Welcome to another edition of Diving Gone Wrong. In this video, we're gonna over three stories
involving deep ocean diving, with each one progressively more
horrifying than the last. I have to warn you, the final story
is particularly gruesome, even if it is true to the events
as they occurred. As always, viewer discretion is advised. [music] In April of 2003, somewhere in the Yellow Sea between
North Korea and the Shandong province of China, a Chinese fishing boat noticed something odd
sticking up out of the water. Initially, it looked almost like an
antenna sticking out of the water. But as they got closer, they realized it was attached
to a massive metal object. Eventually, they got close enough to realize that it was
actually the periscope of a submarine, except it wasn't really doing anything. The entire time they watched it, it just
kind of floated aimlessly. The fishing boat then contacted the Navy who sent
two boats to come to investigate the situation. Upon arriving, the two Navy vessels
worried that it might be a submarine from one of the neighboring countries. This would've been a very serious intrusion
in the controlled waters. But when they got closer to take a look,
they were able to identify it as a Chinese submarine. In other words, it was one of their own ship. Then, they tried to radio the ship or establish
some communication with it, but all they got back was radio silence. The following day, the sub was finally boarded
to figure out what was going on, and what they discovered was as
terrifying as it was confusing. Upon opening the hatch, they immediately noticed
how dark it was inside the sub. There was clearly no power, so no lights were
on anywhere inside. Then, they started walking through the sub and they began
to find the bodies of crew all over the place. And the weirdest part was that all of the crew
were still at their stations and looked as though they were working
and then just suddenly died, like they didn't even know they
were in any danger. In total, 71 bodies were discovered on the ship
with no survivors. Months after this discovery and following
a lengthy investigation, one commander and the commissar of the North Sea Fleet
were dismissed from the Navy. In addition to those high-ranking officials, another
eight officers were all dismissed or demoted on the grounds of improper
command and control. Because of the secrecy surrounding military operations,
it took a long time before the truth was finally learned about
what happened to the sub and the crew. Even now, it hasn't been 100% confirmed. This is the leading theory that is most widely
accepted about the incident. This particular sub holds around
55 crew members. When it was discovered, there were a total of
71 people on board, so it's been speculated that there were some sort of
special procedure or test being run. One of these additional crew was a high-ranking official,
and the rest seemed to be trainees. Now, this particular sub was something known
as a diesel-electric sub. On the surface, the diesel engine is used to power
all the functions and propulsion and also charge large batteries. These batteries are used to power the propulsion system
when the sub is submerged. When on the surface, the diesel engine
pulls in air for ventilation. This can also be done when the sub is partially
submerged to remain undetected. When the sub is in this submerged state, a snorkel sticks out of the water to keep pulling in
air for the engine. If the water gets too high or the
sub submerges, there's a valve that closes the snorkel to
prevent water from getting in. At the same time, the diesel engine shuts off
and the power is diverted to the batteries. Sometime before the discovery of the
sub by the fishing vessel, the submarine either surfaced and
the valve didn't open, or it was already surfaced and water was detected
and the valve was closed. In either case, what should have happened was that
the engine should not have been running. For some reason, it was running and
with no ventilation, it completely consumed all of the air inside
of the sub in just two minutes. One minute after the air were sucked out of the sub,
the men inside would've started to get lightheaded. Two minutes after the air was sucked out,
all of them would've been unconscious, and then by three minutes,
they would've all died due to asphyxia. This also would've created a suction
inside of the sub that would've made it difficult to open
any of the hatches. But it's likely This all happened so quickly anyway
that no one even realized it. That's why all of the crew members were found at
their stations seemingly unaware of any danger. Another possibility is that without ventilation, the diesel engine vented all of the exhaust into the sub,
which would've been equally fatal. In any case, the sub was on some sort
of drill to maintain stealth and therefore, maintain radio silence. It's for this reason that it wasn't
noticed by anyone in command. It's also for this reason that it was trying to ventilate
partially submerged instead of fully on the surface. Ultimately, it was a combination of crew error
and technical malfunction that led to the deaths of everyone on board. In September of 1975, two divers were working
in the North Sea doing a special type of diving known
as saturation diving. Their job was to make a relatively short dive
to 390 feet or 120 meters, and untangle rope that had gotten wrapped
around the guidepost of a piece of machinery called a
blowout preventer. This is a specialized piece of equipment
used in oil and gas drilling that's crucial to keeping the
pipeline operational. Now, in case you missed the last
Diving Gone Wrong video, when commercial divers need to spend long
periods of time underwater or do exceptionally deep dives,
it's impractical to just scuba dive down regularly. Even for dives that are only moderately deep, the decompression time makes it
entirely impractical. Instead, divers will descend in these metal chambers
known as dive bells. They'll actually live in these chambers and then
exit either through a hatch or drop down out through the bottom
when they need to work. These bells are equipped with
beds, food, washrooms, and all the equipment they need to live for
sometimes up to a month at a time. Then, once the job is done, they only need to do
one long decompression when the dive bell is brought up instead
of one after ever dive. This work to decompression ratio is
just way more practical. After the two men were finished their job for the day,
they were hoisted back up to about 310 feet or 94 meters of depth where they would then
enter a small underwater complex. This was their living quarters for the job, which offered them just a little bit more space
than a traditional bell. This complex was actually composed of
three separate chambers. First was the bell, then on the other end
was their living space, and then in the middle of those two chambers
was a small chamber just used to transfer between the bell
and the living space. At about 9:50 PM, the bell made contact
with the transfer chamber, which the divers then sealed together. These two metal rings look almost
like the openings of a front-facing washing machine
connected together. Once these two rings were connected, an attempt was
made to pressurize the chamber to equalize it with the transfer chamber, but as gas started getting pumped in, a small leak
was detected somewhere along the rings. The divers then disconnected the
two chambers, cleaned the surfaces of rings,
and then reconnected them. This isn't uncommon.
Any dust or debris that gets in between can create an imperfect seal, which can
then cause a leak. After the two chambers were reconnected, they tried
to equalize the pressure once again, which seemed to work at first, so they started
moving into the transfer chamber. As the two divers moved inside the
transfer chamber, the chamber actually started to leak once again. But rather than go through the whole process of
disconnecting and cleaning the rings again, the supervisor told the men to just go
into their living space. This would protect them from
further pressure loss and because the transfer chamber and
living space were dry, there generally weren't any issues
sealing that set of hatches. This is also all monitored by a supervisor who's above
surface, either on a boat or the rig itself. Once they were inside, he had them
lean on the door and then he pumped in a little bit of helium gas
to seal the door. On the surface, the supervisor has an array
of gauges and valves to adjust and monitor their conditions
inside the chamber. The way these are set up is that each chamber
has its own separate gauge, but they can also be reconfigured to monitor
the other chambers as well. This gives them a series of backups in case of
some malfunction with any single gauge. But more often than not, just a single gauge
was used out of convenience. So as the men move through the chambers,
the supervisor will just switch the gauge to the section they're in at the time
to monitor the pressure. After he injected the helium into the room,
the door was sealed correctly, but he hadn't changed the gauge from the
middle chamber to the living space. This meant that to him, it seemed as though
the chamber was still losing pressure. And thinking that it was still losing pressure, he started pumping tons of pure helium
into the space. But instead of sealing the door, the room was now
being pressurized like crazy. This went on for several minutes before he finally
realized the mistake he had made, and when he finally realized, the living space
had been pressurized to almost double what it was
supposed to be. This rapid compression, combined with the
high thermal transfer of helium gas and the high humidity in the chamber
caused the temperature inside to go from 32 Celsius to 49 Celsius,
or 90 Fahrenheit to 120 Fahrenheit with almost a hundred percent humidity. This would've been like being inside an oven.
And because the humidity was so high, the men's ability to sweat to cool themselves off
was severely reduced. They frantically tried to open the hatch door,
but because of how pressurized the chamber was, it was impossible. And for some other unknown reason,
the supervisor couldn't relieve the pressure inside the room either,
once he realized his mistake. In an attempt to find some relief from the heat,
the divers pulled their mattresses from their beds and laid down against
the cool aluminum. Finally, another diver was sent down to manually
relieve the pressure and open the chamber. But by the time he got inside the transfer chamber
and looked through the porthole, the men were unresponsive. In the few hours it took to reach them, tragically,
the men had died of hypothermia or heat stroke. This was the first recorded case of saturation diving
death due to overheating. Typically, sat divers deal with extreme cold
at the ocean floor and are often at risk of becoming hypothermic. It's for this reason that chambers are kept as
warm as they are in the first place. So between the already warm chamber
and the series of mistakes, the men were cooked alive
inside their living quarters. Before we get into the final story,
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Ground News out for free. St. Croix is a small island that is part of the US Virgin Islands
and is just east of Puerto Rico. As with most tropical islands, the water is perfect
for supporting all sorts of sea life and rich coral reefs,
making it ideal for diving. And although the entire island is surrounded
by rich diving spots, there is one spot in particular that is famous
because of a unique feature. This is a spot known as the Cane Bay Wall. What makes the spot unique is that just a couple
of hundred feet from the shore, the water goes from 40 feet deep to 13,000 feet
(12 to 3,962 m) deep in a single, almost vertical drop. This means that you can stand on the edge of this wall
and look out into a bottomless abyss that would swallow up most of all but the tallest mountains
in the continental United States. This is one of the largest vertical drop-offs
anywhere in the ocean. In November of 1996, three commercial divers
were diving that area of St. Croix conducting research on the sea life
of the Cane Bay Wall. They had set up some traps a week earlier, and now,
they were gonna collect the samples as well as take some other measurements. All three of these individuals were
highly experienced divers, each having hundreds of dives under their belt. So between the three of them, they had over a
thousand dives' worth of experience. Once they were at the depth of the traps,which is
around 220 feet or 67 meters, two of the men, Bret and Robbie,
got to work taking samples. The third man, Rod, was keeping track
of their depth and timing and noticed two Oceanic whitetip sharks
swimming along the wall in the distance. As experienced divers, the men were
entirely unfazed by this. Shark sightings are just a normal part
of diving in the ocean. It was a bit rare to see these open-water species
so close to land, and they were also unusually large
at around 14 feet (4 m) long. So the three men stopped briefly to take some
pictures before continuing on with their work. After spending their planned 15 minutes or so
working at depth, they reached about the halfway point
in their dive. This meant that it was now time to head back up
to the surface. Their planned ascent would have Robbie go first,
then Bret, then Rod would come up last. When they started to ascend, Robbie's air reading
was a bit lower than expected because he had just been breathing a little bit
heavier throughout the dive. So Bret told him to head on up
to a shallower depth. Then, Bret started to swim as well and noticed that Robbie
was pointing back down to where Rod was, who was still down on the wall. Bret looked down and saw that Rod was covered in silt,
like a dust cloud, covering him completely. To Bret, it looked like Rod might have
had a hose failure, causing air to spray around and kick up
the silt on the wall. This also meant that he might be leaking air
and might need some extra air, so Bret swam back down to see
if he needed any help. It was only once he got into the cloud of silt
and got a better look that he could see that it wasn't a hose at all. Bret grabbed him and started pulling him and realized
that Rod had a huge bite mark on his thigh. And as he was processing what he was seeing,
the shark came in for another attack. The two of them tried desperately to hit its gills
and keep it away, and as they were fighting it off, a second one
swam in and grabbed a hold of his calf, causing the silt to become blood red. Then, the first one came back and grabbed his thigh again
and started pulling him violently. Even though Bret was pulling hard in the
opposite direction, the shark was too strong and pulled the two of them
right over the edge of the drop-off. Now in essentially a free-fall down the wall, the two of
them tried desperately to fight off the sharks, while also rapidly consuming the
air they had left. At one point, Bret checked his depth gauge and saw that
it was maxed out at 325 feet (99 m), meaning they were some number of feet beyond
what his depth gauge could even read and still descending. Finally, there was a brief break in the attack and Bret pulled the two of them into a small
sandy cove in the wall. It was there that he finally had a chance to get
a better look at Rod's condition. And he was horrified to see that Rod's left leg
was almost completely torn off. Most of the tissue was gone, and he also had
serious bites to his stomach and chest. Upon seeing this, Bret basically went into
full panic mode and grabbed Rod and started swimming up
as hard as he could. But within just a few seconds, the sharks came back
and grabbed Rod again, pulling the both back down the wall. And as if things couldn't get any worse,
Bret went to take a breath and it felt like he was pulling the air
through a straw. This meant that he had just a few breaths left
before he was completely out of air. Then another second later, the sharks ripped Rod
right out of his hands, and Bret watched helplessly as they pulled him
deeper into the water. Almost out of air now himself, there was just nothing
he could do to help Rod anymore, so he had to refocus on saving himself. Unfortunately, he was still at close to 400 feet (122 m)
of depth with almost no air. He started frantically swimming up
towards the surface, and at one point, he checked his depth gauge
and saw that it was still redlined at 325 feet. Between the depth, the panic and
nitrogen narcosis, he just focused intensely on making strong rhythmic
kicks towards the light up above. He swam and swam and slowly, his visions started
to close up on him like a tunnel. As he swam, this tunnel got smaller and smaller
until he had one final thought, which was that he was so close and that he passed out
about 30 feet from the surface. Miraculously, his buoyancy device had just enough air
in it to float him up to the surface and bring his head out of the water. Then, the pressure difference forced him to exhale
and kickstarted his breathing, and he woke up gasping for air. He took a few moments to look around and get his
bearings and take in everything that had happened. Unfortunately, the third member of their team, Robbie,
had already left to get help. The last thing he saw was the two of them go
over the wall covered in blood, so the reasonable thing to do was assume
they were dead and go get help. Now, because of how deep Bret had been
and how quickly he resurfaced, he was already starting to suffer from
decompression sickness. He had to get to shore quickly, or he risked
passing out or becoming paralyzed. He got into shallow water, ripped off his scuba gear,
and then ran to the nearest couple on the beach. He quickly told them who he was and that
he had decompression sickness. Then, he told them which truck was his,
where his keys were and that there was a clipboard on the dashboard
with emergency instructions. And just as he finished giving them those instructions,
he passed out again. And although this was obviously a terrible situation,
Bret was also incredibly lucky, because the couple he had run into
was a doctor and a nurse who were also familiar with
decompression sickness. They quickly ran to his truck, grabbed the instructions,
and then ran over to the phone at a nearby hotel. They called the marine lab he was employed by who quickly called a medevac plane
to come get him, and then from there, he was airlifted from St. Croix
and flown to Puerto Rico because there weren't any decompression chambers
on the island. Then, almost like something out of a movie, they ran out
of oxygen on the plane he was in and had to land it on a highway, which was also
coordinated with a helicopter landing to take him the remaining distance
to the hospital. Finally, he got into a hospital and made an
almost full recovery with some lasting effects from the
decompression sickness. Unfortunately, Rod's body has never been found. Bret would later learn that there was
a ship in the area emitting a low frequency vibration that had
attracted the sharks in the first place. It just wasn't known at the time
that this could occur, ultimately resulting in the brutal attack. Hello everyone. My name is Sean and
welcome to Scary Interesting. If you enjoyed the video,
I'd appreciate if you gave it a like. That helps out with the YouTube algorithm. As a reminder for anyone who hasn't
seen the community post, I'm in the process of remastering some of my
oldest and lowest quality videos. These videos are always released
every Wednesday. Brand-new ones are always released
every Saturday. And because they are so many new subscribers, hopefully, many of these remasters are
new to you as well. If you want any more information about that, please see
the post titled "new release schedule". In any case, thank you all so much for watching
and hopefully, I will see you in the next one.
