Everyone has a hobby, something that you like to do when you have some time to yourself and want to indulge. If you like the arts, your hobby may be dancing, painting, or singing – maybe even all three. If you’re into food, you’re go-to activity for some quality “me time” might be cooking up a delicious meal, or checking out various restaurants around town. But, ask someone who loves the great outdoors and water sports what their favorite hobby is, and you’ll be surprised at how many people say scuba diving.
For those heavily engaged in scuba diving, these divers describe their dives as serene and peaceful. Scuba divers love to be one with the wildlife underwater, and it’s a great way to be one with yourself, too. It’s not for everyone, but when you have a love for it, apparently it’s the best thing to do, EVER!
I haven’t gone diving, and I’ll be honest and admit that I don’t know many divers either. But, I do always wonder what an underwater dive may feel like. Is it really as surreal as many people describe it o be?
Scuba divers have many stories to tell. They’ll tell you about the time they came face-to-face with a dolphin, or about all the beautiful sea urchin down there; they also have some horror stories. If not all, a majority of divers have had an encounter they wish they never experience again. These experiences can be scary, horrific, panic-struck, or downright creepy. Many men and women have given up scuba diving because of some of the things they’ve experienced while on a dive.
And, just in case you haven’t heard any creepy diving experiences, below are 47 real-life encounters that people have had while diving through the deep blue sea.
1. A tiger shark almost bit off my foot
“I was diving a spearfishing spot about 30 miles offshore. I was 60 feet under water. There I was, swimming along when I noticed a school of Mahi Mahi. There were about 30, maybe 40, of them. These fish were all between 2 to 5 feet long. They were so beautiful with their sides flashing all different colors. That’s when I felt the tug on my leg. I looked down at my legs to see a 12-foot tiger shark pulling on my dive fin and taking me along for the ride. In a second, he had ripped the fin off my foot. The shark then swam away but kept circling just at visual range. I think he was still curious about how I tasted. I kept an eye on him the whole time I was swimming back to the boat. Scariest moment I have ever had in the water.” – EnderWiggin3rd
2. My team was screaming for me to get out of the water
“45 minutes into our dive, something big swam past me. It never touched me but pushed the water around me enough to flip me head over heels. I felt 4 tugs on the tending line, telling me to surface, so I immediately tugged the line that was attached to my partner 4 times and started to ascend. When I got to the surface, the guys on the boat started screaming at me to get out of the water. A giant gator was seen entering the water and swimming in our direction.” – deepsizzle
3. There was a predator around and I had all the signs
“It was a lovely drift dive and then a three-foot grouper swam into my field of vision. Something seemed off with its movement and then I noticed an 8-inch jagged bite out of its dorsal region. It kept swimming awkwardly with a faint trail of chum following. There were no other apex predators around but for the rest of the dive, I was on edge.” – Just1morefix
4. I got vertigo underwater
“I got hit by vertigo and everything in my vision started spinning. The scary thing is that you can’t tell which way is up or down and sometimes you can end up diving deeper and deeper. I thought that if I just followed my dive buddy in front of me then everything would be ok. Eventually, my brain sorted itself out and the world stopped spinning.” – Ginauz
5. A mud storm hit us mid-dive and there was ZERO visibility
“We were doing one of our last dives before getting certified. We were at about 40 feet and ran into a mud storm under water. It went from 10-15 feet visibility to not being able to see your hand if you held it out in front of your face. My instructor had everyone hold onto a line so if that happened you knew where everyone was and where to go to get out.” – Dandridan
6. I took a breath before the regulator was in my mouth. That’s not a good look.
“My son and I were doing a cert dive in the Caymans, and while in 15 feet, we were learning to buddy breath. He offered the Octo to me and for some reason, I breathed in before it was in my mouth. I took in salt water and I knew not to bolt up. I looked at my instructor and although I tried to stay down and clear, I couldn’t. My reaction was too strong to get to the surface…where I puked up sea water from my lungs.” – pmandryk
7. I was surrounded by hundreds of jellyfish and got stung
“[I] was diving off the Florida Keys a short while after Hurricane Earl hit in 1998. It was the end of the dive and I was in the process of ascending, so I was mostly looking down until something caught my peripheral vision. Look up and there are HUNDREDS of moon jellyfish all around me. Apparently, the hurricane brought them in. And, yes, I got stung.” – ToothJanitor
8. We lost our boat and panic struck
“At one point in this dive, we turn our lights off so we are floating around in the pitch black, it was very surreal with the glowing plankton and weird structures. Slowly it feels like we have gone off course a bit, now there is just sand, no underwater features or reefs. So, we all decide to surface. Our dive master looks around and loudly says ‘that’s not our boat is it?!’ Pointing to a boat more than two miles out to sea. The water is pretty choppy and seeing our very experienced dive master sound increasingly worried was terrifying. I reckon we were bobbing around for five minutes or so before we realize our boat was less than 100 meters away, disguised by the lights from the island.” jackrabbit5lim
9. I had to rescue my Dive Master during a 100+ feet dive for lionfish research
“Because of the nature of our research, we did transects in one direction, so our boat would do a live pickup wherever we ended up. (The boat would know our location as we would send up a safety sausage and then ascend). As we neared the end of our dive, my DM gets out the safety sausage to send up to the surface. As she blew up the safety sausage, the weighted component of the line (that let the safety sausage catapult to the surface while staying anchored at whatever depth we were) bounced off of something, knocked off her goggles and snorkel, and wrapped itself around her arm.
The safety sausage catapulted up, pulling up my DM. Luckily I reacted quickly, grabbed her ankle as she shot upward, fully deflated my BCD, yanked her down, flipped around, and started swimming as hard as I could downward. I pulled her back down to the seafloor and she cleared her mask and just sat there, heaving, for a few minutes.” – Chibsies
10. Spiders tried getting into my mouth
“Was diving once in Ontario (not with a tank or anything, just kinda hyper breathing to get myself to hold my breath longer). I came up underneath a dock and there were dock spiders everywhere! I had to sit there until I oxygenated myself properly before slowly dipping down, and every time I’d try opening my mouth to breathe they’d try climbing in there.” – Reddit User
11. I almost fell asleep mid-dive
“This isn’t a scary event per se, but I was once so relaxed during a dive that I almost fell asleep. It wasn’t nitrogen narcosis, either. I was only 40 feet deep and feeling fine, just relaxed. In hindsight, that’s actually really scary; scarier than when my BC started self-inflating or a remora tried to attach to me when I didn’t know what the heck it was.” – p***********e
12. Someone else’s tank hit me in the head and I gasped…I was underwater and not wearing a regulator
“Oddly enough, my worst incident happened in a training pool. I was doing my rescue diver training and one of our little skill drills was a maskless breathing lap around the pool with a buddy. My buddy and I descended, got our first few breaths and started going. However, when I didn’t have the regulator in my mouth, another person descended on top of me and his tank clocked me in the head.
Obviously, I couldn’t see without the mask and was not breathing from the regulator, so when I gasped in shock, I inhaled a bucket of water. The instructor saw what happened and thrust his secondary into my mouth so I could surface. I spent the next ten minutes puking up pool water.” – izzyjubejube
13. I got hit by a shockwave
“I was on a dive in the Philippines when we got hit by a shockwave from illegal dynamite fishing. It felt like someone hit me in the head with a sledgehammer and scared the crap out of me.
The instructor said that it’s happened a few times. Sound waves carry quite far underwater. He even spent a few weeks in the hospital with severe injuries after getting hit by one that was too close.” Zubon102
14. My boat captain mistook a shark for a dolphin
“I was snorkeling in open blue water with a pod of dolphins and noticed what I thought was a grey reef shark ~60′ below me which I’m perfectly comfortable around. It started swimming upwards in circles towards me. At first, I thought, to myself, ‘Wow, that’s a larger reef shark.’ But, as it continued ascending to about 30′ below me, I instantly recognized the rounded/flat snout and striped pattern on it’s back.
My heart rate quickened and breathing increased as I realized it was a 12′ tiger shark that was curious about me and continued ascending in a wide spiral at me. I immediately attempted to hail my boat captain, who was 150 yards off, using the “shark” and “come get me” hand signals, but he thought I was just waving and having fun watching dolphins.
As my boat captain was unresponsive, and level of risk was exaggerated in my mind (since I’d never seen a tiger shark), I realized that I would have to swim to the boat. Swimming freestyle (with fins) I would take a few strokes and look down and back to keep my eyes on the shark. After doing this 3 or 4 times, the shark had reached the surface and was swimming parallel with me towards the boat about 20′ to my right. I even saw it’s dorsal fin breach the water. Then, as a result of the moderate chop and surface turbidity, I lost sight of the fish.
Not knowing where it was freaked me out even more, and I broke into a full sprint towards the boat, no longer trying to keep my eyes peeled for it. I didn’t wait for the captain to put the ladder down and just hurled myself over the freeboard, nearly out of breath. I didn’t see the shark again.” – Belly_Laugher
15. She was looking right at me as she sank to the bottom
“As a Mate, I dove in after a lady who jumped in with too much weight on and no regulator (breathing device) in her mouth. Her eyes just watched us as she sank, [and] the few seconds it took to reach her and help felt pretty stretched.
As a captain, I can say that there’s nothing quite like the feeling of waiting for late divers. We give them time to be back on the boat so we can get back before Happy Hour. Man, when they are getting super late and you are scanning the waves with your binoculars for bubbles, it can get pretty tense. I’ve never had someone disappear on me yet (knock on wood) but, I have had plenty of rescue situations where afterward my hands would shake if I wasn’t holding the steering wheel.” – I_dream_of_sharks
16. An octopus grabbed my arm and wouldn’t let go
“Just going to start this off by saying I’m an idiot when it comes to sea life. When I was little, I would grab smaller moray eels, chase barracudas so I could watch them, would pet sea turtles with shells the diameter of 3′ or more.
But, one thing that really scared me was when I went down probably 20′ to grab a big conch shell I saw. Just as I grabbed it an octopus tentacle the width of my forearm grabbed my arm and squeezed me against the shell. I managed to pull it off me although it definitely was tough to do (octopus are really strong!). Needless to say, I surfaced, went back down to look at the perpetrator, then noped out of there while I still had all my fingers intact.” – thingsOPis
17. I don’t know if I saw a ghost underwater or if he was real
“Two buddies of mine and I were on a night dive in Puget Sound hunting prawns. It was about one in the morning and we’re a good 100 feet deep, the pitchest black you could imagine. We used to do this thing on night dives where we’d get in a circle, turn off our lights, then stir up the water and watch the bio-luminescence float around us like floating stars in a black watery space. Beautiful.
Only this one time we turn off our lights, stir up the water, and the water glows just enough to reveal a fourth person sitting in our circle. We were at a dive resort so it wasn’t so odd to see another diver, only it was 1am-we’d seen no one else prepping a dive at the dock. He was also alone which was odd considering the dangerous conditions of a night dive in those waters, and he had no fins or gloves. I don’t know how he swam so well without fins or didn’t get hypothermia without boots or gloves. We wore drysuits because it was so cold, but this dude was in a wetsuit with exposed skin and we thought we saw a giant gash in one of the legs.
So, the three of us all notice him and we’re too scared to move. I can hear my buddies panting in their regs, and the guy just smiles and waves then swims away.” – pteam-pterodactyl
18. A current swept my mask away
If you’ve ever been scuba diving you probably know how important it is to have a buddy system. You know, so someone actually knows what’s going on with you and where you are at all times. Consequently, it’s never a good thing when you need to surface because of an emergency and nobody knows about it.
“I lost my mask in a current and couldn’t get the attention of my group to let them know I was surfacing. Just inflated the BC and swam to the boat which was far away.” – diegojones4
19. My encounter with an eel
“I was diving in Thailand and we were at a site diving where there were two steep hills underwater full of rock formations, coral etc. Between these two areas was a sandy bottom with scattered rocks ranging between 1-5 meters across, all full of holes and full of life. We were swimming from one hill to the next and inspecting these rocks along the way.
I was swimming along one large one when I get whacked in the side of my stomach very hard. It startled the s**t out of me and I quickly backed off. The dive instructor noticed and came over, and we inspected what happened. That’s when we saw a giant moray eel (I’m later told it was a giant moray).
He was absolutely massive, never seen one so big. [It] was easily a couple of meters in length and was probably as wide as my head. We assume I had passed too close without noticing and he attacked, he hit my BCD and luckily didn’t persist.” – gloriouspenguin
20. The light at the end of the tunnel just wasn’t coming
“I decided to go dive the cave with my buddy since we’d done it earlier that day when conditions were great.
We didn’t lay a line either (a huge no-no) because there was a pipe along the floor of the cave, which we saw on our previous trip. We assumed this pipe began at the entrance and went straight back into the end of the cave (the owners installed it as a water vacuum to help clean the deepest parts of this cave). This day there had been a high volume of students diving the cavern (the large, open, beginning portion) which had churned up the silt till you could barely see. This is crucial, because the cavern portion is where you just “swim towards sunlight” on a normal dive.
To add to our mistakes we dove in the evening, not realizing that the sun would have set when we were heading out. We began the dive confidently, trusting our misguided failsafe, and swam to the cavern. Both of us noticed how silty it now was, but figured ‘hey, you can still see the surface’ thanks to the sun, and continued towards the cave. Once inside, we swam down to the end of the cave (about 200′ back), turned around, and began to exit. The closer we got to the exit, the worse the visibility got, and by the time we noticed the “light at the end of the tunnel” wasn’t coming, the visibility was barely two feet.
Undeterred, we grabbed on to the pipe and followed, hand over hand, to where (we assumed) the pipe would breach the surface, crawling along foot by foot, holding on to a PVC pipe on the floor. This was the point we hit a wall. Literally. This pipe, which we had assumed led to the surface, instead made a bend to a shallower passage of the cave where it entered the ceiling and disappeared. In the terrible visibility, we followed it into a passage we’d never seen before, in a part of the cave that was a complete dead end.
I’ll never forget the feeling of dread and panic that hit me, but the most memorable moment was making eye contact with my buddy as we both realized we were going to die. Most accidental deaths are instantaneous, but in cave diving, you have the time to contemplate your fate as you watch your air pressure needle drop, and as panic started to set in, my air needle started moving towards zero. So we fought. Survival instinct set in, we refused to wait and drown, and instead started crawling, in near zero visibility, over every part of that cave to find the exit.
There was a sign at the entrance warning people of the dangers of cave diving. It is ironic, but this sign saved our lives, as it’s oriented to face the entrance, a fact my buddy remembered and gave us a point to try and blindly shoot towards the pitch black surface.
No surprise, it worked-we lived. And, one month later I “got back on the horse”-got cave certified, got called a lucky idiot by my cave instructor, and learned to never make the same mistake twice.” – gordonta
21. How to get out of a tunnel when it’s pitch black
“My parents are experienced divers and did a cave dive a few years before I was born. It was narrow and more of a winding underwater tunnel than a cave. The dive master went in first and then all the divers followed him with flashlights. My parents took the rear and halfway through the tunnel my dad’s flashlight miraculously dies and they are stuck in the middle of the pitch black tunnel (my mom was not carrying a flashlight).
Then my dad remembered he had a camera with a flash which prompted them to navigate the rest of the cave, a few feet at a time, by using the flash to see where the divers ahead had kicked up sand. They made it out just fine about 15 minutes after the group, but the thought of being trapped in that cave scares me.” – funf_
22. A jellyfish sting gone terribly wrong
“Diving off of Pensacola, Florida…thousands of moon jellyfish. One stung me pretty bad on the arm.
For non-divers, you don’t see the color red the deeper you dive into the ocean. So, while the sting, which went up and down my arm, turned red/pink, all I could see was my arm turning black.
It was so freaky. When we finished the dive the boat captain said he had been doing that job for 20 years and it was the worst sting he had ever seen, and that I was extremely allergic.” – absolutspacegirl
23. I rapidly started sinking to the bottom
“[It was a] night dive in Bali. The water was pretty choppy and we hung around the sandy bottom for a while before ascending.
When I got up, I inflated my BCD and took off my mask so I could float on the surface and look at the sky. Suddenly, my BCD abruptly deflated and I started rapidly sinking down to the bottom because I was wearing extra weights. [I] kept pressing the inflate button and it simply refused to inflate.
No mask, regulator out of my mouth, and pitch-black darkness. [I] flailed around a bit for my secondary and managed to swim upwards enough (literally paddled for my life) for my buddy to grab me. Turns out a bunch of sand got in my BCD when we were underwater and choked it up, so it didn’t inflate properly. It was horrible. I genuinely thought I was going to be pulled down and eventually drown before anyone could get to me.” – ritx
24. A group of sea lions attacked me
“I had a group of sea lions mess with me. They came to our area as we were very careful not to go near the seal rock jetty or breakwater. Three of them started swimming around me, which I thought was cool, then they started bumping into me and smacking me with the flippers in the head and back. The dive master saw it and tried to intervene, but they took off.” – Granadafan
25. What to do when a school of barracuda fish begins circling
“My grandpa used to dive and he told me this story:
He went diving once with a buddy, and he was about 30 or 40 feet down, observing all the beautiful fish when all of a sudden they disappeared.
He and his friend were alone in the open water and then they saw why the fish had gone.
Three barracuda were circling. The only option they had was to stay put. Eventually, the barracuda swam away and they were fine. I always imagine that opening scene of Finding Nemo when he tells me that story.
Bonus: He vomited through his mask underwater once, and it was like a buffet for the fish.” – Reddit User
26. My friend had a heart attack 30 meters below surface level
“I wasn’t there, but one of our friends in my old dive club had a heart attack 30 meters down and performed an emergency ascent.
He didn’t breathe out on the way up (he clenched his jaws) and he ruptured his lungs. He had the heart attack 15 miles from shore, too. Thankfully the dive team was trained extremely well and saved him, but even they said they were bricking it.
After the incident, he sold me his new diving gear because he was limited to 12 meters max diving depth from that point onwards.” – fmitchanium
27. He was diving when the tsunami struck
“My dive instructor was diving in Indonesia when the 2004 tsunami struck. Completely oblivious to what was happening above him, he had no idea until he resurfaced to what can only be described as utter chaos.” – Maharaj
28. I will never full moon dive again
“Full moon dive in October at Cabo San Lucas, huge 10-foot grouper came out of the dark, took my fin and tried to eat my foot! Freaked me out! My buddies enjoyed the show until he came after one of them. Don’t do moonlit dives anymore.” – skyburner
29. It was just me and the big bull shark
“I was on a shark dive in Fiji, and we were all just crouched behind a reef, not in a cage or anything. A big bull shark swam directly over me, close enough that it parted my hair. Got the ‘ol heart beating a little faster.” – FixMeASammich
30. I had a case of underwater color blindness and it was the scariest thing ever
“I was around 13 years old on this diving trip. My parents are huge divers and we go diving in various locations around the world. It was the first dive of the day in Cozumel (which I may add has some of the best wildlife I have seen) and we were going relatively deep, 90 feet or so.
We go down, and I end up getting a gash on my arm from some coral, nothing big, but I thought I was going to die as my b***d looked green. What raced through my 13-year-old brain was that the coral I scratched myself on was toxic and that I would die 90 feet under water. [I] had a panic attack under water, and had to resurface while my parents helped me stay down so I wouldn’t get the bends. Turns out, red light waves cannot go that deep, and as I went up, I noticed that my b***d was starting to turn redder.
Finally, the dive master laughed and told me basic light physics. A 13-year-old doesn’t know basic physics and that red light can’t go deep underwater.” – c_oliver
31. I had a staring competition with a barracuda
“I was on a night dive which, for the most part, always have a creepy undertone, to begin with. But, this time, I was looking around shining the light and out of nowhere a big barracuda is eye level with me, maybe three feet away from my face, staying completely still. My heart dropped, and we both just stared into each other’s souls until I realized I should probably slowly move away.
Funny now, but it was pretty creepy.” – InTheCrease
32. I coughed underwater and thought I was going to die
“50 feet under and 250 yards from shore, my throat got really dry from the canned air and I started coughing violently. It was all I could do to keep my regulator in and not inhale water. One of the three times in my life I gave myself up as dead and got lucky.” – BallardLockHemlock
33. I had to run away from a group of sea lions
“I used to be very into free diving (no oxygen tank) on the west coast of British Columbia. I trained myself over years to be able to hold my breath for over two minutes which is plenty [of] time to see cool stuff.
I used to take a paddleboard out from the beaches to get to the more remote parts of the coastline. I’d been diving for about an hour, feeling like something was watching me. I decided to call it a day and get back on the board. Five minutes into my paddle back, I look behind me and see three adult sea lions following the paddle board. Got the heck out at 10 kilometers per hour.” – Reddit User
34. A spider crab got a hold of me and wouldn’t let go
“My cousin drove me to Monterrey and we dove at the same beach I got certified at. 5-10 minutes into the dive we’re greeted by a couple sea otters.
We’re right next to a jetty so I move closer to it and attempt to stay stationary so I can just sit and watch the sea otters.
My cousin has been right above me the whole time, so when I feel a poke/pinch on my armpit I think it’s just him or his flipper hitting me. I turn to look and see that he’s still above me. Adrenaline kicks in as the pinch becomes stronger and I can’t see what’s touching me. I spit out my regulator and tore my mask off in panic when the pinch started hurting. I tried spinning around but I was moving into an incoming wave and it felt like I was being held back as well.
My cousin jammed his regulator into my mouth and turned me around again. I thought he was trying to hug me. He had his arms around me and then let go. He grabbed my regulator and his own and swapped them. Then he turned me around again. A giant spider crab was retreating into a crevice in the boulders behind me. My cousin said it had at least two claws on me when he saw me pull my mask off. He told me he understood my panic but he never took me diving again, and I’ve never been diving again.’ – 707RiverRat
35. Touching a scorpionfish can lead you into a medically-induced coma
“Did a night dive on the wreck of the Spiegel Grove. Excellent dive, checking out all the nudibranchs and urchins on a rail when I realize I was about half an inch from putting my hand onto a scorpionfish. They are beautiful animals but have excellent cryptic camouflage.
Oh, and if you get stung by their spines it’ll probably make you pass out from the pain. I was told by a physician down here that they will just put you in a medically-induced coma until the venom works its way out of your system rather than put your heart through the stress of the pain.
I’ve been hit several times by lionfish, distant cousins of the scorpionfish, and they are pretty nasty. So, almost grabbing a scorp by the spines definitely made me pucker.” I_dream_of_sharks
36. Everything went black and I was slammed to the floor
“A friend and I used to dive off Catalina Island, back in the mid-’70s, to sift through the bottom for lost jewelry and stuff. The water was incredibly clear back then and that made it easy to see the tiniest thing during the day, especially at noon. We were down one day and I was sifting through the sand when all of a sudden it went black and I was slammed hard to the floor, losing my mask and mouthpiece. I managed to find both, rolled onto my back to make it easier to clear my mask only to see a pod of whales overhead.
It was amazing that one of the whales dispelled 10 feet of water, with its fluke, with enough force that it felt like a truck was dropped on me. Careful not to get stuck between any of them, we got to touch them as they swam by.
Two weeks later we were out again and a shadow went over me. I rolled over to see the whales and watched a Great White going past. It disappeared in the distance and then we called it a day.
A few years later, we were diving and we had three orca swim by, but they didn’t seem to give us a second thought.” – SnakebitCowboyRebel
37. I found a snake in my pants…
“I went snorkeling in Coron, Philippines on the shallow waters just enjoying the reefs. When I went back on the boat I felt something heavy inside my shorts. I thought it was just water caught up in there, so I shook out my shorts and a reef snake fell out. I freaked out but my sister was able to take a picture of the coral reef snake before it went back into the water.” – mynameisjuvy
38. I was covered in b***d by the time I was done my dive
Yep, if you’re bleeding you’re probably going to want to stay out of the water.
“Went scuba diving in Riviera Maya, Mexico on my honeymoon. [I] had a head cold prior to going and had trouble popping my ears as I went under the water. I forced my way down so I didn’t ruin the excursion. I came up after a great time, b***d was running down my nose in the middle of the ocean. Luckily no sharks were around.” – slimnku4
39. I threw up in my regulator
“This isn’t scary. Well, it is, but it’s more funny than scary.
I was on a trip to Cuba with my family when I was 17 or 18.
My dad and I went scuba diving one day but I decided to get absolutely wasted the night before.
So, we pile onto the bus and head down a bumpy road and I’m happily barfing away into a plastic bag. We suit up and before I know it I’m underwater and feeling cured. That is until the end of the dive. I’m not sure what happened, but at around 10 meters, I started throwing up into my regulator. Do you know how hard it is to keep calm while clearing a regulator and trying to barf without inhaling? Very hard. All the dive master did was point and laugh.” – smellface
40. The Blue Hole, Belize, and bull sharks
The Blue Hole is an absolutely beautiful dive site but it also has a reputation for claiming a lot of lives.
“I went to the blue hole in Belize on my second dive ever. We went down to about 135 feet and I was scared. No narcosis, thank god. Another 50 feet below us were a school of huge bull sharks just circling around. The guide had told us not to worry, so I tried not to. Made it back without incident, but won’t be doing that again…” – MissedByThatMuch
41. That time I tried barracuda tacos
“I was on a dive tour in Isla Mujeres and as we were swimming away from the lighthouse we were engulfed by a school of huge barracuda. I tried to pantomime a biting motion with a shrug to the tour leader and he just gave a thumbs up, so we swam through them and they just parted for us to make way.
I did go fishing the next day and caught a few and had some barracuda tacos and ceviche. So, I guess that’s what they get for trying to intimidate us.” – MrJuwi
42. Face-to-face with a GIGANTIC moray eel
“Our dive master took my buddy and I through a short limestone cave in Cozumel, maybe twenty feet from end to end at about thirty feet depth. As I emerged from the other end, I looked to my right and saw the most gigantic moray eel I have seen anywhere, including on TV, three feet from my face. His head was about fourteen inches tall, and he was just hanging out, breathing, not acting aggressively at all. The dive master knew what he was doing, as these animals are territorial and usually stay close to the same spot. This was a surprise treat he kept for divers he deemed experienced enough not to freak out.” – Build68
43. I nearly peed myself underwater
“PADI Open Water Certification dive in a large lake in the midwest USA. The instructor mentioned that if we were lucky, we might see a paddlefish, but with 10-15 feet visibility, it was unlikely. I had no idea what one of those looks like, and no one asked anything about them. Turns out they can be up to 5 feet long and have big gaping mouths and weird paddle-shaped snouts. But, we didn’t know that.
Down at 30-40 feet, about 10 minutes from finishing the dive, a paddlefish swam out of the murk and directly at my face, with its mouth wide open. Nearly peed myself. It went right around my head and we didn’t see it again. [I] learned afterward that they’re pretty harmless plankton feeders, but on my first dive in the water like that it didn’t seem that way.” – bookwolf
44. If I was in my dad’s shoes, I probably would have died
“I was diving with my dad in Mexico. At that time he had 25 years of diving experience, I’d only just been certified and this was my first recreational dive after that. Since we were on vacation, we had to book with an outfit group. The boat/equipment/etc. didn’t look high end, but it was about average for local outfits.
A few minutes after the descent, dad is swimming furiously to the dive leader doing the “no air” signal and, after a couple seconds of no response basically grabs the guy’s octopus rig. I don’t know if the dive lead was confused but he was grabbing at my dad’s hand as he reached for him. We ascended and he told me that his primary flooded and the secondary had stopped too, not sure what happened but, oh my. Dad was pretty angry at the guy for it and for whatever the heck had gone wrong with the equipment, but otherwise unfazed.
I was mostly confused underwater not fully understanding what I’d seen (I know that sounds dumb right after training but that’s how I recall it). The real fear set in later. What if I’d taken that rig? Just-trained, 19-years-old, and experience only in closely-supervised settings…I don’t know if I could’ve reacted correctly, especially with someone trying to grab my hand. It was scary. I’ve only done a handful of dives over the last 19 years, and they were all amazing.” – adlittle
45. My wife was furious after our very first dive
“On my honeymoon, I went diving with my wife. There were a lot of people a part of this class, it was a big group. At the bottom of the site, I saw an octopus under some coral. I grabbed my wife’s hand and pulled her over to let her take a look. I floated there for a while, just enjoying the awesomeness of seeing another living creature going about its business.
Then this familiar-looking woman swims up to me and gets her mask right next to mine. One eyebrow is raised, questioningly. Oh crap! It’s my WIFE!!! I look at the person whose hand I’m holding, and it’s an adorably cute 17-year-old girl (I’d find out those details later) in a swimsuit very similar to my wife’s. I played holdy-handy with a woman, not my wife, on my honeymoon, and got caught. The look on my dear wife’s face was the scariest thing I’ve ever seen underwater. (We laugh about it now, but back then she was an Erinye on a mission of vengeance).” – lendergle
46. I found a missing hand
One of the fun things about scuba diving is that you never know what you’ll find in the vast blue ocean. But then again, that can also be an absolutely terrifying thing.
“I was diving with some friends and found a fisherman’s glove with a hand still inside it. We brought the glove to the local police and they told us that they hadn’t received any kind of report of a guy with a missing hand.” – gdwcifan
47. I uncovered human remains
“My worst was being stalked by an octopus and finding human bones at an archeology site. Me and my buddy were looking for artifacts on the site and he saw something sticking out of the sand near the end of the baseline. We brushed the sand away and turns out it was part of a femur. The fact that the wreck we were surveying was a possible slave ship made it so much worse.” – OpStingray
Diving can be such an adventure. After reading these stories, I feel like you never know what you’ll come across underwater…
