In this video, we're gonna go over three stories about deep-water diving that went horrifyingly wrong.
As a warning, I think that these are some of the most suspenseful and tragic stories
that I've ever covered on this channel.
So with that said, viewer discretion is strongly advised.
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Off of the coast of Florida on the Atlantic side, down around near Orlando,
there is the mainland itself, and then a few hundred feet off of the coast is a little strip of land almost like a sandbar.
Except this piece of land is much larger than a traditional sandbar
and is something known as a barrier island.
These are formed by almost the exact same processes as sandbars,
but just happen to be much larger in some areas.
This particular one is simply known as Hutchinson Island.
Along this island, there are these beautiful white sand beaches,
and on the interior are businesses and even residential areas.
In total, there are a few thousand people that live on this barrier island year-round.
And as with many parts of Southern Florida, the water is perfect for snorkeling and scuba diving.
The water is clear and warm, and there's tons of sea life to check out.
But even with how interesting this little island is,
there is something that is even more unique that is hidden under the water surface.
In between two of these beautiful public beaches,
there is a buoy a few hundred feet off of the shore.
It's yellow and about eight feet (2.43 m) tall and actually marks something massive beneath the surface.
In the water here, there are three large stone pillars that connect together
and look almost like an underwater building.
These are so large that they can be seen from satellite and from several hundred feet away,
but they are fully submerged in the water.
If you look across from the shore, all you can see is the yellow buoy floating in the water.
It's only when you head into the water by boat that you can see
their ominous silhouette deep in the ocean.
In July, 2015, two best friends from high school, Chris and Robert,
were out boating along this stretch with their families.
So on the boat were Chris, Robert, each of their wives and their children.
They had been going along the shore from rockpile to rockpile and scuba diving to check out the sea life.
As they drove across this stretch, they approached the buoy
and one of them noticed a huge silhouette of something underneath the water surface.
Immediately upon seeing it, they knew they had to stop.
It was just such a strange thing to see and definitely seemed out of place
compared to the rest of the normal-looking sandy bottom.
So they got up to the yellow buoy and tied the boat to it,
but the buoy didn't give any other explanation for what it was or for what the structure was,
which only added to their curiosity.
Then, they got their gear on and hopped in the water to check it out,
and as soon as they got under the water, they were amazed to see this massive concrete building
that jutted out from the bottom of the ocean.
It was almost hard to believe it was there. It just seemed so out of place.
So Chris took the lead and started swimming toward the structure with Robert not far in behind.
As they got closer, there looked to be an opening near each of the three pillars.
Chris made his way toward one of them and noticed a gentle current as he got closer.
Then, within a second, the current got unnaturally strong.
Immediately, he knew something wasn't right but before he could even react,
he was pulled violently into the opening of the structure and plunged into complete darkness.
It was almost like he had fallen over the edge of a waterfall into a black void.
From Robert's point of view, Chris was there, and then a second later, he was just gone.
His first thought that he had just watched his friend die.
The whole thing was so weird and the way he was pulled in was so violent
that it couldn't be anything other than death.
And obviously, it was way too powerful for him to do anything about it,
so he quickly got back as far as he could to avoid being sucked in as well.
Then, he swam up to the surface and started screaming that Chris was gone
and Chris had been sucked into something.
Upon hearing this, Chris' wife thought he was joking, but his tone seemed way too serious.
And then when he repeated himself, she knew he wasn't joking
and burst into tears and grabbed ahold of her son.
Under the surface, now in complete darkness, Chris was tumbling violently in the current,
and it was so strong that it was almost ripping his mask and regulator off.
He actually had to hold onto them with his hands to keep them from being pulled off.
Eventually, he managed to grab ahold of his light and flick it on,
but what he saw was even more terrifying. The light went nowhere.
It was just swallowed up completely by the darkness inside of whatever he was in in every direction.
As he tumbled around, completely out of control,
he came to the realization that something must be pulling in all of this water.
There were some turbine or spinning blades somewhere at the end of this darkness
that he was hurdling directly toward.
If he didn't find some way out or some way to stop himself,
he was going to be thrown right into those spinning blades and torn to pieces.
In that moment, he actually contemplated pulling his regulator out of his mouth
to avoid whatever horrific fate was waiting for him at the end of the tunnel.
Then, he started to think of his family and wondered how they were gonna survive without him.
And minutes went by as he tumbled through the darkness
with all of these thoughts racing through his mind, completely petrified.
And then there was a small light off in the distance, almost like a match.
And then all of a sudden, he just appeared in broad daylight in this crystal-clear water.
His immediate thought was that he was in heaven.
But then he looked around and saw tons of fish and other sea life swimming around in the water.
And then he noticed all around him were these cement walls that led up and out of the water.
And this was because Chris had been sucked into the reservoir
of the St. Lucie nuclear plant on Hutchinson Island.
That buoy marks three risers that all have massive pipes
that run along the sea floor and pull in tons of water to cool the plant.
The largest of these, the one that Chris had been pulled into, is 16 feet (4.88 m) in diameter
and pulls in 500,000 gallons (1,892,706 L) of water per minute.
As soon as Chris was out of the current, he swam to the surface and started yelling for help.
One of the plant workers noticed him and walked over in disbelief.
He asked Chris how he got there and Chris explained that he'd been pulled in through the pipe
and the worker just looked at him like he couldn't believe what he was saying.
As soon as he was pulled out of the water, he asked to use a phone and started calling his wife.
At the same time, his wife was on the phone with 911,
explaining to them that her husband had just disappeared.
And as she was talking, Chris' calls kept coming in over and over,
but because she didn't recognize the number, she didn't answer.
Eventually, she did finally answer and Chris blurted out that he was alive
and he had gone through some sort of pipe, but he was safe.
Following the incident, Chris sued the plant, claiming there was no sign to indicate the danger.
And in response, the plant claimed that there was a sign and a protective cap over the pipe.
But in fact, Chris isn't even the first person to have been sucked into that intake.
In 1989, an almost identical situation occurred where a scuba diver was pulled in in the exact same way.
That scuba diver said that the darkness inside of the pipe was unlike anything he's ever experienced.
When oil is extracted from the seafloor, it's not immediately usable for most purposes.
First, it has to be refined and processed to turn it into some of the more common forms like gasoline and diesel.
So generally, after it's been extracted, it's either stored or transported until it can be refined.
If the oil rig is somewhere far offshore, this might be with a large tanker ship,
but other times, it's transported by large undersea pipelines that run along the ocean floor.
And some of these pipelines are just massive at close to two meters or six feet in diameter
and transport enormous amounts of oil at a time.
At this size, a person could easily swim through or move through the pipe,
but these are generally only reserved for transporting large volumes have already extracted oil.
The pipelines that originate from the oil rigs themselves are often smaller.
In February of 2022, at around 3:00 PM,
five commercial divers gathered around a section of undersea pipeline in Paria Bay off the coast of Trinidad.
This area is home to the largest oil rig in the area,
and these divers are scheduled to perform some maintenance on a particular section of the pipe.
In this area, there's a pipeline that runs along the ocean floor,
and every 1,200 feet (365.8 m) or so, there is a vertical section of pipe
that comes straight up and out of the ocean.
So from the water surface, literally all you can see is this 36-inch (91.4 m) wide metal pipe
sticking up out of the ocean.
That day, these five men were working on one of these vertical sections
to perform some repairs and check some of the other work that had been done on them the previous week.
Now, in order to even work on the pipe, a big metal chamber is placed over the pipe from the surface.
Then, air is pumped into this chamber to push the water out of both the chamber and the pipe itself.
Almost like when you flip a cup upside down and place it in the water
and some of the air remains inside the cup.
So the five men got into their scuba gear and grabbed their tools, and then entered the chamber.
As per their safety protocols, only four of them would actually be working,
and the fifth man was the designated rescue diver in case of an emergency.
As you might imagine, these pipes are not a single piece, but instead, multiple lengths of pipe
that are attached end-to-end
At each end is something known as a flange,
which is basically just a ring with holes that get bolted together to create a longer section.
They needed to check a few of these flanges and replace a few others,
which is why they need the water pumped out of the pipe in the first place.
So they start undoing these large metal bolts and pulling the pipes apart when all of a sudden,
a massive suction force pulled all five of the men down into the pipe.
And remember, this pipe was just 36 inches wide
so one by, they were ripped from where they were standing and pulled into this narrow opening.
This vertical section then travels 55 feet (16.7 m) down to the ocean floor,
at which point there is a 90-degree bend before 1200 feet
of pitch-black oil-filled darkness that runs along the seabed.
Immediately upon seeing what happened, workers outside of the chamber sent a distress call
to all the boats in the area and the Coast Guard.
This was picked up by a boat nearby,
and one of the men on this boat happened to be the son of one of the workers and also a diver himself.
He immediately sped over to the oil rig and saw that none of the remaining workers
outside of the chamber were trained divers. So rather than wait for rescuers to arrive,
he suited up and got ready to head into the pipe himself.
He was then fitted with an umbilical cord that fed him air,
and then he dropped into the water and into the pipe.
He then traveled down this oil and water-filled pipe almost 50 feet (15.24 m)
before miraculously coming upon the rescue diver just past the bend in the pipe.
He grabbed him and started to pull him out, and while he was doing this,
he could hear noise coming from further along the horizontal section that ran along the seafloor.
As soon as he pulled the man out, he went right back in,
hoping to pull out his father and the others but all he found was some of their dive equipment.
He continued in, but soon enough, he got to the end of the umbilical cord and couldn't go any further.
When he got out of the water the second time, he tried to get different equipment to head back in,
but by then, the Coast Guard was there and stopped anyone else from going into the pipe.
The rescue was seen as too risky, and the chance the men inside had survived was too low
for it to make sense to send anyone else in.
But they'd also learned from the man that was rescued
that he had seen three of the men somewhere inside the pipe in an airpocket.
One of these men was so badly injured from the force of suction
and being violently pulled into the pipe that he could barely move.
When he last saw them, they were all sharing their air tanks as they waited for rescue.
Then, tragically, no one else was allowed to go back in until hours later
when a small submersible camera was sent down into the pipe.
It got down past the bend and then 120 feet into the horizontal section
before coming up to some air tanks lodged in the way.
With those in the way, the submersible couldn't go any farther
and essentially destroyed any chance of saving the remaining four men.
Not only were they somewhere beyond 120 feet in the horizontal section, but they had just a limited supply of air.
Hours turned to days as rescue was planned, but soon, everyone was expecting a body retrieval instead of rescue.
A full three days later, three of the men were located somewhere deeper in the pipe
and all three of them were deceased.
And it would take another six days until March 3rd to find the body of the final man.
Because this instant only happened this year,
what has been published about it is a little bit unclear,
so it's unclear exactly what caused the suction that pulled them in in the first place
and how they all got separated from one another in the pipe.
It seems that maybe the man who was rescued
was trying to make his way out when he was discovered while the others were so deep in
or so injured that they just couldn't make| their way out.
It's also possible that there was still some suction or current
that pulled them in further while they waited, but unfortunately, as of now, that's just not known.
At just 15 years old, it was already clear to Linn's friends and family
that she wouldn't be taking the normal route through life.
During that year, she had already gotten scruba-certified and shortly after that,
got into a student exchange program that would take her all the way to Australia
for some of the world's premier diving on the Great Barrier Reef.
And this adventurousness would only continue when shortly after graduating from high school,
she took a 7,000-mile (11,265 km) road trip cross-country with just the family dog as company.
At 18 years old, after having been busy exploring the country for the last little while,
Linn decided to continue diving.
She had already fallen in love with it a few years prior,
but she just hadn't gotten that much opportunity to do it.
But now that she had more time on her hands, she enrolled in advanced open-water training course.
This dive course was about two and a half hours away from her hometown in Glacier National Park, Montana,
and in contrast to all of her previous experience,
she would now be learning in cold mountain lakes instead of the bright warm ocean.
The first of these dives was in Seeley Lake, which is kind of cold year-round,
but now in the fall, was just a few degrees above freezing.
To combat this cold, Linn rented a wetsuit from the dive shop that was hosting the training course,
which if you know much about diving, is not really appropriate for temperatures that cold.
Thankfully, one of the other students dropped out from that dive,
so Linn was able to double up on her wetsuit and made it through the dive without issues.
That night after the dive, Linn was ecstatic.
She was in the middle of the mountains in a beautiful part of Montana
and she was learning more about one of the things she love to do.
This was exactly the type of adventure she lived for, and she couldn't have been happier about it.
The next dive in the course was on November 1st,
and this time, they would be in the even larger Lake McDonald.
In addition to it being larger than the previous Lake,
Lake McDonald is also at an altitude of over 3,000 feet (914.4 m).
This means that not only is it colder, but buoyancy actually reduced due to the air pressure.
This changes how divers have to add and reduce pressure to their buoyancy control as a result.
And this is something that generally also requires a special training.
This time around, her instructors recommended she get a drysuit instead
because of how cold the water was going to be.
In contrast to a wetsuit, a drysuit actually keeps the diver completely dry
and keeps a small amount of air inside the suit.
And in addition to keeping the diver warmer, air is actually added to the suit itself
to make it more or less buoyant. But with these advantages, also comes worse mobility
and more complexity.
A wetsuit doesn't really require any training, whereas a drysuit often does.
Linn ended up renting a custom drysuit for the dive,
and then the instructors and the others headed to Lake McDonald.
Soon, they pulled into the parking lot and saw that the entire lake was surrounded by
these gorgeous snow-capped mountains and the water was crystal-clear -
basically just a perfect spot to practice.
Initially, they hoped to get there around 2:30, but it was already 4:00 PM by the time they got there.
And so with sundown just an hour away, they hurry to get all their gear on and get in the water.
As Linn was getting her drysuit on, her and her instructors noticed that she was missing a hose
that was supposed to attach to the front of her drysuit.
That hose was the one that allows air to inflate or deflate the suit,
and so it was crucial to controlling the buoyancy.
But rather than cancel the dive, they told her that it would be fine
if she just used her normal buoyancy control device that she would've used with a wetsuit.
This is typically inadvisable because a drysuit is heavier and requires more air to become buoyant.
But for a single dive, they figured it wouldn't be an issue.
Next, instead of a quick-release weight belt, they loaded her drysuit with 24 pounds (10.9 kg) of lead weights
and then an additional 20 pounds (9.07 kg) inside her BCD.
Then finally, after all the issues had been resolved,
the group got into the water just a few minutes before sunset at around 5:00 PM.
Linn and the other two students were taken down to about 15 feet (4.57 m) of depth
in the crystal-clear water where they just sort of hovered and got used to their equipment.
About five minutes in, one of the other students who was just 14 years old
was really struggling with the cold, so one of the instructors brought her out of the water.
While all of this was going on, they didn't realize that Linn's drysuit had become
sort of compressed around her body. And Linn, not knowing how a drysuit was supposed to feel,
probably thought that that's what was supposed to happen.
After the instructor came back in the water, the group then descended to 60 feet (18.29 m) of depth.
At this depth, the pressure is double of what it is on the surface,
and this is when Linn would've noticed that something was seriously wrong.
As you descend, the air compresses, including the air inside of a drysuit.
It's crucial to continue to inflate the suits.
Otherwise, it can become almost like a vacuum seal and completely restrict your movement.
From the shore, the lake sort of descends in a series of steps that get deeper and deeper
until the maximum of about 500 feet (152.4 m).
After they descended to 60 feet, Linn came to rest on one of these steps
and realized she could barely move.
Not only was her movement restricted, but the suit was also squeezing her chest,
making it more difficult to breathe.
She tried to kick away to the surface, but between how hard it was to move,
how much weight she had loaded onto her, and how much the air in her suit had compressed,
she was essentially stuck to the ledge.
She started frantically waving to get the instructor's attention,
but they were looking off in a different direction.
Thankfully, the other student noticed her and started to swim over,
but because of how frantically she had been waving, she accidentally tipped backward
and fell over the edge of the steps and started sinking rapidly.
The student swam as fast as he could after and only caught up to her at about 85 feet (26 m).
He tried desperately to grab ahold of her and pull her up but she was just so negatively buoyant
that the two of them continued to sink further into the darkness.
Then, he tried to pull the weights out of her suit but because she wasn't wearing a quick-release,
they were in pockets where he'd never expect to look for them.
On top of the fact that they were in a panicked free-fall to the bottom of a 500-foot lake.
And as they were descending further and further, she was actually becoming less buoyant
as the air compressed even more.
At some point, her regulator even came out of her mouth,
and so the student took turns sharing his air with her.
But as the air compressed even further, they were at risk of running out entirely.
In a last desperate attempt, the student heaved her upward, but unfortunately, this did almost nothing.
Then, horribly, with how desperate the situation had become,
he had to let go of her and head back up for help.
Now at 105 feet (32 m) of depth, he rocketed up to the surface to get the instructors.
As soon as he found them, they went back down to look for her, but they couldn't find her anywhere.
Then, before they could go back down again, they actually had to change air tanks
because they were on the verge of running out.
Then, they finally got back down to look for her where they eventually found her at 127 feet (38.7 m) of depth.
Tragically, she was lying lifelessly on the bottom and by then, she had drowned.
Then, before they could even bring her back up,
they had to remove all of the weights she had weighing her down.
Later that evening, Linn's parents received a call from the police that no parent ever wants to get.
In the months following, the family filed a lawsuit against the dive shop and instructors,
but as of now, the investigation is still ongoing.
Hello everyone. My name is Sean and welcome to Scary. Interesting.
Just a few quick reminders. First, there is now a scary, interesting subreddit
for story suggestions or you can always submit them directly by email.
I'm also taking user submitted stories,
so if you've ever experienced anything like some of the stuff you've seen on my channel
and wanna turn it into a video, I'd love to hear about it.
Email is the best way to submit those as well.
Thank you all so much for watching, and hopefully I will see you in the next one.