Few people were diving in the freezing ocean around St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada, in the winter of 1986. I still had my Poseidon Unisuit, which I had used for several years of commercial diving in British Columbia in the late 1970s. I had not been in the water for several years but wanted to get started again.
I walked into the closest shop with a fill station, and my alarm bells started to ring. The filthy compressor sat in a pool of oil and was incredibly grimy. The walls were covered in black soot, and the air intake was at waist level and went into a parking lot filled with cars. The situation should have been enough to stop me, but I was young and naïve, so I ignored the warning signs.
A couple of days later I decided to do a solo dive at a site I knew well — Bay Bulls, a remote, steeply sloping sandy bottom that reached a maximum of about 70 feet (21 meters). My partner, Tamara, came with me as a shore watcher, which turned out to be a lifesaver.
I donned my gear and started into the shallow water with the regulator in my mouth. I noticed a strong oil taste in the air I was breathing, and my brain started registering a problem. When I reached about 50 feet (15 m), I felt intense pain in my abdomen and knew something was wrong.
I turned around and began to swim back up the slope, willing myself to keep going as I rapidly weakened. I started to see yellow spots that were tiny at first but got larger until they mostly obscured my vision. My legs stopped working, and I crawled up the slope on my elbows.
I made it into shallow water and started to shed my gloves, mask, and hood. Tamara knew something was wrong and waded into the freezing water, flipping me on my back to keep my face out of the water.
I passed in and out of consciousness for the next 30 minutes with Tamara holding my head out of the water. There was nothing she could do but try to keep me from drowning. I weighed close to 250 pounds (113 kilograms) with my gear, so she couldn’t drag me to dry land.
After about 45 minutes it was like a lightbulb switched on. My strength returned, and I could sit up and walk around, feeling nearly normal. Tamara was completely supportive, and I was in her hands for this entire episode. There were no homes nearby, and we didn’t have cell phones back then, so she was stuck helping me survive in the middle of nowhere.
She later told me that I did not display the cherry-colored mucous membranes often associated with carbon monoxide poisoning. But red coloring is not always a symptom, nor does its absence rule it out.
The amazing part of this episode was that I felt great when I finally came out of it. Once I had fully recovered from what was actually carbon monoxide poisoning, I felt fine. I could get up, cart my gear back to the truck, reassure my partner, and drive myself home. The impairment was instantly gone. These days you would go to the emergency room, get assessed, and at a minimum probably spend the night for monitoring, supplemental oxygen, follow-up blood work, and a neurological exam.
I knew about the pathophysiology of carbon monoxide poisoning as a diver and through my career as a veterinarian, but this incident was a dramatic example of how much more powerfully carbon monoxide molecularly bonds to human hemoglobin than oxygen. It was especially clear from the lengthy duration of recovery I had while breathing normal air. Oxygen therapy undoubtedly would have helped speed my recovery.
I visited the owner of the fill station and told him his toxic air had almost killed me. He was hostile and completely denied any responsibility, so I reported the incident to the local police, who did nothing about it. I learned to use other dive shops with certified air quality and modern standards.
I was lucky to live through this episode of solo diving and carbon monoxide poisoning, which is highly lethal to divers under hyperbaric conditions, even with a buddy helping you recover. Documenting this incident was important for me because many people do not survive carbon monoxide toxicity while diving, and I hope some of my observations and symptoms will help others avoid this potentially lethal experience.
It is essential to follow your dive training instructions and insist that your breathing-air quality meets acceptable standards and that the fill station has documentation to prove it. There are many locations where air can be sketchy, so if a fill station does not meet the criteria or you get a whiff of hydrocarbon in your air, don’t use that air to dive. AD
© Alert Diver – Q2 2025
