James River, VA, United States of America

The intent of this dive was for the three of us to drop down to the bottom and them follow a North West bearing out into the middle of the river in an attempt to find deeper water with less current. But after traveling only twenty or thirty feet, Gary Lewis and myself had already lost sight of Mike Williams. Myself and Gary were using Agaa masks without radios, but were able to communicate. I told Gary that we should surface so that we could spot Mikes air bubbles. When we surfaces, we tried for a minute or two and could not find his bubbles. We then noticed that the current on the surface was very strong and was washing us down river pretty fast. We then dropped down asap and tried to swim up river. I then lost sight of Gary. I decided to just swim myself back up river as much as possible. The current was very stiff and had to kick hard continuously while crawling on the bottom with my fingers. I consumes alot of air and by the time I made it back to the spot where we started I was pretty tired. I then surface to find Mike and Gary doing the same.