r/diving

I got myself a housing for my O-EM 10 mark iii two years ago. It flooded on the first dive of a Galapagos liveaboard trip. Turns out there was a manufacturing defect: micro fissure in the plastic. After some back and forth, they offered me a store credit with the value of the camera and repaired the housing. I bought two strobes DS160 and replaced my mark III with the mark iv (housing was compatible). Right out of the box, one of the strobes was faulty: it wouldn’t go into video light more but fired ok. Sent it back and they fixed it, that was also two years ago. Then last month, the hotshoe had problems. One of the delicate wire was loose and no longer soldered. Got a replacement hotshoe with super fast shipping as I was heading on a dive trip. New hotshoe arrived and worked fine. Then, a few days ago, my TTL converter started acting up. The blue/red lights still turn on but the strobes would fire randomly or not at all when on demand. Contacted the company and it seems like the TTL converter is no longer working as it should. The pins are fine, no corrosion: I just can’t figure out why. I have been able to switch to full manual mode but it’s still an annoyance and extra steps that I tried to avoid by going automatic.

My question is: am I just having really bad luck? Or is there other also people having issues? I’m growing incredibly frustrated. I have dropped thousands of dollars on this underwater setup, that I love when it works well, but I’ve had enough issues now that I feel like it’s poor manufacturing/quality control, or I’m just the woman with the worst luck ever with my underwater photography setup.

AI translated article from Finnish media (Helsingin Sanomat, paywall) where Patrik Grönqvist tells about their dives in Maldives.

Divers Lost in Cave Were Found in a Small Cramped Space, Says Diver Patrik Grönqvist

According to Finnish cave divers, the recovery of the four deceased Italians from the depths went smoothly in cooperation with the authorities. Only the Finns entered the cave itself.

“A hole in the seabed.” That is how diver Patrik Grönqvist describes the opening leading to the Devana Kandu cave in the Maldives, in the Indian Ocean.

“It’s a somewhat different kind of cave from what we’re used to,” Grönqvist told Helsingin Sanomat by phone on Wednesday evening from Vaavu Atoll.

He and two other experienced Finnish cave divers, Sami Paakkarinen and Jenni Westerlund, had just recovered the bodies of two Italian divers from the underwater cave.

The other two victims had already been transported out of the cave during a demanding operation on Tuesday.

Five Italian recreational divers disappeared in the Maldives on Thursday, May 14. They were believed to have entered the cave and drowned.

The environmental organization WWF said the missing individuals included 52-year-old marine biologist Monica Montefalcone from the University of Genoa, her daughter, her student, and a colleague. The fifth victim served as their guide.

On Friday, Paakkarinen’s phone rang. He, Westerlund, and Grönqvist were in Sweden diving in a mine.

The caller was from the international diving safety organization Divers Alert Network. They asked for help.

The small community of Finnish cave divers is well known in the field. In particular, an exceptionally difficult operation carried out in Norway in the spring of 2014 is highly respected.

At that time, Paakkarinen, Grönqvist, and a group of other Finnish divers recovered the bodies of two of their fellow Finnish divers who had died in the Plura cave at a depth of 130 meters.

Norwegian authorities would have left the bodies there because they considered the mission too dangerous.

Grönqvist, Paakkarinen, and Westerlund immediately set off on Friday to drive to Stockholm. They quickly stopped by the grocery store chain ICA to buy shorts.

Grönqvist works as a rescue officer for the Helsinki City Rescue Department. He had to request leave for the trip. It was granted even though staffing at the station was at minimum strength.

On the way to the airport, they learned that there was one more victim.

Maldivian rescue divers had been sent to search for the Italians. One of them had now died.

Only one of the missing Italians had been found.

“That’s when we realized we were really needed.”

On Sunday morning, Grönqvist, Paakkarinen, and Westerlund arrived in Malé, the capital of the Maldives. Planning for the operation began immediately with the local authorities. Representatives from the Italian embassy were also present.

Paakkarinen took on the role of team leader.

By evening, they had already arrived at Vaavu Atoll in the middle of the Indian Ocean.

Four people were still missing.

The first dive was carried out on Monday. Grönqvist and Paakkarinen descended into the cave and began searching through it. Grönqvist laid guideline ropes while Paakkarinen documented everything on video. Westerlund coordinated the operation from above near the boats.

Inside the cave it was dark, and they advanced only by the light of their lamps. Nothing could be seen. Grönqvist began to fear that if the Italians had in fact made it out of the cave and drowned only afterward, the bodies might never be found.

There was enormous pressure.

“There was a huge amount of trust placed in us, and the whole world was watching. What if we don’t find anyone?”

They were almost at the far end of the cave when they noticed traces left by divers on the bottom.

Grönqvist and Paakkarinen began following them. They discovered a side tunnel branching off to the left and proceeded into it.

This tunnel headed in almost the same direction as the main passage. They continued for about fifty meters. The tunnel became narrower, rose slightly upward, and ended in a dead end.

First, around a bend, the light from their lamps reflected off a scuba tank.

That was how the victims were found — all four together in a small, dark, cramped space.

The entrance to the cave is at a depth of 55 meters. At the deepest point, Grönqvist and Paakkarinen descended to 70 meters. The bodies were found at around 60 meters.

Grönqvist estimates that the distance from where the victims were found to the cave entrance was about 150 meters.

“That’s not actually a very long distance.”

“But if you can’t see anything in the tunnel and don’t have equipment suited for that environment, then it’s a damn long distance.”

The first two bodies were recovered from the cave on Tuesday.

Before the recovery, Paakkarinen and Grönqvist ran a strong guideline from the surface of the sea all the way to the cave entrance. The victims were carefully attached to it using carabiners.

Divers from the Maldivian Coast Guard and police assisted the Finns. However, they were not allowed to descend deeper than 30 meters after one of their own divers had drowned.

An underwater drone was also sent to the entrance of the cave. Its video feed allowed people on the boats above to monitor what was happening below.

When everything was ready for lifting the bodies, divers descended from the boats to meet them. They carried the bodies the rest of the way to the surface, because the Finnish divers still had to remain underwater for another two hours to carry out so-called “decos,” or decompression stops. During these stops, nitrogen leaves the body, helping to prevent decompression sickness.

On Wednesday, the other two bodies were recovered in the same way.

Tuesday’s dive lasted somewhat over three hours, Wednesday’s slightly less.

“It went quite well.”

Patrik Grönqvist does not know why the Italian group had entered the cave. That is what puzzles him. They did not appear to have the equipment required for cave diving.

Beyond that, he cannot speculate about the causes of the diving accident. That was agreed upon with the authorities. A police investigation will be conducted into the incident. The divers will be interviewed for it before leaving Malé, the capital of the Maldives.

According to Grönqvist, a diagram of the cave structure circulating online is inaccurate.

“We’ve tried drawing it ourselves a bit, and it’s really difficult.”

He estimates the total length of the cave to be about 150 meters.

“I’ve made three dives there now, and even so I’m still not completely certain how the passages run.”

The first chamber was more than ten meters wide and about five meters high. After that, the cave narrowed into a tunnel that at its lowest point was only one meter high.

The recovery operation has been closely followed by international media. In just a couple of days, thousands of new followers have appeared on Grönqvist’s Instagram account.

The Maldivian authorities had to keep Italian television crews farther away from the recovery site.

The Finns were given permission to give interviews to the Italian media, but for that they had to take a boat out to sea to a location where no nearby resort island could be seen in the background.

The Maldivian economy depends heavily on tourism, and this was reportedly the worst diving accident in the country’s history.

Local people fear that the holiday paradise will now become associated with tragedy.

In Grönqvist’s view, the rescue operation has not been technically difficult for experienced cave divers, but physically and psychologically it has been exhausting.

It has been difficult to get enough sleep. Even though Grönqvist is a professional, it is hard to keep the victims’ final moments in the cave out of his mind.

He praises the local people for their help. Without them, everything would have taken much longer.

On Thursday afternoon, Grönqvist and Sami Paakkarinen will dive into the cave one final time. Their departure had to be postponed because of the strong currents around the atoll.

They want to remove the guideline ropes they attached inside the cave so that they will not later tempt anyone else to enter.

In the Maldives, diving below 30 meters is prohibited. Decompression diving is not allowed.

“It’s actually a fine little cave and not technically demanding at all, if you have good equipment and an experienced cave diver.”

A shark patrols the entrance to the cave, but apparently it is the kind “that doesn’t attack.” On Wednesday, however, they encountered a tiger shark instead. That one can be dangerous.

“At least it was considerably bigger than Sami when it came up next to him.”

“But it left immediately afterward. And we didn’t really have time to focus on it.”

So based on the information currently available, this would not be a recreational dive by any standard — it would effectively be a full technical decompression cave dive.

A cave penetration beginning around 55 m, extending roughly 150 m in length, with the divers ultimately found around 60 m inside the cave, already places the dive far beyond the limits of recreational training and equipment configuration.

To conduct a dive like this safely, you would normally require doubles or a CCR simply to carry enough gas for the bottom phase, the decompression obligation, and adequate emergency reserves. Additional stage cylinders with dedicated decompression gases would also typically be required. We are potentially talking about a 2–3 hour dive involving extensive planning, contingency procedures, and staged deco/hang tanks in case of a gas emergency.

And that is before considering the cave environment itself.

Technical cave diving at these depths requires guidelines, cookies, redundant lights, specialized cave equipment, and — most importantly — advanced cave and decompression training with substantial real-world experience. Not basic cavern training or recreational overhead-environment exposure, but full technical cave certification and proper operational discipline.

If the reports are accurate that the divers were using rental recreational equipment, single AL80 cylinders, and air, it becomes extremely difficult to understand how this dive could have been considered feasible from a gas-planning perspective alone.

At 60 m, the NDL is only a matter of few minutes (~5 to 8). Even an immediate turn at depth would still result in a significant controlled ascent (13 min according to UTD recreational Ascent Profile), and the rock bottom requirement for two divers sharing gas at that depth is already above 200 bar. The Gas needed for one diver to descend to 60m, stay at depth for 5 min and return the dive would be close to 160-200 bars (based on 20-25 sac rate and a 13 min controlled ascent) excluding any sort of emergency or problem solving.

A single AL80 simply does not provide enough gas to safely descend to 55–60 m, stay the NDL and ascend.

Let alone penetrate a cave, and return while maintaining an adequate reserve for a gas-sharing emergency. Even without an emergency and without the cave penetration; the available gas margin would be extraordinarily small once depth, stress, elevated SAC rates, ascent time, and potential decompression (in case of NDL breach) are factored in. And we don’t even account for the inadequacy of Air as a Gas for any depth below 30m and the narcosis consequences  

From a diving standpoint, the reported configuration and profile are fundamentally incompatible with accepted safety margins for this type of dive.

I sincerely hope there is additional information or another explanation, because otherwise this scenario makes very little sense from a any standard of diving: recreational, cave-diving and decompression-diving.
I can’t comprehend any of it !!!!

Hi guys,

I've been on the hunt for a new decent quality mask but have been having some trouble with it.

I seem to have issues with very painful pressure points forming on either my eyebrows for compact masks or on the section between my eyebrows/top of nose bridge whenever any level of pressure is applied to the mask, with equalisation having limited or rather only temporary success.

Do you guys have any recommendations in regards to frameless masks for slimmer faces I could try? Till now the only mask I have had any luck with has been a vintage Beuchat oval mask, which definitely made my OWD course interesting but has since then sadly crumbled into dust more or less.

Budget wise I would say that 150€ would be my limit.

The most recent mask I tried was one called OG-60 from Dynamic Nord in Germany, just to give you an example of what I have been trying on so far.

Based on other posts I have been considering the following ones to try out already:

Hollis M1

Scubapro Ghost

Atomics Frameless Medium

Fourth Element Scout

Slight edit: I currently do not have access to any dive shops near me sadly, I do fully agree that that this is the best option if available. My aim here for the time being to either narrow it down for when I next have got access to one or hopefully strike gold and one of your recommendations will fit like a glove as I intend to order a few to try on.

Many thanks in advance for any advice!

I'm so confused. I've done about 130 dives and did all my training in Indonesia. I don't think I'm the most experienced at all but I have exposure for sure. I have gone to 50m with recreational gear. Touch down and very quickly need to start ascending because dive computer clearly starts indicating deco time is accruing and we must go up.

I never had the chance to do it but we also had an official "deep dive" to a shipwreck. 50-57m depending on the end of the ship you're at. Although we did have nitrox available they'd also do the dive using normal air with tanks waiting for them at deco stops since air goes way faster at those depths and there was ~an hour total deco stop that would need to be done coming up. It was also very clearly stated that bottom time was max 18 minutes and that you would be in deco time for most of that since they technically stay past the usual time limits for those depths.

I'm just sitting here very confused how these divers didn't prep whatsoever it seems. I would say I'm still a newer diver still as I know some divers who have 5000+ dives yet this still sounds insane to me. Then to hear a rescue diver was also killed???

Has anyone been diving around this area? I'm very curious if there are down currents or something that messed their dive up. And if not, how can you reason that people (TWICE) were so uneducated that they didn't even calculated the correct amount of air to make a dive like this. Let alone the rescue diver... why would he stay down there if he was watching his air?

It doesn't make any sense.

Question is pretty much on the title. I have never touched a regulator or gas tank in my life, so I am speaking out of absolute ignorance, but all this reminds me of the infamous Bushman's Hole accident where Dave Shaw died to retrieve a body.

The people who went in there knew the risks. And besides, why is everyone using the word "rescue" as if they were alive?

Should dives like Cenote Zapote / Hell’s Bells (deep cavern diving) require more than AOW?

Not suggesting that, just curious what the discussion will be on this page.

New diver here. Any recommendations for diving or diving-related movies / documentaries/ shows?

Just watched Dave Not Coming Back and I’m hooked. Lots of great stories out there I’m sure. TIA 🙏

Hi lads,

Looking for any recommendations for dives in Sicily. I'm still a fairly beginner diver so wouldn't be doing anything hectic. Thanks!

Anyone know if the Maldive cave divers were breathing air or Nitrox or other mixed gasses? At first I thought may have been bad air fills when I heard of 5 deaths but after hearing depth and cave penetration in addition to the death of a military diver I wonder what happened.

According to our local media. Waiting for more updates.

edit. I'm working so have no time to translate the article. Google/AI is your friend.

Petite bouteille a la mer : je suis aujourd'hui et demain a Marseille (cote Docks) et je cherche un.e plongeur.euse autonome qui voudrait plonger cet apres midi ou demain apres midi. Le Bateau Jaune a de la place sur son bateau sur ces deux creneaux mais avec des formations donc personne pour faire une palanquee. Voila !

Looking for an automous diving buddy for either today afternoon or tomorrow!

I’m currently going through GUE training and recently had a fairly intense disagreement with my instructor about the underlying physics of trim and stability in scuba configuration. I’d like to sanity-check my understanding with people who have a strong physics background.

Context:

I had to do Fundies twice because I got sick during my first attempt. At that time I was consistently very foot-heavy and couldn’t fully compensate for it with my beginner skill level.

Configuration during that period:

• Wetsuit + Jetfins
• Aluminum cylinders Doubles 11.1 with weights on the bottom if the cylinders

On my second attempt:

• Similar setup, but steel cylinders instead of aluminum (only option available), no weights

In both cases, I was extremely foot-heavy.

During the second attempt I was just barely able to pass the tech rating, but only by holding a very constrained body position:

• Legs fully flexed / tucked to counter heavy Jetfins (size XXL)
• Arms tightly pulled in because they were buoyant (brand new 5 mm neoprene suit + double 12s)

In short: my “neutral” position was not actually neutral. To stay level I had to actively maintain a very rigid posture. I couldn't compensate for any more offset weights towards my feet. Was at absolutely my maximum. Could go all the way into the other direction but not a single bit further into the one i already am.

My interpretation of the situation:

To return to a relaxed, stable horizontal trim with a proper position (knees at 45 degress not 90, slightlybend arms etc.), I believe I need to shift my center of gravity forward (e.g., by moving weight/lead or redistributing mass toward the head). Otherwise I’m always fighting a torque imbalance between buoyancy and weight distribution.

My instructor’s view:

He argues that this is not primarily an equipment/weight distribution issue but a skill issue. He suggested that what I perceive as imbalance is actually related to:

• Center of gravity shifting dynamically
• Gas in the wing transferring kinetic effects
• And that proper technique should resolve it without changing configuration

He framed it as something that can be solved through skill refinement rather than physical redistribution.

Where I’m stuck:

To me, this seems like a classic static stability problem: a torque between center of buoyancy and center of gravity. Similar to how a ship trims bow/stern heavy depending on mass distribution.

I don’t see how “skill” alone can permanently change a persistent rotational moment caused by mass distribution, unless I’m misunderstanding something fundamental about how buoyancy + gas shift interacts in real diving conditions.

For reference, this is within the context of Global Underwater Explorers training, which tends to emphasize standardized configuration and physics-based explanations.

Question:

From a physics perspective (rigid body mechanics + buoyancy systems), is my interpretation correct that persistent foot-heaviness is primarily a center-of-mass / center-of-buoyancy alignment problem?

Or is there a valid mechanism where skill alone can realistically compensate for what appears to be a static torque imbalance in a stable horizontal hover?

I’m specifically looking for input from people with physics or engineering background, not training doctrine.

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Edit: Thanks for all the replies. Honestly, this discussion saved my sanity a bit.

I work as a mechanical design engineer in heavy steel/machine construction, and after that conversation I was seriously starting to question myself to the point where I joked I might need a new career.

I’ve since talked to another Global Underwater Explorers instructor who explained the issue using center of buoyancy (where the lift effectively acts, in my understanding) and center of mass / center of gravity. His first recommendation for improving trim was either:

- adding a trim weight directly below the upper tank band

- or reducing weight at the feet

So this aligns much more with what I originally thought.

Please avoid turning this into “GUE bad” comments. This was one individual instructor, not the organization as a whole.

I also spoke to a higher-level GUE instructor responsible for a specific area within GUE, and one of his suggestions was simply lighter fins. I won’t mention names because I don’t want to expose who said what.

Unfortunately the whole discussion eventually became emotionally exhausting and honestly pretty unpleasant. It turned into a situation where every objection was reframed into “you just don’t listen to the instructor” or “you think you know better.”

At some point words were put into my mouth, and my actual arguments got exaggerated into absurd versions of themselves. For example, I got responses like:

«“10 kg on your ankles won’t solve the problem.”»

…even though that was basically the exact opposite of what I was arguing.

Near the end, during a dive, he started moving a 1 kg weight around in his hand and said that proved he could change trim without changing equipment. But to me that literally is changing mass distribution.

The whole thing affected me more emotionally than I expected. It became less about physics and more about pride and not wanting to lose face.

Personally, I think this has nothing to do with GUE itself and everything to do with one instructor.

I’ll stay with GUE, but I’ll avoid this instructor in the future.

Also: does anyone have good reading recommendations on the physics/mechanics of diving trim and buoyancy? I found Technical Diving in Depth during a quick search. Is it any good?

I am looking for great dive sites in Europe. I am AOWD and did around 50 dives so far. Therefore please don't recommend any cave dives or other technical dives.

Thank you very much in advance.