Person Online Asks Deep Sea Divers To Share The Most Horrifying Experiences Underwater, 26 Folks Deliver

Diving the day before a hurricane on a small south pacific island. Out of nowhere a black and white sea snake (venomous) wrapped itself around my arm. Apparently this happens from time to time before major storms- they can sense it and look for things that are heading towards the shore so that they don't have to put in so much effort to get out of the sea. As soon as I was in the shallows it uncurled and headed up the beach where it hid under a breadfruit tree.

I thought I was going to get bitten to death by a snake at sea... Turns out I was just a taxi for a very calm but rather rushed reptile.

The only scare I've had is some jack**s in a yacht cruising through our dive location at full throttle. You could hear the boat coming for a solid minute or two before it flew over our heads.
Our boat had a dive flag on it and we had a buoy with a dive flag on it. They didn't even slow down.
Barracuda, sharks, rays, manatees, dolphins... All cool. Humans are way scarier.

I wear heavy prescription lenses and can’t wear contact lenses. Halfway through a week long liveaboard dive trip, someone dropped a tank on my prescription mask and shattered it. I usually had a second set with me, but could not find them and only brought one, because hey, nothing had ever happened before.

I am functionally blind without corrective lenses; I can see colors and that’s about it, starting about five inches from my face. I was devastated, but decided to go diving anyway, with my husband as my seeing-eye diver. I could see my gauges, so I felt reasonably safe.

It was among the most amazing three days of diving I’ve ever had. I saw the colors, shapes, and movement. Without being focused on the details, I actually took many of the best underwater photos I’d ever taken. I wasn’t worried about focusing on a particular coral or fish; I was looking at the larger color patterns.

So it didn’t turn out to be the disaster I’d thought it was.

Not me but my brother, and not deep sea, sorry. He was 18, part of the dive club at his school. They went on a diving trip. The crew that handled the dive counted heads wrong and halfway through the dive the boat went back to shore without them...So there they were 2km from shore with their only option to swim back. There were about 5 of them, 2 girls 3 guys. All of them between 15-18 y/o. About halfway through one of the girls couldn’t swim anymore and started crying, my brother along with another guy swam with her, dragging her along, making sure she didn’t drown. Everyone made it out ok.

Worst part, school tried to hide it, and had the audacity to suspend my brother from school for catching him with a beer while on the trip. Needless to say they were in deep s**t when it came out. Not sure exactly what happened though.

The Byford Dolphin diving bell accident

Long story short, some divers came up from an extremely deep dive at an oil drilling rig, and someone f****d up the decompression procedure and opened the door while the chamber was still pressurized at depth.

The four divers were instantly killed, and the one nearest the door literally exploded and they found bits of his body all over the oil rig.

So, next time someone tells you that people don't explode in decompression chambers like you see in the movies... tell them they're wrong.

Saved someone from drowning while SCUBA Diving... person had an epileptic seizure at 85 feet of water in a pitch black cavern that I was diving also. I was hovering above just watching the flashlights move about when I noticed one flashlight not moving, I swam down and was met with the other diver with no regulator in their mouth, eyes open and just on their knees. The divers buddy was next to them and in complete shock to what was going on and was not assisting whatsoever. 15 years of diving and instructor training came over me like it was second nature. I thought her regulator just came out so I popped mine out and offered it to her, that when I noticed she had done mentally checked out. I popped my #2 regulator in my mouth and attempted to put my #1 regulator in her mouth but her teeth were completely clenched... I then press the purged button to get air into her mouth and noticed her cheeks moving so I know air was getting in there. That was good enough for me, I then grabbed her under her arm and get the regulator flowing in her mouth and swan to the opening of the cavern and then up over 60 feet to get her to the surface. One on the surface did everything I was trained to do, inflate bc, dumped her weights, got her on her back and started towing to land. As I'm towing her in she is regurgitating all the water she swallowed and inhaled, it seemed like gallons of water. Got her to land where other divers assisted me in getting all her gear off. She was breathing fine and alive but in shock for a while and slowly came around like nothing happened. We were very lucky that we were only 10 minutes into the dive or for sure we would have both been bent and spending time in a hyperbaric chamber. The crazy thing is she didn’t tell anyone she had epilepsy and when we later reviewed her consent form she checked off “no” to epilepsy. I put myself at risk shooting up to the surface like that but if I came across that situation again I would not hesitate to save someone’s life.

I got the bends once. I was careful. Followed my charts and my computer. Had appropriate depths and surface time. But I didn’t drink enough water so I was all out of wack.

Felt fine until I got home, mild headache. Then I woke up and it was just pain in my left arm. Elbows. fingers. Couldn’t even bend them without bad pain. My headache was intense and I was so dizzy. Called my older more experienced dive buddy and I got rushed to the hospital.

Docs got me hooked up and fluids, checked my dive logs while the decompression chamber was set up. And then got me in there with a nurse. 8 hours in a tube about the length of a car but as wide as maybe a double bed? I was on oxygen and hooked up to an IV and it was so loud, with all the air rushing in. As soon as I got to “depth” the pain vanished. It was crazy.

I’m fine now obviously. But I wasn’t allowed to dive for a month which sucked but hey. The dives were pretty great

Not my story but my parents. They like to scuba dive when traveling and have gone several times over the years. Once they visited Mexico and went diving there before I was born. I'm not sure where they were exactly, but my mom was slightly lower down than my dad and looking at the ocean floor. He was looking up and around. My mom had on a gold necklace that was floating in the water around her, it was a sunny day and a fairly shallow dive so it was sparkling.

From my mom's pov, she was going along having a grand old time looking at the sea critters below, when suddenly my dad grabbed her and started frantically shaking her arm to get her attention. She looked up and a barracuda was directly in front of her, closer than was comfortable and staring intently, scary teeth on full display. It was focused on the shiny necklace and was just hovering there, transfixed. She slowly moved up her hand to cover the necklace and they slowly and calmly moved away from it and it took off without bothering them anymore, but still pretty unsettling and taught my mom to be a little more aware of her surroundings when diving

tl;dr I fell ‘asleep’ while diving.

The weather had been pretty hot and the water temp was also around 26C. We’d done a dive and a long swim in the morning. We then headed out for our second dive and the boat dropped us in the wrong spot. So we had to swim against a massive current to get to our intended site. Halfway into the swim I just felt like I needed a nap. And so, I closed my eyes and did exactly that. It felt so peaceful... I immediately dropped down to an even deeper depth and was lucky that one of the guys on the dive turned around at that moment and saw what was happening. He swam as fast as he could towards me and caught me. He asked if I was ok, I said I was and passed out again, this time spitting my reg out and started blowing bubbles. He then went behind me, shoved my reg back in, wrapped his arms around me and took me straight to the surface. He saved my life.

I wear contacts so getting water in my mask is extra bad as I can't open my eyes under water. Shortly after being told about a shark colliding with my friend from behind and removing his mask I am pretty scared about this (not sharks in general.) And I see a shark heading for me. They are curious, they often shoulder bump you as they turn at the last second. But she wasn't changing course. I stayed calm and still as long as I could and at the last second before she hit my mask I ducked. Except instead of ducking under I just headbutted her right in the nose. Everyone saw and thinks it was the funniest thing ever. I may be the only person alive who headbutted an 11foot shark in the nose but it was because I was scared she would take my goggles off.

Free dove to about 160 ft in Deans Blue hole in the Bahamas. It’s where a lot of the free diving world records are set - super neat place, google a picture.

Anyway I’d never really been past 100ft freediving, but this was the perfect place to do it. No current, there’s ropes to keep you straight and allow a slight pull back up.

Scary part is that you become pretty strongly negatively buoyant after like 60ft, so you’re basically hauling a** down while doing nothing and using very little air. So I’m dazed out a bit feeling good and counting the lines that mark depth and all of a sudden feel pressure like my trachea is going to collapse and wake up and realize I’ve counted to the line that’s around 160 ft or so.

Very scary moment because I wasn’t sure if my body could take the depth or if I had gone too far and wouldn’t have enough air to get back up, which is a much slower and more air intensive process.

I was diving under an oil rig between Long Beach and Catalina island. I was collecting sea scallops at around 60ft or so and knowing that there were seals all around I always kept an eye out for sharks, you just can't help but think about them. So I was just about to finish my dive but I was looking for one more scallop for dinner and I saw a blur swoosh right by me just in front of my face. My initial immediate reaction was SHARK!, but it was just a damn seal playing with me. I literally was screaming under water for a couple of seconds. Funny thing is I have over 25 logged open water dives, some at night, mostly around Catalina and I never saw a shark.

Not mine but my uncles. My uncle got lost from a group and was beginning to start surfacing when 5 or 6 guys grab him and drag him to a small boat...turns out he strayed into a very small military installation nearby and didn’t realize it. He got grabbed up by some navy divers...kinda crazy

My biology teacher told us that she once was swimming in the south of the Philippines because she was trying to find an elusive sea horse and she went quite deep at night when they are more active and she got attacked by a shark and her team got out fast , the next day they found a turtle that was bitten in half shell included that was pretty big and its its supposedly the last time she went diving in that area

Only thing that really scares me is lung expansion injuries. So the one time I was freaked out was swimming near a wreck at about 100ft. I lost perspective (and buoyancy control) and suddenly realized I had surfaced about 40ft in 30s or less. Visions of the bends and a popped lung instantly came to mind and dropped a ton of air from my BC to get back to depth in a hurry. Got a massive squeeze from it in my ears, but it gave me a chance to calm the f**k down and get a better sense of where I was and reestablish buoyancy control.

Bottom line - the scariest things that can happen while driving is the s**t you can do to yourself.

It wasn't exactly a deep dive, but it was one of the most terrifying moments of my life. I was on a beach dive with my parents, having swum from the beach out to a small reef and then descending. It was only a few minutes after getting down to the reef that something started going on with my parents. My mother was agitated and clutching her chest. We surfaced and she started spitting up dark liquid and struggling to breathe. Fortunately, it was a busy beach and after we inflated an emergency buoy, lifeguards rushed out and carried her back to the shore where an ambulance waited. It turned out she'd had swimmers edema induced by the greater pressure. Things turned out fine, but having a medical emergency underwater in the ocean is a specially level of scary.

Not exactly a horror story, but that one time as we were circling a reef I saw a huge eye that belonged to something buried in a sand. We just looked at each other as I passed by. I can tell it was definitely curious but non aggressive. Had a weird feeling afterwards.

I did a shipwreck night dive on New Years Eve one year, and it was spooky as hell. 80 ft down, really small plane. Visibility was obviously not great (I've only done this one night dive), so these slow moving fish would come looming out of the dark...

Scarier to me was getting back on the boat, because it got really stormy. You'd be looking UP at the ladder, and it'd come crashing down right next to you. The waves were crazy. My brother got hit by the ladder, but not too badly, and we all managed to get back ok

My family got certified while I was in high school.

Our last dive was open water. We decided we would do it on vacation (all other dives were in the states in a pool). Wreck dive about 200 yards off shore.

Not sure why but Mom’s tank went empty way faster than everyone else’s while we were out at sea. She didn’t realize it until it was less than 5%.

We surfaced and started swimming back. But she panicked. She was an experienced swimmer and snorkeler but she couldn’t handle it with the other scuba gear.

We whistled for help...and the locals thought we were just being tools. Didn’t realize she was struggling.

We kept her up and got her back. Finally about 50 yards out they realized we were towing in a diver in distress.

Everything turned out ok. I haven’t been scuba diving since. My brother went on to become a dive master.

Was doing a boat dive and came up to find 20 foot swells. We just had to chill for a while down under until the boat would calm down and we could actually grab the ladder without getting smashed. I remember seeing the ladder going up and down 6-8 feet at a time. I finally grabbed the rope and climbed up as fast as I could. I hung on to the ladder and the boat crew grabbed my BCD and hauled me out of the water and onto the swim step. Half the divers puked on the way back into port. That was the roughest conditions that I have ever been diving in.