Two things I would like to add.
Firstly, a few years back I thought I would take a pic of an unusual sea urchin I had found in just over a hundred feet of water. While trying to get a pic, it slipped off my gloved hand and not knowing any better I gently pushed it back with the non glove hand, from there a strange pain and heat spreading through out firstly, then a dull ache every where started, next was dizziness and every thing started to look weird and I felt like I was going to loose consciousness as I took my pics. I then grabbed my gear and went up to shallower waters and just laid there for a while going in and out of semi consciousness or more so another sort of feeling that I can’t describe, but I couldn’t easily move for a few minutes. It went away quite fast and that night I sent off an email and got this thing identified by the Q museum, they told me I was very lucky!
The pics that follow are of it.
The next is a young Asian woman that died at our south port seaway wave beak Island popular dive site. She died in ten feet of water because they would not make it well known in her course that you drop your weight belt as a major line of defence against either death or so they can find the body!
I argued about this poor girl dieing because of money and stupidity by the teachers of her on the auz dive forum and two dive instructors got angry and said, if they made this that clear to new divers, they would not do their course thinking something that bad may happen. My wife knew well to drop her weight belt as I taught her, she survived that day when things went wrong for her while I wasn’t watching.
Oh and maybe always swim into the current so you can drift back to the boat.
The main things here are the current, we have to live with the east auzy current at 3 to 6 knots at times and always a rope from the front anchor to the back or we wont get to the front at all,lol. and once down you hide behind structures to get out of the current. Then long spin sea urchins, those are our main issues of safety. I don't use an ocy, very few of us do, we get in and its a case of "see you back in the boat later", that's the way it has been for over 40 years of my scuba diving and sometimes for my free diving as well.
Twice I have dropped my weight belt in all this time and they were very close calls. There is more to just dropping your weight belt, like letting air out as you go up and more, but you get my drift.
