Last night after the 2.5 hour drive back from diving I was very sore and feeling my 30 years of age. No longer am I 20 my body won’t take the abuse! It was a long day (8am-2:30pm) of rescue scenarios which meant lots of getting in and out of the water including towing and dragging únconcios divers up the beach. Karl, Guy and I aced the last scenario so much so that Bruce out instructor said it was the best demonstration he had seen of teamwork etc.

The sceario is you are sitting on the beach getting ready for a dive and a diver comes out of the water missing his buddy. You have to question the diver to find out where he thinks he last saw the diver. They are not meant to volunteer information you have to ask the necessary questions. Then you have to kit up as a team, give specific instructions to ”people” who are ashore i.e. call 911, get oxygen and a first aid kit, post lookouts and look for bubbles, send someone to check the diver didn’t go off for lunch without telling anyone etc. You then enter the water and go down to the bottom where the diver was last seen and then start an expanding box search this was hard as the visibility was only 4 feet. We had one person navigating with a compass and one person looking to each side searching the bottom and amongst the kelp. We found the diver ”non responsive and not breathing’ and brought him to the surface. Between the three of us we did rescue breathing, took off the divers and our equipment while towing the diver to the shore. We than pulled him up on the beach and started CPR and administered O2.

The whole thing to 28 minutes from when the diver exited the water telling us he was missing his buddy to putting him on O2 and doing chest compressions. This was very fast for the conditions but in real life unless the person was in respiratory arrest for more than 6 minutes of that period the would be dead or have serious brain damage. It just goes to show how important it is to stay with your buddy when you are diving and not lose each other.