Me this time!
I was on a dive boat in Plymouth when the skipper bantered me about bringing some scallops back and being the accomodation guy, I said yes but I would need a bag.
Over we dropped into the drift of Drake's passage which was running at a couple of knots. I had the SMB up and was holding the bag with my buddy doing the scalloping. The routine was that I would turn into current and hold position while he picked up the scallops and deposited them in the net bag. I could only hold position for a little while as the SMB was dragging me up, so as I rose a couple of metres, I would turn and drift down with the current.
After about 30 mins the bag was getting pretty heavy and I was having to add more air to my wing which was causing some problems as I had the bag of scallops in my left hand, the spool and SMB in my right.
It then got to the stage where I was going up too quickly and because both hands were full, I couldn't dump the rapidly expanding air fast enough, so I (foolishly) decided to dump the scallops as I didn't want to lose the SMB. I was now very bouyant and hit the surface and lost my buddy. I had the presence of mind to go back down and then do a slow ascent to the surface. During the descent I tried to find my buddy again, but he was gone but he had seen me make my ascent with a regulator in my mouth so wasn't too concerned about my safety.
After the slow ascent I signalled for the boat to come over and they picked me up but there was no sign of my buddies SMB and was starting to get concerned but after a few minutes on the boat it surfaced and we picked him up complete with scallops.
When the bag was back on the boat we reckon it was in the region of 10kg hence the fast ascent when I dropped it.
In addition, my buddy had had a freeflow of his drysuit inflation hose when he tried to inflate the CC SMB so he had to shutdown the left post!!
Lessons learned:
If scalloping or lifting anything more than 3-4 kg make sure that the bag is not linked to you, but rather another bouyant tool such as a lift bag or SMB. Ooooh just like the PADI manual says
If you are going to drop anything, don't worry about the cost, it might be that dropping the expensive thing saves your life.
Don't get yourself in the situation to start with by thinking through what you are going to do on the dive.
If using a DS inflate for a CC SMB, try it out first in the safe environment, not in a 2-3 kt current on a drift dive!
Always have at least one hand free to dump air from the wing.