Updated October 3, 2026: This article has been expanded with additional first-hand details provided by Craig Kuhl and his wife, Brooke Palmer Kuhl, about the dives preceding his illness, the onset of his symptoms and his subsequent recovery.
For Craig Kuhl, it was supposed to be an ordinary day of recreational diving during a trip to the Bahamas.
He was an experienced diver with more than 150 dives behind him. His wife, Brooke Palmer Kuhl, is an advanced NAUI diver. Diving was not unfamiliar territory for either of them.
The day involved two dives.
According to details Craig and Brooke subsequently provided to The Scuba News, the first reached approximately 60 feet and lasted around 30 minutes, followed by a five-minute safety stop at around 10 feet.
After a surface interval of approximately one hour and five minutes, Craig made a second dive to around 52 feet. That dive also lasted approximately 30 minutes and ended with another five-minute safety stop at around 10 feet.
Nothing about the dives gave Craig or Brooke an immediate indication of what was about to happen.
Craig was already out of the water. The boat had returned to shore. His equipment was off and he was inside the dive shop.
Then, approximately an hour after the second dive, something changed.
Craig later described the sensation as feeling “like I was in an alternate universe, present but not quite.”
What followed was a medical emergency that would take him from the Bahamas to intensive care in Miami, then through weeks of rehabilitation in Tampa and into a recovery that is still continuing more than a year later.
Doctors determined that Craig had suffered an arterial gas embolism, or AGE.
For Brooke, the seriousness of what had happened quickly became apparent.
“It was VERY serious,” she told The Scuba News while helping us reconstruct Craig’s story.
From A Dive To A Medical Emergency
An arterial gas embolism is one of the most serious injuries associated with scuba diving.
According to Divers Alert Network, AGE occurs when gas enters the arterial circulation, where bubbles can obstruct blood flow and damage tissue. Because the brain receives a large proportion of the body’s blood supply, neurological injury can be particularly serious.
The resulting symptoms can resemble those of a stroke.
Craig’s own recollection of those first hours demonstrates how profoundly his perception had been affected.
He remembers believing he was in Mexico. At other points, he thought the divemasters were taking him underground. The experience became confused and nightmare-like as the medical emergency unfolded around him.
Craig was ultimately airlifted to Miami, beginning an acute-care phase that Brooke believes was fundamental to his survival and subsequent recovery.
She particularly credits the hyperbaric team at Mercy and Dr. Syed Ahmad with playing a critical role in his treatment.
“Without that knowledge and their expertise, this could have been VERY different,” Brooke told The Scuba News.
Craig ultimately spent 25 days in intensive care.
The man who had travelled to the Bahamas as an experienced diver emerged from the acute phase of his illness facing the task of rebuilding some of the most fundamental parts of everyday life.
Starting Again From Zero
After 25 days in intensive care at Mercy Hospital, Craig transferred to TGH Rehabilitation Hospital in Tampa, where he would spend approximately another 20 days.
When he arrived, he could not independently get out of bed.
He required a lift simply to be moved.
His rehabilitation involved intensive physical and occupational therapy and the painstaking process of relearning activities most people perform without thinking about them.
Walking.
Climbing stairs.
Feeding himself.
Getting through ordinary daily routines independently.
Craig later described the scale of that challenge simply: “I had to come up from zero.”
There was no single dramatic moment when everything returned. Recovery was measured through smaller victories.
Brooke recalled one of them during Craig’s rehabilitation: being able to take a shower.
“It was almost like that first session of that shower, his whole demeanor changed,” she told FOX 13. “Maybe it was because he knew that the team cared enough to even notice.”
When Craig left inpatient rehabilitation, the recovery was far from complete.
He still could not walk independently.
But the milestones kept coming.
Brooke remembers the point when Craig began walking on his own, and particularly the possibility of taking him home for Thanksgiving, as one of the moments when the scale of his progress became tangible.
He had left the hospital on November 3 unable to walk into a doctor’s office independently. By Thanksgiving, he had progressed far enough to spend the holiday with his family.
Then came another symbolic moment.
The wheelchair was collected.
The Question That Remains
Perhaps the most unsettling element of Craig’s story for divers is what remains unknown.
There has been no publicly established explanation for why he suffered the arterial gas embolism.
That distinction matters.
Nothing currently available establishes that Craig made a rapid ascent, held his breath or committed another diving error. The dive profiles subsequently provided by Craig and Brooke describe two recreational dives, each lasting around 30 minutes and each concluding with a safety stop.
That information helps establish what Craig remembers doing. It does not, by itself, explain the subsequent medical event.
AGE is commonly associated with pulmonary barotrauma during ascent. As pressure decreases, expanding gas trapped within the lungs can damage lung tissue and allow gas to enter the arterial circulation.
Rapid ascents and breath-holding are recognised risk factors, but they are not the only circumstances in which AGE can occur.
DAN notes that AGE can occur even when an ascent has been completely normal. Certain pulmonary conditions may also increase susceptibility.
That does not provide an explanation for Craig’s accident, and it would be inappropriate to retrospectively diagnose one.
The timing Craig and Brooke describe is also part of his individual medical history rather than something from which a cause should be inferred. Diving-related neurological symptoms can overlap across different conditions, and determining the diagnosis belongs with the medical professionals treating the diver.
What Craig’s experience does demonstrate is why unusual neurological symptoms following diving require serious medical attention even when the preceding dives did not appear alarming to the people involved.
A Long Recovery
Recovery did not end when Craig left rehabilitation.
After returning home, he continued physical therapy and gradually rebuilt his independence.
By mid-January, he had progressed sufficiently to be cleared to drive again.
Physical therapy continued until March, after which Craig began working with a personal trainer and continued rebuilding his strength and mobility.
More than a year after the accident, Craig and Brooke estimate that he is around 85 to 90 percent recovered.
He is driving.
He is walking independently.
He is playing golf again.
Around the first anniversary of the accident, Craig and Brooke travelled to Columbus, Ohio, a particularly meaningful destination for a devoted Ohio State fan.
“Ohio State is his favorite,” Brooke told The Scuba News. “All during his recovery we had Ohio State stuff everywhere.”
The couple have also begun turning Craig’s experience into something that may help other people.
They made a gift to TGH Rehabilitation Hospital in his name and named an AED kit used by the safety team aboard a Florida Aquarium research vessel in his honour.
They also intend to return to the rehabilitation hospital to meet and encourage people facing difficult recoveries of their own.
It is a remarkable change in perspective from the earliest days of Craig’s rehabilitation, when simply getting out of bed required assistance.
Diving After The Accident
There is one part of Craig’s former life that he has chosen not to reclaim.
Craig and Brooke have agreed that neither of them will scuba dive again.
That decision does not mean they have turned their backs on the water or the diving community. They still expect to visit friends at the Florida Aquarium and remain connected to a world that formed an important part of their lives.
But their relationship with diving has fundamentally changed.
For two experienced divers, the accident demonstrated that familiarity and experience cannot eliminate every risk.
Brooke describes herself as a conservative diver and recalls something a divemaster friend once told her after she experienced a panic attack in only around five feet of water during her honeymoon.
“It’s OK if you don’t want to dive today. You dive when you feel like you can.”
That advice has taken on greater meaning since Craig’s accident.
For Brooke, one of the lessons is to pay attention to how you feel rather than allowing experience, expectations or the apparent simplicity of a dive to override your instincts.
Even a dive that feels familiar and routine deserves respect.
What Divers Can Take From Craig’s Story
Craig’s experience is not a case from which a cause can responsibly be reverse-engineered.
Nor should it be used to suggest that diving is inherently unsafe.
It does, however, offer several important reminders.
Training, experience and a conservative dive profile do not make a diver invulnerable to a medical emergency.
Brooke believes diving education could give greater attention to decompression illness and the reality of what serious diving injuries can look like.
Her message is also simpler than any medical explanation.
Listen to your body.
Trust your instincts.
Dive with a buddy.
And never become so familiar with the ocean that you stop respecting what can happen there.
“The ocean is beautiful, but it’s dangerous,” is the principle Craig and Brooke now carry with them.
For Craig Kuhl, one day of diving divided life into a before and an after.
More than a year later, the story is no longer simply about the accident.
It is about the medical teams who treated him, the rehabilitation professionals who helped him regain independence, the support system that surrounded him and the extraordinary amount of work required to rebuild a life that changed in a matter of hours.
Twenty-five days in intensive care.
Another 20 days in inpatient rehabilitation.
Then months of physical therapy and rebuilding.
The wheelchair is gone.
He is driving again.
He is playing golf.
And Craig estimates that he has recovered around 85 to 90 percent of what he lost.
Craig and Brooke will not return to scuba diving.
But the experience has given them something they want other divers to hear: experience should never become complacency, a buddy matters, and when something does not feel right, pay attention.
For someone who once had to “come up from zero,” the distance Craig has travelled since that day in the Bahamas is difficult to overstate.
