Divers TRAPPED On The Ocean Floor | Diving Gone Wrong

Welcome to another edition of Diving Gone Wrong. In this video, we're gonna go over three stories about diving that combine all of the elements of claustrophobia, thalassophobia, and everything else about the deep ocean we find terrifying. And if for some reason that you happen to be on a submarine right now, you might want to skip this one.

As always, viewer discretion is advised. [music] Quickly, before we get into today's stories, this video is brought to you by Endel. I spend a ton of time researching and writing scripts for this channel, and inevitably, I lose focus.

I've tried to use music to combat this, but I find song lyrics distracting and having to switch songs takes me out of the zone. Thankfully, Endel has a better solution. Using cutting edge AI technology, Endel generates real time personalized soundscapes for you based on your location, weather, heart rate, and the type of activity you're doing.

So if you just need to focus like I do, Endel can generate sounds to help boost your productivity. If you just wanna relax, Endel can generate sounds to calm and comfort you. Endel can even generate sounds to help soothe you to sleep.

And these are all completely seamless - meaning you'll never have to switch songs. These can all be changed or adapted for whatever mood you're in and whatever platform you're on. In fact, the soundscape you're hearing right now is one that Endel generated just for me.

So if you feel like Endel would be perfect for you, click the link on screen now or in the description below, because the first hundred people to download Endel will get a free week of audio experiences like the one you're hearing now, but completely customized just for you. With that said, let's get into today's video. Born in Wasaga Beach, Canada, Luke practically grew up in the water.

From a young age, he just loved being around it and swimming and scuba diving and sailboating. And because of this love for the water, he eventually turned his passion for diving into a career at around the age of 34 when he switched professions to become a commercial diver. According to his mother, in addition to his general love for exploring, he also wasn't afraid to take risks, which is generally what most people consider commercial diving to be.

Then, at the age of 39, he married a lovely woman named Sheryl, and the two of them moved out to Nova Scotia, Canada, which is on Canada's East Coast on the Atlantic Ocean. About three months after the two of them were married in July, Luke was at work, getting ready to perform the annual inspection of something known as a sluice gate at the Nova Scotia power tidal plant. In this area of the Atlantic, near the famous bay of Fundy, the tides are higher than anywhere else on Earth.

In the most extreme areas, this difference is up to 53 feet or 16 meters of water between low tide and high tide. In fact, it's so extreme that it's totally normal to walk around at low tide and see boats sitting on the dry seabed. Then, just a few hours later, they're sitting in deep water again.

It really is incredible. This power plant that he was inspecting took advantage of all this moving water and used it to turn turbines to generate electricity, and this required large gates to control the flow of water. These look a little bit like the blade of a guillotine, except instead of a blade, it's more like a giant wall of metal or concrete to block the flow of water.

When the wall is raised, water flows through and when the wall is lowered, the water is blocked. And understandably, to ensure that these are functioning properly, occasionally, somebody needs to go down and actually get a look at them to ensure they're free of debris and damage. So Luke suited up in his diving suit, which looked a little bit different than your normal scuba gear.

For commercial diving, divers often have an umbilical cord attached to them to supply them with air rather than tanks. This way, they can stay down indefinitely without running out of air. Once this was all tested and ready to go, Luke slipped into the water for what was gonna be at least 15 minutes of work.

Then, just a minute or two into the dive, Luke signaled that he wanted to be pulled up, but before they could grab him, the line went completely taut. The surface team tried to pull against it, but it was as if it was fixed in place. Despite all of them pulling on it, it didn't budge at all.

So not wanting for him to get pulled further, just in case, they tied off what they could and just waited helplessly. The reason this was all happening was that there had been a crucial mistake before entering the water. They never completed something known as the bag test.

It's very simple. You take a bag with a small weight inside, tie a line to it, and then you drop it in the water along the length of the dive area. If the bag stays stable and there's no pull, that means there's no current.

If there is a pull, there's some current somewhere in the water and it's not safe to enter. Had they done that that day, they would've realized that despite the plant lockout control showing that the sluice gate was closed, it was actually open about 12 inches or 30 centimeters. With it open, Luke was being pulled into this opening by the force of the entire Atlantic tide, which can be literal tons of pressure.

The reason they couldn't pull him at all was because of this incredibly strong suction force pulling his body into the small opening, and it would take a full hour before the pressure finally equalized in the area for them to finally be able to descend and see his condition. Entering the water once again, a diver went down and found Luke's body wedged underneath the sluice gate. His helmet was firmly jammed inside, his ribs were broken, his suit was torn, and tragically, his mouthpiece was out of his mouth.

It's not clear exactly the sequence of events, but ultimately, it seems as though he drowned as he was being crushed in between the opening. This, believe it or not, is the leading cause of death among commercial divers. Specifically, a phenomenon known as Delta P or pressure differential.

In the industrial world, everything is just larger. The intake pipes, the structures, and consequently, all of the forces involved. Getting caught in the suction or flow of some of these can mean certain death in most cases, if not from the force alone.

But then, getting stuck or running out of air, and occasionally, it's even worse than that. Despite how different they are, planes and submarines share a unique ability to bring us comfort in extreme conditions. For those of us who are comfortable with flying, the feeling is not so different from sitting in the seat of a coach bus.

We hardly think about the fact that outside of a thin sheet of metal, it's negative 50 degrees, the air is too thin to breathe, and we're suspended 30,000 feet (9,144 m) in the air. It's almost too comforting given how harsh the conditions are outside. And I've never been on a submarine, but I imagine that the feeling is probably not that different from a plane.

There too, a thin sheet of metal is all that separates you from the complete darkness of the deep ocean, the crushing pressure, and the unbreathable liquid. On the contrary, although they are rare, incidents have occurred where this thin sheet of metal is the only thing that has prevented people from reaching safety, especially early in their inception. Interestingly, the first designs for submarines date back at least several centuries.

They weren't exactly the deep-sea variety that we know today, but the concept was more or less the same. They'd have some sort of air chamber that had sailors underneath the water instead of on top of it like traditional boats. Early designs even had oars because they were human-powered.

The first fully mechanical sub dates back to the mid 19th century, but these weren't really widely used until World War I when they started to become an invaluable piece of any military, and this would be the case from then on. Today, every capable military has subs in its fleet. Just prior to World War II, the Royal Navy of England was in the middle of producing a brand-new fleet of subs known as the T-1 class.

These were an upgrade to all of their old subs and would be the latest and greatest diesel electric subs they possessed at the time. In total, over the course of several years, they produced 53 of this class - one of which was named HMS Thetis. This was the 25th produced, finished in 1938, ended up being 275 feet long (84 m).

It could support 50 full-time crew and travel over 8,000 kilometers (4,971 mi) before needing to resupply. Following its completion, it was due for a sea trial on the 1st of July, so rather than the normal crew of 50, it was carrying a total of 103 men in celebration of it being finished. The majority of these were sailors, but at the last minute, all of the engineers decide to stay on the board to join the Navy for a celebratory buffet.

Then, in addition to these men, there were a few high-ranking officials and two catering staff to prepare the food. Once everyone was on board, the sub then set sail from Birkenhead en route to Liverpool Bay. When they were about 12 miles (19.

3 km) off the coast, the lieutenant on board needed to add some water to the sub to increase its weight because it was running light and was having trouble diving. Now, the way that the system was set up on this sub was that there were six ballast tubes - each with an outer hatch and an inner hatch. These tubes could then be filled with water to increase the weight of the sub.

To open these hatches, there was a series of circular valves that were labeled from 1 to 6. Under normal conditions, spinning the valve in one direction, close the hatch, and spinning in the other opened it up. Except for reasons that are unclear to this day, the outer hatch on 5 was already open.

In addition to this, the shut position on valve 5 was a mirror image of valve 6 right above it. So when the lieutenant adjusted these valves, he accidentally opened the inner hatch of tube 5, causing water to come pouring into the sub. He quickly shut it again, but by then, tons of water had already weighed down the end and caused the bow to sink directly to the sea floor.

Thankfully, there was no immediate danger and no one was hurt. But the way that the sub was positioned meant that the end was just barely at the water surface. This also meant that the intake for fresh air was submerged, preventing the sub from being able to recirculate oxygen back in - meaning they were on a countdown to eventually running out of air.

Shortly after the initial sinking, an emergency buoy was sent up to flag down any passing ships. Then, a couple of hours after they had gone radio silent, a ship they had been in communication with sent it a message that they were no longer responding. This was around the time an official search was launched.

Unfortunately, the nearest rescue ships were hundreds of miles away, which guaranteed that it would be at least several more hours before the men inside were rescued. So hours went by as the carbon dioxide levels slowly got higher and higher inside the contained chamber, eventually causing the men to get very sleepy. As time passed, the crew resorted to dumping all of their fresh water and all of their fuel oil to lighten the ship and get the emergency hatch closer to the water surface.

And it become apparent that they couldn't wait for rescue any longer or they risk dying. They would need to use the sub's emergency exit instead. The next problem was that this hatch was only large enough for one person to exit at a time, and similar to the ballast tubes, there was one hatch in and one hatch out.

So each man had to enter the tube and then close it behind himself. Then, he had to equalize the pressure to the water outside by filling the chamber with water, and they need to be completely full before the hatch could be opened. So just imagine you're in a tiny metal chamber, you have to sit in potentially freezing water until you completely submerged.

Then, on a breath hold, you have to open the chamber, shut it behind you, and then swim to the surface. It's also unclear exactly how far this hatch was from the surface, so it could have been right there, or it could have been a decent swim. In any case, one by one, the men started going through the sequence to escape the sub.

Four of them escaped without issue, and then a fifth man entered the chamber, ready to escape to the surface. He closed the hatch behind him and started to let water into the room with him. The water slowly roses higher and higher, and then he started to panic.

In his panic, he opened the hatch early, causing the water to rush in from above. And tragically, somehow, during these events, he drowned inside the chamber. This also meant that the outer hatch was now stuck open, which prevented any of the other men from being able to use the escape hatch.

At this point, only four of the total 103 on board had been able to escape and the air they were breathing was dangerously low on oxygen. Then, even more tragically, due to a combination of blunders because of the unexpected nature of this incident, the rescue ship wouldn't get there until 13 hours from the time that the sub first went down. In addition to a ship capable of rescue being so far away, the sub was difficult to locate by planes flying overhead.

Then, because there was no radio communication, it wasn't realized until later that they needed equipment to cut into the ship. Finally, when a cable rescue ship arrived on scene, a thick cable was attached to the end, sticking out of the water to hold it in place. But because of the weight and the movement of the water, this snapped and sent the sub plunging to the seabed.

By then, even if any of the men on board were still alive, this made it impossible to mount a rescue. The technology simply did not exist to reach the men in time. With hope abandoned, the rescue turned into a salvage operation and it would take another four months to finally retrieve the Thetis from the seafloor.

On May 14th, 1972, a ship known as the Fred Berry was deliberately sunk off the coast of Key West, Florida to a depth of 330 feet (100. 5 m) to create an artificial reef. Just like actual reefs, artificial ones can help promote marine life, control erosion on the seafloor, and prevent ships from passing through or using large trawling nets.

About a year later, scientists were trying to figure out how the local marine life was responding to this new feature so a fish trap was lowered to the wreckage. After it had spent a day resting on the bottom, it was then due to be collected once again, but because of how delicate a job this is, a special submersible needed to be used. The one that was chosen is a vehicle known as the Johnson Sea Link.

This pickup truck-sized vehicle is completely unique compared to both traditional boats and submarines. At the front, there's a large transparent sphere made of four inches thick acrylic. This is the pilot sphere and gives up to two people almost a 360-degree view unobscured.

It almost looks a little bit like a helicopter bubble. Then, behind the sphere is the dive compartment, which is an eight-foot (2. 44 m) long cylinder with about a five-foot (1.

5 m) diameter. This compartment has a window into the pilot sphere along with port holes on either side and can hold another two to three people. This compartment also has a hatch on the bottom, not too unlike the escape hatch from the previous story.

This allows commercial divers to equalize the pressure and exit through the bottom to leave the compartment and work in the water. In addition to these two compartments, the Sea Link has life support systems that allow the crew to stay in the water for hours at a time as deep as the seafloor. In fact, it can actually sit on the bottom and move around relatively precisely at depth of up to a thousand feet.

The motors can be rotated and powerful lights illuminate a large area around the ship. Because of this, it functions almost like a mobile dive bell or observation deck for commercial or scientific work. Then, on the 17th of July, 1973, the fish trap was scheduled to be retrieved from the wreckage.

For this trip, there would be four people. There was the pilot, Archi, who had already done over a hundred dives on the Sea Link before this. Dr Robert would be accompanying Archi in the pilot sphere as a scientific observer.

Not only was he a highly experienced diver, his PhD work was in Pressure Physiology. Then, in the dive compartment would be Albert and Edwin, both of which were also experienced divers. They were gonna be observing as training if they need to work from the Sea Link at a later date.

Ordinarily, they'd have dive equipment on, but because this was purely observational, when they arrived on the deck to meet, they were wearing just shorts and t-shirts. Upon seeing this, Robert mentioned to them that it was gonna get quite cold at depth, but the two of them just sort of shrugged it off. Knowing that this would be a short trip as well, Robert did the same and then all four of them then entered the Sea Link where it was positioned on the deck of the ship.

Following their pre-descent check, the submersible was lowered into the water, and then at 8:36 AM, it detached from the ship and started descending. About nine minutes later, it reached a depth of 340 feet or 106 meters and started moving in the direction of the wreckage. At this depth, visibility was poorer, but soon enough, they passed the ship's anchor chain.

Then, they passed over the wreckage and landed on the seafloor about 40 feet (12. 2 m) from the fish trap. Archi then pointed the Sea Link directly facing the fish trap and positioned the motors in such a way that they became negatively buoyant.

This way, they reduced their risk of a current sending them upward and crashing into the hull of the wreckage. Then, they started moving forward, directly toward the fish trap to use a forked-shaped retrieving lance on the front of the sub to grab a line attached to the trap. Once they were close enough, Archi got it dead on, but the spring of the lance wasn't activating and closing around the line.

He repositioned two more times and tried to grab the line, but was unsuccessful each time. On the third time, he let the bow down just a few degrees, causing the stern to lift up an equal amount. Then, because the lance wasn't closing, he decided to abort for the time being and would come back to make another attempt at a later time.

He then backed the Sea Link away from the wreckage exactly as he came in, but all of a sudden, the ship jerked to a stop. Because of the shape of the Sea Link and all of the small pieces of metal that stick out from it, as he repositioned, a steel cable running along the wreckage had wrapped around them. Archi tried to move around and free the ship, but pretty quickly realized that he might be making it worse.

In their current position, the ship was able to rotate 270 degrees with about 20 feet of slack in the cable. But not being able to see exactly how it was positioned, they risked getting even more stuck. The four of them then discussed what the best course of action was and decided that it was probably best to simply radio up to the ship and request help.

So at 9:53 AM, a message was sent up, explaining the situation to the surface crew. This message was then relayed to the coast guard at just after 10:00 AM and suggested that they might need Navy divers to come and untangle them from the wreckage. In this message, they also explicitly stated that the crew was in no imminent danger because that's what they believed to be the case.

Unbeknownst to the crew though of both the submersible and the surface ship, a crucial mistake had been made - calculating how much breathable air they'd have at depth. The life support system on the Sea Link uses a substance known as Baralyme to absorb the excess CO2 breathed out by the crew. Without it, the CO2 levels can become toxic.

The original calculations show that they have enough for 61 hours in the dive compartment and 42 hours in the pilot's compartment at a temperature of 70 Fahrenheit or 21 Celsius. Under normal circumstances, this wouldn't be an issue because the Sea Link wouldn't be at depth for long enough for it to get very cold inside. But because they were now going to be stuck for hours, the sub would get very cold and significantly reduce the Baralyme's ability to absorb CO2.

And this was especially the case in the dive compartment, which is mostly made of aluminum. Following the distress signal, the crew inside the Sea Link contemplated locking out the dive chamber and sending one or both of the men in the water to try and entangle it themselves. But what they realized was that they'd need to pressurize the back chamber to do this and change the composition of the air they were breathing.

In the short term, this change in gas mixture wouldn't be a problem. But if they were unsuccessful and still need to wait for a rescue ship, the gas would be toxic to them long before it arrived. After coming to this realization, they decide that despite how uncomfortably cold it was becoming inside the chamber, they'd have no other choice but to wait.

About two hours after they sent out the message, the surface crew set up a line with a buoy on the end to mark off the approximate position of the Sea Link. That way, when the divers arrived, they could head straight into the water. This proved to be much more difficult than what they expected when the line became tangled in another line to mark off the wreckage.

While all of this was going on, a ship known as the Tringa was being prepared with equipment and crew to leave Key West at about 3:00 PM that afternoon. And it was only just before this ship left that someone onboard the Sea Link realized that their calculations needed to be redone. This was the first time they realized that their situation was much more desperate than they initially thought.

At 4:15 PM, the Tringa finally arrived on scene and immediately got to work, setting up a four-point mooring. This ended up being an incredibly time-consuming process and took all the way until 8:00 PM to get set up and secure the Tringa in place. Unfortunately, this was crucial to do because the divers would be on umbilicals attached to the ship.

If the boat moved, they could be ripped through the water or have their equipment ripped off while they were at depth. And as all this was taking place, the Baralyme was becoming more and more ineffective. The rear compartment of the sub was down to just 42 Fahrenheit or 5 Celsius, and the two men in this compartment were on the verge of hypothermia.

Then, at around 10:00 PM, the Baralyme had been completely exhausted and Albert and Edwin switched to tanks that were stored in the compartment. At the same time, the pressure in the compartments start to rise inexplicably. By the time the Navy divers got into the water at 10:45, the pressure had risen to two times the pressure at sea level.

Then, by the time they made their way down to the wreckage, the pressure increased to three times sea level, forcing the two inside the dive chamber to switch to a mixture of oxygen and helium. The pressure was becoming so high that they started to experience nitrogen narcosis if they didn't. Then, finally, over 12 hours after they first got stuck, the Navy divers got down to 316 feet (96.

3 m) just above the wreckage. When they got down there, they realized that the only path to the Sea Link was completely obstructed by the ship. They also risk getting stuck in the debris before ever reaching them.

So upon seeing this, they were forced to head back up to the surface for the Tringa to try to reposition for them to descend again from a better angle. At midnight, the pressure inside the dive chamber had increased to 10 times the pressure at sea level and had now equalized to the pressure on the ocean floor. With that, the men opened the bottom hatch and contemplated heading out in a last desperate attempt to untangle the cord.

At this point, they had almost no gas left and they were desperately cold. The mixture of oxygen and helium they were breathing caused heat to be expelled much more quickly in addition to the already low temperature inside the chamber and the fact that they were wearing shorts and t-shirts. And because of how cold they were, they decided against leaving the Sea Link and hoped that another diver would be able to get down in time.

Throughout this, Archi was in constant communication with the surface team, trying to coordinate Tringa's new position. At just after 1:00 AM, as the divers were getting ready to enter the water again, Archi and Robert looked into the dive compartment and saw that Albert and Edwin were convulsing on the floor of the chamber. They called out to them, but there was no response.

This made it absolutely crucial that they get them up to the surface right away. Then, at 1:35 AM, the Navy divers entered the water again and eight minutes later, they were just above the wreckage. This time, they'd somehow manage to be even farther away than the previous dive.

Neither party could even see the lights of one another, and with limited distance on their cables, they had no other option but to return to the surface once again. An hour later, another ship arrived on scene. This time, with a dive bell to lower into the water.

Divers could then be brought down almost the entire way and then be able to get much closer to the wreckage. Unfortunately, it took another three hours for this to be lowered when it was finally lowered at 6:00 AM. It was quickly brought down to 282 feet (86 m), and then a diver exited, hoping to get to the Sea Link.

As soon as he left the chamber though, the current was so strong that he was immediately wrapped up in his own lines, forcing him to abandon this attempt and the use of the dive bell entirely. In order to properly decompress the diver, this was finally brought up at 9:20 AM - now over 24 hours since the divers entered the water. And despite the acrylic bubble maintaining a warmer temperature than the dive compartment, the Baralyme in this chamber was now getting low as well.

Despite all of this, it would take all the way until noon for a new ship to arrive that was a salvage vessel with a unique unmanned platform with a camera attached. This could be sent down and controlled by the surface team. So finally, at 3:00 PM, the surface team was able to get a clear, unobscured view of the Sea Link on the ocean floor.

The platform was then raised, prongs were attached to it, and sent right back down. This time, it managed to attach the Sea Link where it was finally pulled from the wreckage and to the surface. Archi and Robert were unharmed, but it was now 14 hours since there were any signs of life from Albert and Edwin.

Immediately, an oxygen helium mixture was pumped into the pressurized chamber and hot water was sprayed over the outside to warm the interior up. From outside, everyone watched anxiously as the chamber was warmed, but the men inside showed no signs of life. Eventually, doctors on scene felt that there was no hope for the men and they were tragically pronounced dead.

Once the chamber was brought to normal pressure, they were finally removed and transported to a hospital in Key West to have their autopsies performed. It was determined that they died of carbon dioxide poisoning. Thank you so much for watching and hopefully, I will see you in the next one.