Given the dimensions of the air bubble mentioned it seems the guy was in a mostly flooded room.
In a body recovery dive on a sunken vessel the diver would swim inside the vessel to look around. I’m sure the trapped man would hear the diver. Then he just had to wait and grab him as he went past.
I was wondering why he didn’t swim out on his own first. The article said some people were locked in rooms, so maybe he was locked. But then how did he reach out?
I took an intro to SCUBA class a few years ago. One of the things the instructor stressed was “anything you can do without a regulator in your mouth, you can do with a regulator in your mouth.”
Including vomit. He called it “feeding the fishes”.
You think? Barring a fortuitous rescue as in this case, I’d take a minute or two in a water-filled one over three days or however long it took to die in a partially air-filled one any day.
Even during daylight hours, I’d imagine it’d be almost pitch black down there too. Terrifying.
But, yeh, at least if he were to still succumb down there before rescue, asphyxiating on a build-up of CO2 has to be more peaceful than drowning outright.
You’d think, but no. CO2 build up in the lungs is what drives air hunger and the feeling of suffocation, which is agonizing. Drowning? I’ve actually inhaled seawater, enough to fill my lungs, once. It didn’t hurt, just felt much cooler than air. It didn’t trigger a coughing reflex. I had to force exhale to expel it though. I got most of it out pretty quickly but spent the rest of the evening coughing the rest, plus all the plasma it pulled into my lungs by hypertonic osmosis. Not fun.
If you’re planning to do that, remember to switch to your backup regulator first. That’ll teach your diving buddy to watch his gas consumption better next time.
I thought that the diver and the mission leader both showed a remarkable sense of calm when that hand turned out to be attached to a live body. I would have expected a lot more screaming and cursing right at that point.