She needs to use those big leg muscles with flippers, she was really only relying on her arms. Dropping her weight belt would also have been a big help to her.
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Yes, as you descend the air in your BCD (buoyancy compensator device - your vest you fill with air) and in your lungs is compressed, to retain neutral buoyancy she should’ve added air to her BCD (you can do via a button to fill it with air from your tank), otherwise you could take a deep breath and see if that get’s you back to a neutral buoyancy depth. As you continue to descend you may do so at a faster and faster rate the more you become compressed - a feedback loop of sorts. This may have caused her panic, who knows? You can see at the 27 second mark she’s descended a bit and has begun flailing her arms around - it’s not like swimming at the surface in a pool without gear, using your arms/hands, other than to change direction, is a big waster of energy (tank air).
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SNUBA is also going to limit how deep you go, you shouldn’t be below one atmosphere (33’ or so), so no worries on the bends. There are always free trials, I highly recommend them and getting classes from a reputable dive center. It’s been 20 years since I was certified and I still know this stuff in a way that my wife, who got a weekend certification later than I did, doesn’t.
Climbing the stairs to nowhere.
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For the record, my dive instructor was by the book in every way. I’m sure there are a lot of lousy PADI instructors, but mine was excellent.
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Non-diver. Anyone want to explain PADI to me and what the reputation is?
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It’s one of the worldwide certification organizations. SCUBA is an activity that requires clarity on training – minimum requirements at each level – so having only a handful of major certification organizations makes it easier to keep track of what each diver’s level of experience and training certification means.
It took about 44 seconds to get her to the surface of the water once she panicked. You won’t die just because you can’t breathe in any oxygen for less than a minute. The danger was in her either fighting others to the point of damaging THEIR equipment and/or hurting them, or swallowing too much water. The big thing to remember is that there has to be movement of air one way or another (in or out) at all times underwater, so even if you can’t breathe in you still have to breathe out.
This situation is a good example of why you always dive with AT MINIMUM a partner, but usually in a group of paired up divers with at least one trained instructor supervising.
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Definitely not Diamond Head or anywhere in Hawaii. The video is in green water and they’re wearing thick wetsuits. My guess is that it might be somewhere in England (Update: Capetown, apparently). It looks like a checkout dive to me: the filming diver checks on multiple rendezvousing divers, gives ascend signal, it turns out not to be very deep (thank God).
In the early seconds, you can see that she’s pawing at the water with her hands and breathing heavily, a sure sign that she feels overweighted and is beginning to panic. Rather than add air to her BC or fin harder, she’s trying to scull her way up.
The filming diver, who approached the panicked diver from the front and did an uncontrolled ascent risked his or her own life. Drowning people are dangerous and uncontrolled ascents can easily lead to overpressure injuries or bends.
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“where the tank was faulty and had been leaking air…”
I think your friend may have been fibbing to save face. Take a look at this video and you’ll get a sense of what a single lungful of air looks like, bubble-wise. 80 cubic feet of air takes a long time to go through even emitting big noisy bubbles. It’s not uncommon for regulators to have slow leaks that emit a steady fizzle of bubbles and those amount to reducing dive time by a couple of minutes.
Either your buddy went in with a near-empty tank or he barely opened the tank valve and it couldn’t supply enough volume.
Oh, and for the record, not only is passing out worse than the bends but if your buddy ran out of air on his way down, he wasn’t down long enough to be risking the bends! 
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Cape Town, apparently.
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No, the thumbs-up given by the filming diver was not an “OK” signal, it was an “ascend now” signal. You can see he/she is saying “Come here and ascend together.” It’s a little confusing because at :13 one of the other divers responds to the ascend signal with “two big thumbs up!” This is one of the reasons why I think the filming diver was an instructor and this was a checkout dive (that is to say, an instructional dive for beginners).
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In the UK we tend to use metres rather than feet when diving. I’m an (amateur, BSAC) instructor myself, I’ve not had anyone panic at that depth but I have had people forget what to do when practicing changing regulators, and even 2m down that’s scary.
Scuba is a lot of fun, but it is definitely something where I would say don’t try to do it too quickly or too cheaply. There are some great instructors and some that are somewhat lax (with all agencies). If anyone is interested in diving check out the rating of the specific shop/instructor if you can, consider asking online for recommendations (I’m a member of thediveforum.com )
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Yeah, that’s the part that really bothered me. I assume it was a concerned friend and not a more trained professional.
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The Daily Heil story says he was just another person on the training dive, they got separated from the instructor.
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Professional Association of Diving Instructors. I learned from their course, like @chgoliz and others, and I, too, had a great experience doing it–25+ years ago, so I can’t comment on anything they do currently. From WP’s Criticism bit on the org:
PADI is often subject to criticism. In particular, two accusations are sometimes made against the organization: that it "dumbs down" scuba diving training courses, making them too short and easy...and that it "profiteers" from demand for diver training.
Diving is a lot of fun, but for the cost and time invested, I’d recommend spending that same time/cost becoming a good swimmer and then go snorkeling in good spots. Good fins, mask/goggles will take you plenty far enough with sights aplenty.
Good call…er…@daneel et.al. I saw Table Mountain and thought Diamond Head. I’d surf SA, but diving? Not sure I’m brave enough for that.
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That thing you said about the bends.
I’m looking at DH right now (from my back lanai), and a photo of Table Mountain. They do look remarkably similar, though I suspect the latter is quite a bit larger.
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Is it okay if I don’t understand this non-sequitor?
Everybody was coming up way too fast already. Don’t be faster than your bubbles. You can continuously exhale your last breath for several minutes on the way. There’s no reason to hurry. Unless you panic, it isn’t even uncomfortable.
\ the entire video is only 1:24 long.
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…and that is why I have only Scuba dived once. I am a good swimmer, I can hold my breath and swim underwater, etc. but going deeper under water and breathing form the regulator was so unnatural to me. I have (had, continue to) spent my whole life going to the surface to get air that I almost chickened out on my first dive (a quick tourist lesson the day before and then the dive with instructors the next day on the Caymans). It was totally mind over matter for me to descend finally.
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