BTG 121 - How I nearly drowned 90ft deep in the ocean

[Music] hello and welcome to another episode of Breaking the guard on today's episode I'm going to talk about another story this one not martial arts uh related at least not directly but uh it's actually a time where I nearly died I was uh to cut to the chase I almost drowned the 90 ft of water in the Galapagos and if you've been on following me for some time you've probably read the article that I wrote about this in my old uh blog it actually got a lot of traction over the years but I I figured it would be good to to retell it in video format and I could elaborate a little bit more uh on the backstory and it's also what I lessons I learned learn from that experience okay so to start off I must have been with my wife girlfriend at the time for a few months and we were planning a our second vacation together and that was to go to the Galapagos now at the time we weren't planning to go scuba diving we were just going to visit the the big island there which is Isabella it's the biggest but most remote island of the Galapagos chain usually tourists are not flocking there like the other Islands have casinos and major hotel chains in Isabella at least at the time that we went there was no major hotels there was uh very few areas that even had Wi-Fi and you would hear uh evangelist complaining on the radio about too much technology uh when it was very uh scarce at least from our point of view but a beautiful island uh nonetheless we weren't planning to go scuba diving we weren't certified in scuba diving didn't own any scuba diving gear so we I think it was like four or five months that we had booked most of that trip about 6 weeks out I thought man it would it would kind of be a waste to not go scuba diving at the Galapagos and my brother was scuba diving at the time and he bought his own gear and stuff so I thought you know what let's get certified um it shouldn't take us long and that way we can at least do a dive or two when we're there our first experience going scuba diving in Miami was not great it was I think in December uh so the water was coldish for Miami right not really cold for anybody else uh but it was very choppy and that was the bigger part and we ended up going on a big dive boat there was probably like 20 something other divers there and there was another dive boat also that was certifying divers and if you've never been scuba diving before when it's choppy uh it's not great to be on the surface and what ends up happening when they have these big groups is that they wait for everybody to kind of form smaller groups with their Dive Master and a Dive Master is basically the instructor he's the guy in charge of that group and you end up having lots of people just floating on the surface where the waves are very choppy and that's the worst part like in the water it's not that bad but on the top of the surface you're bouncing up and down uh so getting off the boat into the water not great but then we Dove and it's fine but the worst part was getting out because getting off the boat into the water is fairly quick getting onto the boat when there's 20 other people in front of you that have never done it before and this boat in particular had you getting on it with your fins on which is awkward uh very difficult and a lot of people were banging tanks you know because they don't know how to space out and I think there was quite a a few people that got seasick including myself and my wife and um I think that was the only time I can recall being seasick uh was on that trip so it's funny because at that point my wife's like I don't want to go uh scuba diving ever again but I already paid for the certification and it was like a two-day thing and I go let's let me see if I can find a private instructor so that we don't have to go in this giant you know group group and maybe it'll be a lot better and I was able to find someone that would do it private and tremendous difference right it was just us and the instructor uh it costed maybe a 100 or so bucks more 100% worth it and then she enjoyed the experience so we ended up getting our uh diving certification and just maybe like two weeks before we were going to fly to Ecuador to go to the Galapagos we didn't have any equipment I contacted our hotel to make the arrangements for the local agency there that would be doing the diving and to see if they would have rent us equipment they said yes okay so we got there now when we get there first time me jumping into the Pacific Ocean for diving it is cold it's like in the 60s there and well oh 60s doesn't sound cold in air and water it's very cold especially if you're going to be in there for you know 30 45 minutes it's cold so they have to layer Us in wet suits my wife has so many she has like multiple layers of wet suits and she's so buoyant that you throw her in the water and her like her chest is like sticking out you have to put lots of weight just to counteract her buoyancy but all the gear is very shabby and uh my my depth gauge basically when you're diving you have a a bunch of equipment on you and one of them is a depth gauge and it tells you how deep you are under water it also tells you how much oxygen you have left on your tank mine is broken the depth doesn't work and uh I can't recall if it was telling me the right amount of air I think it was yeah it was just a depth cage that was broken and the dive master's like oh don't worry about it just stay with me and I'm like okay understand this is going to be our first real dive you know and we were slated for four Dives so just baby us we're not supposed to go below UH 60 ft or something like that because that we were just a beginning diver certification and he's like no problem it's going to be nice and easy we're in a small group I think there was like six of us total diving it'll be fine so we start diving and first first three Dives go great no uh mishaps at all got to see a giant hammerhead in the water it was probably like a 16 to 18t hammerhead shark a great Hammerhead very cool uh that was the only real big sighting of that um that scuba dive trip we also got to swim with uh a manta ray or at least I tried to it was running away and I was just chasing after as fast as I can so that was cool Final dive I before jumping into the water my mask I had noticed was leaking a lot and I had to constantly trying to flush out the water when I was diving so I thought you know what let me tighten my mask up a little bit so I tighten it up a little bit jump into the water and then we start diving we go what seems to be deep but again I don't know the depth because I'm just a beginner and also my depth gauge is broken but I just follow the the Dive Master I'm the last person in the group when you're diving you always Buddy Dive uh which means that you and your partner are always together in this case there was a Dive Master there was a group of two oh and then the one guy was paired up with the Dive Master as well so he wasn't alone and then it was me and my wife the problem was all of us were using rental gear right so we all looked the same and she was following somebody else thinking that was me I was following her last guy in the group okay at one point there's a big rock formation and then kind of like a little half cave if you will so it's kind of like an arch like this and they're going to go swim through it not a big deal I start paddling down and for some reason when I start pading down suddenly I see my vision go start closing in like I I see the black closing in so I oh I stop and I pull up a little bit and then I stay there like oh what's going on I'm like okay let me try again on the second time I try to paddle down my vision closes in again but this time it closes completely so now I completely blind can't see a thing fully conscious I'm Lucid but I can't see anything my first instinct here is to signal for help I start waving around a little bit maybe like 10 seconds I get no response I grab my flashlight I start start flashing it I get no response and at this point now I estimate I was alone for about a couple minutes in my head now I'm thinking well I must be under this little shelf I told you about like this half cave and they probably can't see me I need to try to swim to what I think is up which is not easy because one I'm blind I'm underwater and two there's a lot of current so it's you're getting moved around and sosed all over the place so I start trying to swim to what I think is up and after a couple minutes I feel the ocean floor on my feet so now I start getting into this situation where I'm thinking okay I'm in trouble here how am I going to get out of this and I think of a few options one I can try to wait around here and hope that they Circle back to find me maybe they're already looking for me and they're having some trouble but we were probably about halfway through this dive and I was the first one to run out of air in the group I was the biggest guy of the time so this was not a great idea for me cuz again I don't know how deep I am in the water and uh maybe they find me but I'm out of air and I've drowned right so the second option I thought of was well I can inflate my BCD which would float me to the surface but there are a lot of problems with that right uh your BCD is basically a vest it's a buoyancy control device and when you fill it with air when you're at depth what happens is you will start to rise you'll get positively buoyant so you'll start to float but the higher you go the quicker you go and you end up going up too fast and without being able to see and control it you're you're basically going to Rocket your way up now there's a lot of issues with this one you might suffer some uh barot trauma uh sometimes this is you know you can end up getting the bends where you have nitrogen that has come out of solution ution uh and you have bubbles basically and those are not able to be dissolved in time because you mooved too quickly typically when you're diving you do what's called a safety stop at around 15 ft 15 to 20 feet stay there for 3 minutes which is supposed to help remove anything like that if I just filled myself up I would just Skyrocket up uh I wouldn't drown but I would have to deal with medical complications on the surface now the other problem is we were about 30 to 45 minutes from the island that we're at that Island does not have a decompression chamber so we would have to then get transportation to the main uh Island and then get transferred to a decompression chamber there were going to be a lot of problems right so although I might have not died at that moment I may have had some serious health complications but at that time that was going to seem to be the best option for me all right CU otherwise I felt it was a certain death at the bottom of the ocean now I went through a lot of talk to come through with this to you guys but at the moment I felt like it probably took me about a minute to make my decision as far as what I was going to do but before I did I felt the pressure of my mask being very tight I'm like I need to take this mask off so there's a process in scuba diving where you can clear your mask where I can take the mask completely off basically you keep your eyes closed and you can clean it under water then put it back on and by blowing out through your nose you can flush all the water inside the mask out to the top and clear the mask and I was familiar with doing this because I was getting a lot of mask leak right so when I did that I felt the pressure relieve and then I got my vision restored but my I was seeing double that was fine though because now that I could actually see something I could figure out where to go as far as coming up to the surface now when my vision restored I was nowhere near where I remember last being right I did not see the cave I was on some slope somewhere I was way off course uh and again like I said it was so much current there that it doesn't surprise me that I was blown off course but the my thought at that moment was I need to get up to the service quickly because uh I don't know where my people are and they are probably trying to find me and I don't want them getting worried particularly my wife right right uh and I also don't want to get stranded either because you know we did come in a boat if they end up leaving without me I'm screwed right so I made my way up safely as best I could although I couldn't read my air gauge because I said I was seen double but uh I kind of just eyeballed you know as far as how you but coming up you can figure it out because basically don't go faster than your bubbles you know right so that's fairly doable and eyeballing 15 20 ft is not too difficult doesn't have to be an exact science either so I just got myself up stay at a depth for about three to 5 minutes and then made my way to the surface when I got to the surface I started looking around I was trying to find the buoy for where the divers were typically a Dive Master has a little floaty at the top which kind of lets you know where the group is at I couldn't see it I also couldn't see the boat so for a moment I was a bit concerned like oh crap and I had to turn and then I looked pretty far and then I saw the boat right and it might have been because my vision was kind of messed up too and once I saw the boat I started doing this sign here which means uh I'm in trouble rescue save me however the boats response to me when I started really straining to look was they were just pointing at a direction and I kept doing this and the boat did not respond with other than pointing so then I looked to try to figure out what they pointing at and then at the distance I could see the buoy so I'm like oh okay let me go there because that's where they're at and let me tell them what's going on right so they know that I'm okay so it took me a few minutes to be able to reach that buoy and then the buoy itself has a line that goes to the Dive Master whoever's holding it so I started swimming down and uh took me few minutes to be able to come down to them when I finally got to them I saw them all there and I looked at the Dive Master he looks back at me and then he's like okay and this is the okay sign for diving right and I'm like not okay right uh not good and then he basically signaled to me to stay with them as long as I could um but when I looked over to check on my wife when she makes eye contact with me she freaks out I can see under water she is not uh uh she didn't realize I was gone she thought she was following me the whole time so then I'm sure she was wondering what the hell happened where did I come from uh and who the hell was she following the whole time anyhow I stay with them as long as I can but because I've done you know now two entrances I was make I had to make my second exit early but at least now I knew I was all right I was able to do my safety stop again by myself get up to the surface and I was the first one on the boat right when I get back on the boat everyone on the crew is looking at me really odd and I figured okay something happened to my face right because they're looking at me like I got messed up right uh so and my vision is still wonky right so I go into my cabin after I take off my gear I look in the mirror and I can see that my eyes are sucked out right I look like Arnold schinegger in the the first Total Recall movie when he gets on Mars on the surface with basically there's no atmosphere and he's getting his eyes sucked out that's how I looked like I had two big black eyes on each eye and my face was really pulled so I'm like not good right but uh I'm like well at least I'm alive uh when my wife finally rejoined me she's like looking after me and she's a bit concerned but I'm like well you know my vision is getting better slowly I I think I'll be fine after you know some rest when the Dive Master comes to check on us he's like oh yeah you know um we were just about to go back and and find you and in my head I'm like how do you figure I was pretty far from where you guys were at I mean they would have never found me right I I don't think they would at least they would have not found me in time so I realized there like man I trusted the wrong man with my life here and this is where well I'll get into the lessons part later right um but the story doesn't end there so I survived this ordeal and we still have some days left in the vacation we enjoy it and we come back home when I come back home they are doing construction now across from where the condo I was living at at the time I think they were building a new condominium across from where we were living so they would start of course at a crack of 6:00 a.m. and I like getting up a little bit later so I have my hearing protection I use for shooting so I would put that on when I went to sleep to kind of drown make sure I don't get woken up by the construction however something happened where when I would put those ear muffs on I would hear the ocean and I was like oh son of a because it reminded me of what I was hearing when I was underwater by myself alone in the dark especially when I'm trying to sleep and I'm closing my eyes cuz while I'm talking to you here there obviously a lot of noise when I was underwater there's no noise it's just the ocean I just hear the waves and for whatever reason when I was putting on those the hearing protection that's the same sound I was hearing so after a few days of that I told my wife we're going to do Advanced certification now and the reasoning I had was I'm not going to to have this type of like trauma haunting me uh for the rest of my life or being afraid of this you know because I had a bad incident so what I realized was now we'll get into the lessons right one I went to do something that requires training and discipline with very little preparation right scuba diving is dangerous it's not a safe sport there's a lot of things that can go wrong if you're not careful now that doesn't mean like it is inherently dangerous and it people shouldn't approach it just like driving is dangerous you know or you know Jiu-Jitsu can be dangerous if you don't know what you're doing sco div is dangerous you need to respect it and you need to go into it with the proper uh care and training so although we did do the certification in retrospect that wasn't enough preparation right uh particularly the Galapagos are a difficult sight to die because of the current and uh although the current itself wasn't really the factor here it definitely didn't help so it would be like if I was going to compete in a j tournament and go into the blackbell division with one week of training wouldn't it be a great idea are you going to get hurt automatically not necessarily but you can get brutalized right especially if you were like in a pro Division and a guy is going to break your arm and you're just like some one week white Bell wanting to like test your chops like that would be a bad time right so uh didn't have enough training and preparation right two not having my own gear hurt me in a lot of ways one since my gear was broken I didn't know how deep I was and I was having issues uh operating The Mask right it turns out that what happened was that I had built up too much pressure in The Mask right uh which is called a mask squeeze and when I tied in The Mask even though it resulted in no not as much leaking going on I wasn't getting the pressure out because the space inside the mask is pressurized and as you get deeper it now is different than the pressure outside and essentially it starts to suck and that's why what you're supposed to do is blow out through your nose as you start getting deeper to equalize the pressure inside the mask with the pressure outside the water I wasn't doing this because I wasn't really trained to do that as a beginner diver you're usually diving below you know above 60 so 0 to 30 feet usually in which that doesn't even matter you're not building enough pressure for that to make a difference well it turns out that when we got to the bottom because I I had asked the the Dive Master we were at 30 m which puts us somewhere around 98 ft that was way deeper than what we were supposed to be I and I had told them not to take us that deep still took us that deep and uh that's deep even for regular divers right like you usually don't hang around 98 ft for a long time if you're an air right so uh not having a depth gauge I didn't know to avoid that right and also not having the training not uh recognizing that I was developing a mask squeeze now normally people when they get a Mas squeeze do not go blind right that is very unusual I I guess I was just unlucky in that situation most people will get bloodshot eyes meaning that the the the blood vessels in the front of the eye burst so now their eyes get bloodshot but their vision is not obstructed in rare situations like mine the blood vessels in the back of the eye burst and it basically it's somehow blocks the optic nerve shutting down your vision which is what happened to me and when I was able to relieve the pressure by taking the mask off and equalizing then it basically allowed the vision to restore uh like I said very unusual circumstance most people don't have that issue I just happen to be one of the people that were unlucky to have that however uh that just goes back to not having the right training gear right again uh that's like going to a sparring session without a mouthpiece or with like tyo you know cardio kickboxing uh sparring gloves instead of real SP weing gloves right like you're going to have a bad time you're not equipped properly the other thing is that um by not having our own gear it was harder to identify each other right um since I was built similarly to someone else in the group and we're all wearing essentially black wet suits we all look the same so my wife didn't uh realize to follow in the right person and uh now we after this experience we all got our own gear and we have our own things that make us stand out and look unique so we don't we know exactly who we're following at any moment the other thing I got was more protective gear as far as signaling gear rather and the thing I got was a water hammer which is basically like a small cylinder kind of like this and you shake it and it has ball bearings inside that Rattle and they make a lot of noise in the water so even if you're not able to reach somebody to touch them to Signal or be able to visually get them to recognize you you start shaking that thing and everything in the water hears you uh you know pretty easily so now I won't dive without that thing uh I also have what they call the safety sausage now where I can essentially fill up my own buoy and signal to the top so at the very least even if if I am stuck underw and I can't surface people at least know where I'm at because I can float that to the surface so I looked to First be better prepared when taking on a new activity right not to just jump into something that is dangerous to invest in better gear three invest in better training that's why went to do the certified uh the advanced Open Water diver from Patty right just getting more certification getting more training being able to deal with more difficult situations right and I went with that same private instructor we did last time but obviously covered a lot more material so that it could be better prepared uh the other thing was trusting the right people uh the guy that we used for that trip in Galapagos was Reckless right uh he was nice but he was Reckless right he shouldn't have been pulling us that deep in the water he shouldn't have lost track of his divers for that long right there was only five people in his care and he lost essentially 20% of the crew without recognizing that he had lost it and he was again I had to be at least out of the group for 10 minutes at the minimum probably longer being honest probably 15 minutes that's a long time 10 minutes in the water it's a long time where you can really lose somebody especially when there current pushing you around um and him being very nonchalant about it also not cool either right so uh I learned that as well which is you have to trust the right people right again it's like going to MD dojo and thinking you're learning the real martial arts right like you trusted the the wrong person so another thing that I I had to look out for right uh so when we Factor all these things in have the proper respect for engaging the activity we get the right equipment test it make sure it works we have the right training and preparation so we know how to handle difficult situations that they arise have the right people around you being able to look after you and uh also you know part of the training was making sure that my wife knew as well that we're a team we have to be looking out for each other we can't just trust somebody else to look after us right uh since then I've racked up a couple hundred Dives right and no incident since well I had one issue with a a sinus squeeze not a big deal though I was able to take care of that myself but uh other than that no incidents in the diving so the the the enhanced level of respect more training has really improved and also just terminated that potential phobia right I can put on uh hearing protection without hearing the ocean right so I was able to use some adversity and turn it around to make it something now that I enjoy doing I think one of the things that uh that probably saved my life was my martial arts training because you might have heard me tell that whole story and it sounded very like cold not emotional very logical and you're you might have been wondering where was the panic and honestly the way I recounted the story to you is how I experienced it I didn't have Panic uh come across me when I was doing this I was thinking the entire time and I was and trying to deduce my way out of this there was only one moment which was when I tried to swim to what I thought was up for a couple minutes and ended up on the ocean floor where I stopped to think oh I'm in a bad spot now right and uh that was the extent of my Panic right if and again I don't think it Panic it was just a realization I was in control of myself the entire time and able to think through a difficult situation to be able to come out on top and I credit martial arts to that because I've been in lots of very bad positions in fighting and panicking doesn't save you from that right you're if you panic when you're fighting you're just going to smash yourself right uh and I've been in spots where you know things went the worst way possible Right my knee get getting exploded by P haris was again a spot where I knew I was in a bad spot but I'm like well I'm just going to have to do my best to get out of this or you know the time that Tarsus choke me unconscious I was fighting the whole way through I didn't you know out of Pride say oh I'm not going to tap I'm just going to you know let myself fall unconscious I never it never occurred to me that I was going to go out I was defending the whole way but I was staying as composed as I could and just doing my best to to survive and I feel that energy I brought into this event and I spoken to a few people who were rescue divers and they first of all had never heard of somebody going blind in the water from M squeeze uh so they were surprised that could happen and I looked it up online and it's very rare indeed that that does happen and a guy has a rescue diet told me I have friends that I've been working with for decades that if that would have happened to them they would have drowned in the water and he said the only thing that saved you was your Martial Arts experience and uh so this is somebody with you know experience in the field telling me that and uh I tend to agree with that right that that was my assessment as well I don't find that I panic when things get crazy I think my way through them right uh and obviously that probably saved my life right um I always try to tell people that right when things get bad panicking is not going to make it better right I've never heard someone Panic their way into a fortune right it's usually the other way around they Panic their way into disaster right so it's understandable why you would want you would might get emotional or freak out because you're worried about losing something whether it's you know in this case your life or you know your fortune or a loved one but you have to set those emotions aside and think pragmatically how am I going to deal with this situation what's the best way forward what are the potential consequences and uh then make a decision as far as which route you're going to choose and that's how I went through it in my head and it didn't take me long like I said probably took me about a minute to come up with my final plan fortunately I didn't execute that plan right I I I just listen to my body which was saying hey this mask is really tight you know uh so again I I share this because first of all if anybody's into diving I want them to know about this so that if this ever happens to you or someone around you you're better equipped to deal with it right uh two I feel this little like this is probably my closest brush with death right uh and I'm proud of the way I was able to handle that right and I hope that that could Inspire others to be able to deal with their own issues in a way that's better than than even what I was able to produce right to protect themselves and the people around them and I think it's uh hopefully the way I listed out the the flaws and my approach to entering this and then me being able to analyze after the event what went wrong what went right how am I going to prevent this from happening in the future all right and not caring a stigma around me anymore uh was important for me because well maybe I don't know if I conveyed it well enough but it was a little bit haunting for a few days putting on the hearing production just here in the ocean and then you know especially when you're about to sleep you're essentially being transported back into that uh into that bad environment that I was in for a moment so uh I felt it was very important to quickly overcome that and not allow it to manifest into something further anyhow I hope that uh story was entertaining to you and also more importantly informative and uh that's all I got for you for this week week I see you all next week