*From a kayaK fishing site.

 Worked in the dive shop Saturday and we had one of our regular trimix divers come in with his twin bladder bcd/wing (buoyancy control device) complaining about a leak.
He regularly dives to sixty meters and all his gear is kept immaculate, also when diving to these depths, divers carry two of everything for that just in case moment, hence the twin air bladders in his bcd/wing, one is redundant.

Prior to leaving home, he went over the dive plan (a 63 meter dive), gas blends, pony bottle's and checked all his gear again before packing it in it's case in the boot of his car. Arriving at 5.30am at Portsea where they were to board the dive boat, he carried his dive gear down to the pier then returned to his car to don his drysuit and lock the car. The pier had only five fisherman on it when he took his gear down, and they were still there when he returned wearing his drysuit, he did not see anyone else walk towards the pier. The boat pulled in and he boarded it while he waited for the other divers, then they left for the Ships Graveyard out through Port Phillip Heads. Once out at the dive site they gear up, inflate their drysuits, stride off the boat and swim for the shot line, the decent begins.

Cannot remember what depth he was at (but it was deep), he needed to slow his decent so went to inflate his bcd/wing, nothing and his decent rate increased, his dive buddy following could see the bubbles of air escaping as he tried desperately to slow his decent by pumping more air to his bcd/wing. Realising something was wrong he tried to inflate his second wing, still nothing and dropping even quicker. Hits his drysuit instead, his decent rate slowed and he was able to gain some control, his dive buddy catches up and signals that he has a bad leak and they need to make an ascent and call the dive off, now the second problem begins. Because they are using trimix for a breathing gas, they only carry a tiny little bottle of air for inflating the drysuit and being laden with extra deco cylinders etc it was not going to be an easy task. When they reached the 10 meter mark, his tiny drysuit bottle ran out of air but with continuing assistance from the other divers he was able to make the surface and get back on board the boat safe.

After a close inspection of the bcd wing, it is fairly clear that someone has shoved a knife through his two bladders and he is quite certain the only time this could have happened, was when he left his gear unattended at the pier. We (divers) often have fisherman on piers try to jag us when diving, they say we scare the fish away? If only they really knew the truth, if only they two could see just how little the fish worry about divers and in fact let us interact with them.

Away just thought I would let you all know just how lucky this guy was, and if it was deliberately punctured, just how foolish it was, the consequences could have been dyer.