On Catalina Island, a Chamber of Life for Divers

Panic struck 60 feet down. A student in John Corso’s scuba class had spit out her regulator. Survival instincts took over as she found herself unable to breathe. She bolted for the surface in a rush of adrenaline.

Corso pursued. He tried to slow her ascent, mindful of what can happen when compressed air expands too fast in the body, like gas fizzing from a bottle of champagne.

Two-thirds of the way up, it was Corso--not the student--who got slammed. A pouch of air burst through his lung wall, injecting an air embolism into his bloodstream.

“It felt like someone took an ice pick and jammed it in my back,” the veteran dive instructor recalled.

He managed to get to the boat, flopping on the deck like a gaping fish, unable to catch his breath. Blood trickled from his mouth and nose.

A Los Angeles County lifeguard boat that patrols Catalina rushed him ashore and into a hyperbaric chamber, a steel contraption that looks like a landlocked blue submarine with portholes.

For the next 7 1/2 hours, Corso breathed pure oxygen in the recompression chamber, which mimics the effects of depth. It constricted the air bubble so his body could expel it.

Corso walked away fully recovered and full of gratitude for the USC Catalina Hyperbaric Chamber, which saved his life.

This year, for the third year in a row, Corso’s chartered boat of divers led the annual Chamber Day fund-raising effort that supplies more than a third of the facility’s $160,000 annual budget.

Divers aboard the Magician contributed more than $5,000 of the net $75,000 raised in donations to keep the chamber’s staff and team of volunteers at the ready 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Los Angeles County contributes $100,000 every year.

Scuba diving is generally a safe sport if proper precautions are taken. But an underwater excursion can turn to tragedy in a flash.

“There is nothing natural about breathing underwater,” said Corso, an instructor at Scuba Haus in Santa Monica. “I don’t care how experienced you are. You can do everything right. But if you dive aggressively, sooner or later it’s going to nip you.”

During the past quarter of a century, more than 800 injured divers have been whisked on gurneys into the cylindrical chamber. In the last six years, 18 people have died after arriving in cardiac arrest.

About 60% came in with decompression sickness, which usually is not life-threatening. The condition is also known as the bends because of the body-cramping pain caused when excessive nitrogen in the blood expands into bubbles.

The other 40% arrived as Corso did, with an embolism. It occurs when expanding air, unable to escape as the diver holds his breath, ruptures a tiny air sac in the lung and burps into the bloodstream. If the embolism reaches the brain, it can cause a stroke.

The first stages of treatment are the same for both conditions. Get the diver into the hyperbaric chamber and pump enough air into it to increase the pressure to the equivalent of a depth of 60 to 165 feet. The diver is then “brought up” at a rate slow enough for the nitrogen or air bubbles to dissolve.

The Catalina chamber’s location is key. Situated in a hangar at the USC Wrigley Marine Science Center on the western end of the island, it is close to many of the most popular diving sites in Southern California.

When things go terribly wrong underwater, minutes can mean the difference between life and death, or in less severe cases, the difference between speedy recovery and permanent neurological problems, such as numbness or paralysis.

It’s much quicker for rescue workers near Catalina to drop an injured diver at the island’s chamber than to head 22 miles to the mainland. The next-closest hyperbaric chamber is at UCLA Medical Center in Westwood. Others are at St. John’s Pleasant Valley Hospital in Camarillo and UC San Diego Medical Center.

“If you are in trouble, you want to get treatment as fast as you can,” said Dr. Michael J. Lieber, medical director of the Gonda UCLA Center for Wound Healing and Hyperbaric Medicine. “The Catalina chamber is an institution. It’s a good thing to have a chamber there.”

On a recent Tuesday, 342 divers in 11 boats participated in the annual fund-raising excursion to Catalina. Corso was one of those who used the fund-raiser as an excuse to take the day off and go diving.

It began, typically enough, with a clumsy procession on the stern of the Magician, as more than two dozen divers in bulky wetsuits strapped lead-weighted belts around their waists and hoisted heavy air tanks onto their backs. Once fully laden, each teetered in flippers to the edge.

One big step over the side. Splash. First came the shock from the chilly Pacific, then dreamy weightlessness.

During the course of two dives, Corso poked around the bottom to look for elusive critters. Pulling out a knife strapped to his leg, he cracked open a purple sea urchin to feed the bright orange garibaldi that loiter in the kelp. He tracked the progress of a large stone crab, missing one claw, as it trundled along the bottom.

Although such underwater activities are routine, this outing differed from a typical day of diving in the busy waters around Catalina.

In addition to plunging twice into the ocean, the 300-plus divers took a simulated dive in the hyperbaric chamber.

Corso joined his group filing into the giant blue barrel. He stepped through the air-lock door, which closed with a clang, and took an uneasy breath. It was first time he had been back in the chamber since he was carried in semiconscious six years ago.

Whoosh. The chamber’s compressors kicked in, flooding the chamber with extra air.

Corso pinched his nose to clear his ears, as the pressure--and heat--quickly climbed in the metal barrel. “You never forget that sound,” he said. “Or that feeling.”

Mark Tulin, a chamber volunteer trained in cardiopulmonary resuscitation, accompanied the group on its “descent.” The depth, he noted, was merely a fraction of the usual depths: 60 feet for those with compression sickness and 165 feet for those with an air embolism. Under that kind of pressure, the temperature inside the chamber shoots to 130 degrees.

“It becomes a sweatbox,” Tulin said. “You’re working hard at reviving someone, so you don’t notice until afterward that your gloves are filled with sweat.”

Tulin has seen his share of divers arrive in serious trouble, or worse, without life signs.

“We don’t give up until we are told to,” Tulin said. “We have had miraculous things happen here.”

Corso counts himself among the lucky. “If I ever win the Lotto, I would give a big chunk to those guys,” he said. “I’m so glad to have them there.”