Above link broken, but this appears to work:
http://www.psdiver.com/images/10-21-2008_Woodbridge_VA_-Frank_Stecco-_LEO_Vol_PSD_Training_Lost.pdf
Try cutting and pasting the link. For some reason the entire link won’t list after Woodbridge_VA_
Thanks Nunio.
(whoops meant this reply to @ptickner )
Of course you are right! What an embarrassing misconception. I feel silly.
I guess the real danger would be hypothermia from letting in cold water.
Although he succeeded in releasing the air from his suit, he was probably out of time and involuntarily inhaled and filled his lungs with water. That would probably make him negatively buoyant and so he sank. There’s no mention of whether he had any other gear strapped to his suit that may have further reduced his buoyancy as well. I’m slightly negatively buoyant even with my lungs full of air. I’ve always been jealous of people that can lie on their back and float like a cork.
If he had not succeeded in releasing the air in his suit he probably would have been found floating feet up, possibly in time to save him.
There is great comfort in being inherently buoyant. I’ve always been that way, even back in high school and college when my BMI was on the “low healthy” range (I am on the “fluffy” end of that range now). I suspect it is due to being rather small-boned yet buxom. I can literally “hang” motionless in the water without any flotation or actively treading water and my head will stay above the surface. I can float effortlessly so any sort of graceless flailing stroke will propel me to where I want to swim. Therefore I have never been afraid of water over my head or have any panic response to immersion – I was a “water baby” anyway spending early childhood on Great Lakes beaches where even as a crawling toddler my parents had to watch me because I would happily plow into the surf and come up happily laughing and sputtering from submersion.
The only drawback is that it takes an amazing amount of belt weights to neutrally balance me for scuba diving – more than usual for my body mass even just wearing a swimsuit and a ridiculous amount when I am in neoprene. I took my PADI course during the winter in a municipal indoor pool in a pretty chilly building. I wore my 3/4 surfer wetsuit so I wouldn’t get hypothermic during the extended poolside instructions but had to really load up on lead to execute safety exercises that required us to sit in the deep end and remove and then replace our tanks and gear. Unless I was well-weighted, as soon as I removed the SCUBA apparatus I would start to inexorably rise to the surface like a big rubber-encased bubble.