He was waving his hands and his head was up and down at the surface. He spit out the regulator, opened his mouth, try to suck in air, but swallowed water instead. I had had pressed the inflator of his diving equipment but somehow the buoyancy was not strong enough to keep his head above the surface.
I tried to shut the regulator back into his mouth, but he kept spitting it out. After a few tries, he was getting more panic and grabbed my arm. I wanted to shout at him for spitting out the regulator which was the only air supply he had. I did not risk to take out my regulator from my mouth. I was too close to him, and he could grapple me around the neck any second.
I already spent too much time and worried that he was choking on water. I tried to lay him up to keep his face above the surface. I failed and he grab my arm harder and harder. When I was running out of idea, my colleague came and pull him back to the boat.
After the drama came to an end, I still could not stop thinking of what I did wrong. I was supposed to handle this situation by myself. I was trained to be a lifeguard and a dive instructor. This was just another ordinary panic diver that I had dealt with for many times.
My colleague figured out the root cause that made the panic diver up and down at the surface when I went back to the boat. The host connecting to the inflator was a little loose. The inflator worked for a second only when I pressed the button. Then, it stopped inflating.
Not only I did not notice the dysfunctional inflator problem, I also made a huge mistake. There were more than one way to create buoyancy to support the panic diver. I should have taken out the diver’s weight belt. If I had done that, the diver’s head would instantly pop out of water even his diving equipment was only partially inflated. I could also fully inflate my diving equipment so that I could have become a giant rescue buoy.
To conclude, I was too anxious to overlook the alternatives at hand like the diver was too panic to spit out the air supply. I thought I were competent to deal all situations in water. In fact, I still have a long way to go.
