pushing against the desired path of travel.  Cecilia and I attempted the turn felt the current in our face, and we realized this wasn’t going to work. I looked back to see Cecilia to being dragged out to sea. Wena and I let the current take us until we were a group of three again, and we then kicked hard against the current until we could shelter behind a large coral and avoid the strong current.

I started reflecting on what just happened – seeing Cecilia dragged away scared me and swimming against the current had winded me.  And that’s when the fear set in. It has only happened to me once before on a dive — you’re 15 meters deep, you’re breathing rate speeds up, you’re sucking in as much air through the regulator as possible, and you still feel like it’s not enough.  My body went tingly and my instincts told me to get to the surface as quickly as possible so I could get that much desired deep breath of air. Luckily, my training and my previous experience was telling me that would be a terrible idea (potentially keeping me from diving the rest of the trip) and that I just needed to chill out and breathe slowly.  After a minute of resting on the ocean floor and breathing slowly, the tingling stopped and my mind cleared. I’d survived a full-on panic attack and was going to be fine. I wish I could say that was the last eventful moment of the dive.

At this point, trying to continue the dive was pointless — any attempt to leave the shelter of our current location and see more of the site would result in us being swept out to sea.  We agreed the next move would be to start heading up for the crucial 3-minute safety stop at 5 meters, letting the current take us as it pleased. We left our shelter, the current dragged us out to sea, but we were able to easily move towards the surface.  I was right behind Wena, keeping an eye on my dive computer, currently reading 6m depth, when I turned to look for Cecilia. She wasn’t there. I searched horizontally for 360 degrees, and then looked down. She was in perfect diver form and shrinking in size as the down draft swept her deeper.  I freaked out and took off after her, pointlessly screaming at her to look up and swim towards us. I caught up to her (at 19.3m, later confirmed by my dive computer), grabbed her tank, pulled her near me and immediately starting inflating her BCD while also inflating my own. I could feel the strength of the downcurrent, and the fact that the bubbles from our exhales were encircling our face instead of rising towards the surface confirmed the situation.  At this point I was freaking out and doing everything I could think of to keep us from sinking deeper. By now, Wena had caught up with both of us and could see the panic signaled by the over-inflated BCDs (generally a bad idea during an attempt to surface). He quickly started working against my panic-fueled actions and dumped our BCDs while imploring us to hold on to the rope tied to the surface marker buoy (SMB) he’d released to signal our location to the dive board.  The SMB provided sufficient buoyancy to keep us from being dragged away, allowing us to gain our composure while the bubbles still swirled around our masks.

We eventually surfaced and I felt relief like I hadn’t felt in years.  Cecilia on the other hand, looked at Wena and asked what all the commotion was about.  She made it through the entire episode without having a clue what had transpired. Ignorance in this case truly was bliss.