Silent Killer -- Spearfishing blackout stories 

Thanks for sharing guys it's so easy to forget how dangerous this sport can be, glad your close calls didn't turn into tragedies. Dive Safe!

Thanks for posting and sharing your stories guys - Big fan of your videos and customer of Nautilus Spearfishing!! I'm just getting into the sport and trying to learn as much as I can - My training in freediving has been with PFI and here are some key points they teach to surviving a blackout: 1. Your buddy should be able to touch you as soon as you reach the surface - So he or she can immediately protect your airway....... 2. Watch your buddy for no less than 30 seconds after surfacing....... 3. Don't over weight yourself - You should still be able to float at the surface after a "passive" exhale so you don't start to sink if you do blackout....... Interesting facts: 90% of blackouts or sambas/LMC's (loss of motor control) happen at the surface after 2-3 breaths and some type of "OK" sign. Another 9% of B/O's happen between 15 feet and the surface due to the rapid change in partial pressure.......For these reasons they recommend a 3 member "Spearo Team": 1 diver, 1 safety and 1 on deck. From my research this is rarely, if ever done in spearfishing, but would dramatically enhance the safety of the sport if it was.

this is why i never dive alone.

Firstly, at last spearheads is back! Secondly THANK YOU to everyone who shared their stories, it really hits home how different each of those stories could have been. Thank you again I'll be posting this to my dive buddies as well.

Thanks guys. Every story helps protect life. Who knows who will avoid a shortened lifespan just because he or she watched your video. It's always been my biggest fear in spearfishing. I've done the samba twice. Once in a pool after a monitored 4:55 breath hold, and once on a personal best 105 foot freedive in Monterey, California. I have competed in quite a few national spearfishing championships...have been on the first place team, I think three times, and have been individual vice-champion twice. I also went to the Worlds in Chile back in 2004. I'd like to share something I did as an experiment. Please, if you read anything below, please pay attention to the last point. To me, it is the most disturbing point. I am a retired firefighter. As a firefighter, I had access to a pulse oximeter at the firehouse. It measures the percentage of blood oxygen. I wanted to see the effect pre-breath hold hyperventilation had on oxygen levels and contrast that with a breath hold without hyperventilation. I also wanted to determine what was happening to those percentages as a breath hold progressed. I performed many breath holds with different breathing techniques before the hold (I'm just going to call all the breathing up I did "hyperventilation" since I don't remember every technique I used). Though I wish I had, I did not do any with any attempt at simulating dive level exercise, i.e., I didn't walk on a treadmill or anything like that while I held my breath. I did this experiment, probably 25 years ago, and am trying to remember the results, since I don't have the data in front of me (I'm on vacation in Oahu right now. When I get home, I'll try to dig up the actual record I made.) Anyway, I remember a couple of interesting results. First, I recall that, without any hyperventilation...just taking a breath and holding it for as long as I could, I could get my blood oxygen percentage down into the mid to low 90% level before I had to take a breath. I also noted that recovery to my normal resting level (about 98-99%) took only a few seconds. Then I started doing some hyperventilating before I held it. On some of the hyperventilating, I did long, slow, deep breathing. I would count the number of breaths I took, as well as the nature of the breathing up I did. The more I hyperventilated, the longer I could hold my breath. I even did some crazy hyperventilation sessions, like everyone thinks of when they hear the word "hyperventilate", where I would inhale and exhale rapidly and repeatedly. Now, here's some weird information, but read on, because it isn't the weirdest thing. The more I breathed up, the longer I was able to hold my breath. Yes, everyone knows that and expects that. But the oxygen levels were what astounded me. I was able to get my oxygen percentages into the low 70s, and I think i may even have gotten it down into the high 60% range. (As I recall, this was after well over 3 minutes of breath hold) But that's not all. As I timed each breath hold, I would record the oxygen level every 10 seconds. That allowed me to note when the oxygen started dropping and how fast it dropped. Interestingly, the oxygen % stayed at 98-99% for longer when I hyperventilated before the breath hold. In other words, hyperventilating resulted in oxygen levels staying high for longer. That surprised me. It appeared that breathing up DID have a beneficial effect on oxygen retention. The only thing I can come up with as to why this may have been is that maybe breathing up purges more of the lung spaces of CO2 and replaces it with fresh air. Either that, or perhaps there is a little bit of supersaturation of the tissues that can occur. It would take some kind of expert to research that. But here's the part that really shocked me and disturbs me, and I found this out by accident. I mentioned above that my oxygen level returned to normal very quickly after I started breathing. I had noticed the same thing with my breath holds preceded by hyperventilation too. But at one point I just happened to leave the pulse oximeter on my finger for a while after one of the breath hold sessions was completed (a session where I hyperventilated beforehand), and I saw something that really surprised me. My oxygen level went back to normal, as usual, but then as I watched, it started going back down. I thought, "what the heck is going on here? I'm breathing...I feel fine... why is my oxygen level dropping?" This happened for every breath hold that included hyperventilation beforehand. Also, the more I hyperventilated, the more pronounced the drop. For example, when I really hyperventilated a lot, and then held my breath until the oxygen level was down in the 70% range, the secondary drop was really pronounced. I think it actually dropped back into the 80% range. After that happened, I started watching the meter for a lot longer and found out even more interesting but disturbing info. Not only did the levels drop after I started breathing, but they did it SEVERAL times. I'm probably not making any sense, so let me give an example. Ok, say I hyped up pretty good before starting a breath hold. Now, I hold my breath and start the timer. Every 10 seconds I record my oxygen level. Let's say that at the 1 minute mark, my oxygen level goes from 98%-97. Now, let's say that at every 10 seconds, the oxygen has dropped 2% more. So, I hit the 3 minute mark and my oxygen is at 75%. Now, I start to breathe. Within 10-20 seconds, my oxygen level reads 97%. I keep breathing, and as i do, I notice that the oxygen % starts to drop again. It keeps dropping all the way to, let's say 83%. Now, as I continue breathing, the oxygen climbs back up again to near normal levels. As I KEEP watching, it starts to DROP again. This time it goes down to the high 80s...now it again climbs back up to near normal. As I watch, it drops AGAIN...this time into the low 90s. Finally, it levels off and stays at full oxygenation. Ok, I have no idea what the physiology was that caused that to happen. It may be that it's just me and no one else's results would be the same. Maybe it's because I was an out of shape couch potato (actually, I wasn't, but everything's relative. Compared to Mark Healey, I probably was). One possibility that I came up with is that perhaps the breathing gets blood oxygen up very quickly but that the depleted tissues are still starving for it and have to process out the CO2 and take up oxygen. Maybe that process isn't as fast as the lung to blood transfer. One thing I WILL say, and I feel it's very important. I never FELT any of this as it was happening. In other words, I FELT like I was ready for the next breath hold. In FACT, my body was in an oxygen depleted state. Ever since I did this little experiment, I have changed the way I freedive. Now, when I do anything deep or long (for me now, deep is 50-60, and long is 1.5 minutes. Hey, I'm 61 years old, ok?) I stay on the surface for longer than I feel like I need to between dives. I used to adhere to the philosophy "a minute down, a minute up". No more. Now, it's more like, "a minute down, THREE minutes up." Guys, sorry for being so wordy. I just don't feel like editing this for brevity and all that. It's bed time. I truly hope that someone benefits from my experience with this little experiment.

Glad to see you guys making videos again. This video is great for awareness, never dive alone and it's not too catch more fish but to be aware of your dive buddy with the one up and one down system. I would of probably gone for the dosey-doe position with that LMC at the end of the video to increase the rate of return. I definitely recommend Martin's Fii course. Good job!

Awesome video as usual. Great message SWB is no joke. Get trained...Know your limits...Dive safe.

This is great stuff. When I introduce my boy to skin diving these types of videos will be a big part of the curriculum.

Great video guys- more awareness raised around this risk the better. Whilst we do jump in the water knowing these risks, people need to know how to help mitigate them.

Thanks for doimg this film. This stuff is essential for everyone wheter they dive 2 or 50 metres. Great work!

Thank you for sharing . Live and learn , I did also .

Thanks for the post, hope the divers in Barbados understand team work

WOW Great vid guys. I just picked up a "65 Blacktip Custom that I cannot wait to try out!!! I know when trying out new gear there's always that kind of " I want my first fish on my new gun to be something special" kind of mentality so it's definitely something that I will be uber-cogniscent of.

Great video, very educational. I hope people that watch this take the great advice.. Do a free dive course and always dive with a buddy. "'EXHALE' - A must watch for all Freedivers" is another video to watch if this doesn't convince you.

This is why you always dive with a buddy.

good work - thanks - all freedivers should watch this

12/30/18, Gregory Schreiber lost his life to shallow water blackout near Pedasi, Panama. Poor visibility, "safety" diver did not see the event. R.I.P. my son. Please carry a spare air, everyone, and beware of euphoria!!! IF you feel euphoric, stop everything, get the spare air in your mouth, and go scuba to the surface.

Really interesting video guys! Love watching your videos.

keep your weightbelt hooked to a float line and float or wear a second belt with a reel with the hook attached to the belt's buckle so in case of problem you can drop your belt on the bottom and go back up more easily then you'll pull it back from the surface i always wear a second belt with dyneema a small bungee and a stainless hook that i clip to the weightbelt buckle can be of a good help too if you catch a bigfish with a small size speargun 75cm with no reel keep your tuba in your mouth when you dive it may save your life take care :)

it happend to me this year & i was alone , i was lucky i didn't die i did feel so deezy & my hands was so havy , in that moment i knew i'm gonne die but i was lucky i didn't panic so Thanks for posting and sharing your stories guys

Very excited about doing this sport, but am a loner. So i guess better call it a pass, better safe than sorry in this case

Great video guys!!!! 👍👍👏👏👌

Gr8 info thank you.

great video!! a little spokie. It can happen just that quick

Scary. Been solo diving for awhile no worries and some reason Ive been watching these videos alot lately..

sounds like breathup issues. not feeling like you're needing to breath when you usually would have.... probably not much co2 in there then.

The first guy blacked out without an other diver to help him and he still survived. He really really was lucky.

Great instruction and knowledge.. now the why.. Why this happens? lack of circulation, poor training, lack of experience? Depth? Temperature of the water? Digestion? what.. Thanks

super scary stuff. if you blackout, how long before you drown? I mean, even if your friend is diving with you, he may not even noticed or see you for a few mins.

It happens when push it too far, when you know you should surface and you take that extra 10-15 seconds to take a shot or whatever it is, it hits you on ascent, I have gotten foggy, dizzy on verge of pass out by not listening to myself to surface when I should.

He did everything youre not suppose to do.Great video.

I got hypoxic doing 25 meters under water for a hour . I couldn't think or speak . I felt extremely happy almost high . After a hour or two out of the water I was ok with it . But the next day I was sick to my stomach that I could have died

Oh you lucky son of a gun...Thanks for sharing man!

There’s a great deal of physiology that you all describe, but don’t quite understand. I am not a diver, but I suspect that black out happens for several reasons. 1) Hypoxia sets in faster as you get deeper, due to collapse of your deep air spaces/alveoli. This is enhanced by the surroundings water pressure on your body. When it occurs, there’s more shunting or bypass of blood in the lungs. This will extract more oxygen from your already oxygen depleted blood cells. And reduce further oxygen exchange from the lungs into bloodstream. 2) build up of acidity and CO2 is increased as your body metabolism is increased from swimming around. You might think that you have trained your body to ignore the urge to breathe, but that higher CO2 actually lead to an anesthesia effect on your brain. You blackout because you are anesthetized. The hypoxia likely doesn’t help on top of that. 3) The negative buoyancy at depth is going to be pulling you deeper, and accelerate the process by removing your respiratory reserves that you rely upon to work out of this spiral to death. It’s not something wise to do. Like a roll of dice. You risk not coming back every time...depending upon whether the situation or conditions are right to knock you out. The videos of free diving look so cool, and it’s so alluring. But is it really worth risking your life to go that deep to spear fish? Everyone has to answer this question based on your own experience, training, and risk tolerance. Like I said, I am not a diver, and can’t speak to that. I am a snorkeler, and have briefly gone a little deep at times. I hope y’all think about this every time you get out there, and not push the envelope. Hope this information can help you get a better understanding of your physiology. Dive safe. Peace!

yea you need to know how long and deep you can go

I am a free dive for more then 30 yers I dive alone whit no one and I haven’t got a blackout and I recommend to any one to dive alone is match better 😋 for me Don't push your limits

I hope I can try spearfishing someday. having said that, I would think that a fail safe compact oxygen device would have been developed by now to help in situations like this? Something to give a person just a few more breaths of air to make it back up. Also, don't people time their selfs? Seems to me that timing would be essential to this activity. Forgive me for my ignorance, but I know nothing about diving.

Just out of curiousity how long are these guys staying underwater for?

did he say he was alone? but who was filming?

I have not even started the free-diving course yet, why am I doing this to myself

I'm an old guy I don't push it, stay doing my shallow 0 - 4m dives small fish and crayfish. I STAY DOING MY ROCK HOPPING.LOL

Good......

His lips were purple that was a real close call. Dive safe bro!

stay in your comfort zone - diving in Port Fourchon the top 20 ft of water is brown - no one can see you

11:00 Been there :) Samba

OH MY FUCKING GOD this is the sacariest shit I'EVER seen on my entire life .

Fuck, iv been diving alone all my life cuz I live right on the beach. But now I'm scared

😳

I was hoping to find a samba dance partner here

Lucky you weren't Shark Bait

Wtf what is he telling at 6:00? Yuo get blacked out because you get out of the water so high? This cant be real.... there is nearly no difference from Gravity in 30 cm Air

So blackouts save fish life?