My first time

[endoman]

First time underater was a Snuba experience in Barbados in the summer just gone.

I booked a Snuba experience for my self and my 13 yr old son. We were taken out on the boat to a site above some wrecks, and asked about our previous experience. Neither of us had any except snorkelling, and everyone else on the boat, 8 in total was similar. We were shown the equipment, how to clear a mask, equalise, and a few basic signals. Total instruction time maybe 10 minutes. We got into the water placed the reg and dipped heads under. It was amazing what I could see. I hung onto the float and waited for the others sharing our raft for four to get in.

Snuba uses a normal reg on a 20 foot hose with the tank on the surface. We were escorted by a guy in Scuba gear ? DM? We had been swimming for some time, I later found out around 35 minutes, when breathing got difficult. It was not impossible to breath, but harder to get a breath. I was right next to my son and could see he felt the same. We surfaced at once from the depth we were at, I guess around 18 feet. We held onto the raft and both said we found it hard to breath. A short while later the Scuba guy came up, looked at the tank spg, and it read zero. We had run out of air. We had no idea about how spg's worked and that we could run out, nor that we had to breath at all times while under water. Very , very fortunately we both tried to breath all the way to the surface, and avoided any injuries. The Scuba guy just made a joke of it and said " Oh, you guys sucked all the air! " We were sharing the cylinder I guess. My lad hasn't wanted to dive again, but is not scared about what happened, I don't think he knows what could have happened. I think the fact the other 2 divers sharing the raft were californian personal trainers in tiny bikinis may have had something to do with it

Well I enjoyed it so much I signed up for OW ( with a different dive school) and have gained certification. Since coming back I have done AOW in UK and Nitrox as well and have a further dozen or so dives under my belt.

I am now pretty freaked as to what could have happened, and why the guy didn't check the air levels enough, or even mention out of air signals. He was looking after 2 other divers as well, and they were having troubles equalising and stayed pretty close to the surface, where I was down near the bottom exploring the wrecks the whole time.

[wilbo]

sounds like you had a pretty lucky escape to me - both from not drowning, over expansion injuries and from the DM himself.. Excellent to read it didn't put you off..

Standards are there to be flouted by some it would seem - especially when money is the driving force..

I've seen some real shockers too..