[Humber Coastguard]

My experience of dealing with incidents involving Decompression Sickness over the last couple of years leads me to the conclusion that these incidents are mainly caused by one of the following reasons:

1. DSMB – The diver is unable to deploy the DSMB correctly and makes a rapid ascent.

2. Drysuit – The diver is unable to dump air fast enough, often due to being too heavily weighted and makes a rapid ascent.

3. Out of air – The diver runs out of air and has to make a rapid ascent.

4. Missed stop - Due to one of the above reasons the diver is unable to make a decompression stop.


There are of course some cases where the diver has followed a normal dive profile and still suffered from DCS.

So that we have better information for our accident prevention initiatives and as a safety guide to other divers - what was the cause of your bend? Was it one of the above reasons or something different?

Are there any lessons to be learnt from your experience?