In Reply to: Re: Trip Report and Photos: My encounter with a Gill Net posted by Max Bottomtime on January 02, 2008 at 15:42:54:

When I was new to Diving a friend ask me and another guy to try to find a dropped keel off his sail boat, about 300 yards south and 200 yards west of Angels Gate. Depth 65 ft. Vis about arms length. We got seperated almost instantly. As I was swimming a gill net appeared on my mask, very lose, could'nt figure out which way to go. Told myself not to panic, still had most of my air. I Guessed which way to go and started swimming. I stayed on the bottom and crawled with my hands and notice I was caught. I didn't know where the net was. I told myself not to panic again but my pulse sure went sky high. Went for my knife on my calf asap becasue I was'nt sure I could get it later. The net caught my 1st. stage and it seemed like it took forever to devise a way of freeing myself. I came up with reaching back behind my head and grabbing the lot and then ran my other hand over the top of my fist to make sure I didn't have a hose in there too. Then I took my knife and sliced multiple times right across the fist. That was scary! To make a long story short I succeeded getting out of that one only to find out now my fin was caught. Thankfully that was less stressful to deal with and finally made it to the surface. I came close to lose'in it. The other guy did panic. He was just barely able to break the surface and scream for help. He pull the whole net off the bottom, weights and all. Lost his knife from the start of the panic. When I finally got to him, (my friend was holding onto him at the back of the 19' boat) he was like the pray of a spider, totally wrapped up in the thing, his hands ripping at the 20 lbs. monofilament in total panic.
Very scary day. You want to stay away from that crap!