Bret Gilliam's Shark-Driven Ascent
In 1972 off Cane Bay on St. Croix, technical diver Bret Gilliam was on a scientific dive with partners Rod Temple and Robbie McIlvaine when oceanic whitetip sharks suddenly attacked Temple at a depth of more than 200 feet. Gilliam grabbed Temple and tried to haul him up the wall, but the sharks dragged them down until his depth gauge pegged at 325 feet, and he later estimated they had sunk to nearly 400 feet, where the sharks tore Temple from his grasp while his tanks ran almost dry.
With no real air left and no time for decompression stops, Gilliam kicked for the surface in a near blackout and finally lost consciousness as he rose. He survived the emergency ascent but surfaced with severe decompression sickness, required evacuation to a recompression chamber in Puerto Rico, and became one of the deepest known survivors of an out-of-air ascent.