I witnessed something stupid & potentially very dangerous on a recent dive.

[Skinsfan1311]

Last week we were diving in Grand Cayman.

The first dive of the day was a max depth of around 100'.

We headed over to the second dive site, which was a very short boat ride. Some of us were jumped off the boat, to cool off, float around, snorkel, (pee!), whatever, during our surface intervals.

Upon hearing that the top of the coral-head below was only about 40', this one guy tells his wife that he's going to dive in and see if he could touch it. He then proceeded to try to do so.

Bear in mind, that we were only about 15 minutes into our SI's!.

The DM was quite irate and told the guy that "I've seen people get bent pulling stunts like that! Do not ever do that again!"

Fortunately, the guy did not seem to suffer any injuries, but that sure was an eye-opener and a pretty valuable lesson.

I'm also kinda embarrassed to say that as I watched the guy pull that stunt the thought that it could be dangerous never even crossed my mind!

I've definitely filed that in my "lessons learned" category.

[gthomas]

I think learning from other mistakes is a lot less painful than learning from yours

[Foo2]

Eeek! That's kind of scary! Glad the guy was ok and thanks for sharing. We can all use that reminder now and then. Just because we no longer have the reg in our mouths doesn't mean that we don't still have nitrogen in our system.

[Martin2]

Easy to forget sometimes how fragile we really are underwater.

[Charles R]

Glad to hear everyone is ok and this moron did not kill himself. Thank you for sharing we can all use a reminder of what not to do.

[mselizann]

well- and what a jerk for trying to touch coral anyways!

[Geoff_T]

Originally Posted by mselizann

well- and what a jerk for trying to touch coral anyways!

hey you never know he could have gotten a fist full of fire coral and bent!

[Vercingetorix]

And Darwin misses yet another excellent opportunity

[RoyN]

Well, lesson learn and another one for the archive.

[MConnelly2]

Ooooh, ooooh, perfect thread title for me to admit to my latest near-dustup with Darwin. Diving off my kayak on the jetties, looking for lobster. Big old Loon 160T tandem kayak. I've gotten pretty good at getting in and out of the thing, and I usually hop in and out in 4 feet of water anyhow.

Finally found a lobster this year, good sized, too. Had left the bag behind, hadn't seen ANYTHING yet this year, didn't expect to, just wanted an excuse to go diving with the Mares Abyss my dear wife bought me for Christmas, so just carefully lugged it along, tossed it in the kayak. Got all my stuff off and stowed the way I wanted it, hopped in, stowed the anchor (a 6lb. hard weight on some type II), un-bungeed the paddle, and started heading for home.

Now, the Loon isn't a sit-on-top job. It's a sit-inside battlewagon of a kayak. foot braces up high on either side, where of course my feet were planted. That lobster had crawled to halfway between my knees and where I didn't want it to go before I realized what was likely about to happen - and this isn't a southern spiny lobster. This was a New England, cold, pissed off lobster with two mean claws crawling straight towards my lap. I very nearly backrolled off that kayak.

So, "Stupid and potentially very dangerous" - yup, got that out of the way for the season. And it's been a week so I'm willing to laugh about it now.