Having a new scuba student go into a full-blown panic underwater is one of the most dangerous situations that an instructor can face. The true responsibilities of a scuba instructor immediately comes roaring into instructor's brain like a freight train. His sense of impending legal liabilities are focused on his future like a steel cutting laser beam. Whatever glory he ever thought it was to be an instructor is fried in that instance.

Instructor training, like scuba training, has come a long way since I earned my first instructor rating in 1968 with SCIP (Southwest Council Instructor Program). Eventually, I would earn four other instructor rating by the early seventies: the University of Texas Underwater Society, NAUI, PADI, and YMCA. I enjoyed the sport of diving so much that I used the instructor route to gain a wide area of knowledge that was not available to the average diver. Now there are all types of specialty courses where a diver can become knowledgeable in whatever he wants without having to become an instructor.

In 1972, Chuck Hamblin and myself were the manager and assistant manager, respectively, of Scuba Point, a new dive shop in Austin, Texas. Chuck had a private class consisting of a young man and his girlfriend. I was to help with the first open water training at Windy Point on Lake Travis. On this first dive, the students would do mask and regulator clearing, budding breathing, and an emergency swimming ascent from 30 feet. After this, we would take the students on a short tour of the lake.

Windy Point is basically a peninsula. We were on diving the west side of it. It is like diving on a steep hillside. However, this hillside keeps going down to the original riverbed over 200 feet deep. Visibility was probably around 5 feet at 30 feet. The water takes on a greenish tint from the algae. Wetsuits were required because the water had not warmed up in early Spring.

Chuck took charge of the young man and I, the young lady and we all proceeded to go to thirty feet and do our dive training. Both students did the mask and regulator clearing and stationary buddy breathing. Chuck had his student perform an emergency swimming ascent and both headed for the surface. I had noticed with my student when she flooded her mask, the sudden blast of cold water on her face, made her a little nervous.

In the early seventies, the way emergency swimming ascent was taught was: get neutrally buoyant; take the regulator out of your mouth and exhale one normal breath; one hand above the head, look up and swim up and continue exhaling on the way up. The instructor would face the student and have a firm grasp of the tank harness and swim up with the student. In this manner, the instructor could control the rate of ascent.

During this era of diver training, it was felt best to have the student leave the regulator out of their mouth so the instructor could insure that the student was exhaling all the way up to prevent air embolism. Once a student performs this exercise, they realize that it is an easy thing to accomplish. However, for the first time, thirty feet up without the regulator in the mouth and having already exhaled a normal breath, the student generally feels anxiety.

When it came time for the young lady to perform the ascent, she took the regulator out, exhaled and just started to make an ascent. All of sudden she decided that she could not make it. She grabbed her regulator and took a big breath of air, without first clearing the water from her regulator. At that instant, her eyes were as big as saucers. I looked at her and thought, " Oh #*! ." This 90 pound lady turned into a jet propelled tiger rocket. She gave a large choking cough and spit the regulator out. Then she literally started clawing her way to the surface. In the process she clawed my mask ajar of my face, flooding it. When this happened, my grip on her tank harness loosened slightly, and she was away. When I got my mask clear, she was gone. I quickly looked around and saw no one. I rocketed to the surface. When I got there, there was no one on the surface. I turned round and round trying to find bubbles coming to the surface. I could see none. Chuck and his student were still on their tour and there was no one on the surface.

I could visualize my student tumbling unconsciously down the watery slope. I plummeted back down to 30 feet and swam along the hillside in one direction for a short distance, dropped down five feet and came back. Then dropped down five feet and swam back the other direction. I was swimming this short search pattern to see if I could find her. I would periodically look toward the lighter colored surface to see if I could see any air bubbles coming up. I could see the billows of silt from where we had been sitting on the bottom tumbling down the hillside. Was this her? Eventually, I was deeper than the tumbling silt and realized that she was not here. I think I now was at the 90-foot level. While I was swimming this search pattern, I was visualizing newspapers streaming off the presses with the headlines, "New Instructor Loses Student-Multimillion Dollar Lawsuit Results From Her Death."

I bolted for the surface to see if I could get help. Upon reaching the surface, I was greeted by the sight of my student laying on the side of the lake with Chuck and the other student watching over her. Chuck was seeing if she was going to exhibit any symptoms of air embolism. I was certainly relieved to see her, but this was not what I wanted to see.

What had happened after she had broken away from me, she realized that what she was doing was not going to save her life. She was sinking. She remembered us telling the students not to panic. She dropped her weight belt, pulled her CO2 vest lever, and got control of her regulator and started breathing again. At that point, she popped to the surface. Chuck and his student had just got back to shore. He saw her pop to the surface and knew something was wrong. He swam out to her and pulled her to the shore. When I had cleared my mask and swam to the surface, I had actually beaten her to the surface. When I went back underwater, she then popped to the surface.

Chuck and I looked down on her. She seemed weak and shaken, but otherwise okay. She was apologizing for having panicked. It was determined that she probably did not have embolism. We placed her in the back of my Chevrolet Suburban Truck. Her boyfriend got in the back with her.

and I started driving back to Austin toward Brackenridge Hospital. It took about 30-40 minutes to get her to the emergency entrance. She was still in her wet suit and I in mine. I had a farmer John style suit. My top was unzipped and beaver tail unsnapped. I has a knife strapped to the side of my leg. You can imagine the stares of the people in the emergency waiting room. I grabbed the head nurse and stressed the importance of having the doctors check the student out for embolism. I told the nurse that if she had embolism, then have the doctors call Brooks Air Force Base and get her to the recompression chamber located there. I even gave her the phone number. At that point, I felt we were not in an immediate life and death situation. I am sure all the patients were amused at my strutting around with water dripping water out of my wet suit onto the shiny hospital floor. When they wheeled the student away on a hospital cart, I felt I had done all that I could. I said goodbye to her boyfriend and left the hospital.

She had to stay in the hospital for about three days. She had gotten fresh water into her lungs. When this happens, your blood chemistry changes. A person can appear and feel quite normal and then suddenly die. She was kept in the hospital for observation. When all was said and done, she came back and finished up the course. She was very embarrassed for having panicked. I was extremely annoyed with myself for having let this 90 pound lady get away. When my grip on her was slightly loosened when my mask was pulled away from my face, that is all that it took for this screaming tiger to escape my controlling grasp. I vowed never again to let this happen, and it didn't, but I never experienced another student panicking as badly as this again in my 18 years of being a diving instructor. This happened to me when I was fairly new to the instructor game.

There were several lessons that I learned from this experience. First, unless an instructor has ever seen a ful-blown panic situation, it is hard for him to imagine how strong and wild a small person can be, much less a normal sized or a large person. Second, as a helping instructor that walks into a training situation for the first time, ask the instructor in charge if there are any potential "problems" with any of the students he is about to conduct open water training with. In this situation, the girl had exhibited no previous warnings for Chuck to have had any concerns. Third, if the instructor knows or feels that there may be a problem in open water training with one of his students, it is his responsibility to conduct training with that student. The instructor knows that student best and the student will feel more confident knowing that the same instructor that has guided him through the class will be the same one to look after them in open water.

Lastly, an experienced instructor knows the most likely situations where a student will most probably panic. Having a student wet their faces with cold water before going under helps lessen the shock of cold water on the face during mask clearing. Emergency Ascent Training has changed in that students keep the regulator in their mouths while doing the ascent. This basically eliminates the student's anxiety of "running out of air" before making it to the surface. All the student has to do is exhale on the way up, and if need be, take another breath. This eliminates the problem, as in my situation, of having the student forget to clear the regulator before taking a breath, then choking. If a student does choke for whatever the reason, it is important that they know this is the only air supply they have and to work with it until they have control of the situation. The bottom line, the student may have the ultimate responsibility of saving their own lives. They must do what they have been trained to do.

My "little tiger" saved her own life. She mentally got control of the situation, dropped her weight belt, inflated her vest, and cleared her regulator and got some more air. In helping her get over her embarrassment from having panicked, I emphasized to her that she had ultimately saved her own life. This helped her to regain her confidence to safely finish the course.

When a diver realizes that they want to become an instructor and if they will spend a good deal of time helping with classes over a variety of diving situations, then they will have learned some of those important instructional lessons that only experience will teach. Today, there are more levels of dive instruction existing today than when I first became an instructor. If students will spend some time gaining more than the required experience to become an instructor, they will be far ahead of the instructional safety game. Having to grab a tiger by the tail only once, is one time too many for any instructor.

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