TSandM: Missing Diver in Clallam County, WA

[gcbryan]

The more I think about this situation the more puzzling it is to me.

There are very few things I can think of where the body wouldn't end up on the surface and that doesn't appear to be the case.

You can have a heart attack and die instantly (my father for example) but in many cases it's not that fast. A newer guy well known on a local board was diving (with a buddy) on a shallower local dive and wasn't feeling good and ended the dive. He was having a heart attack.

He was able to talk on the surface and Lynne happened to be on the surface and was with him as he died (a minute or so later).

Panic due to excessive CO2 due to exertion doesn't kill you either but some freak combination where you gulp water and end up drowning would of course.

Ox tox couldn't really be a factor here.

Most any condition that gave a little warning even if unconsciousness soon followed would allow enough time to inflate the drysuit or wing and you would end up on the surface even if you were then unconscious.

Breath holding (not likely at all in this case) is a major problem mainly during the last few feet in which case you would end up on the surface.

I don't think entanglement is an issue.

It's hard to imagine something that wasn't an issue when she was last seen becoming an issue seconds later.

A massive heart attack brought on prematurely due to overexertion would fit the circumstances but I'm assuming there was no medical history to suggest that. Since something happened, I guess that's about as likely as any other scenario.

It's hard to imagine that something happened and that it prevented her from reaching the surface but those do seem to be the facts.

There were 4 other divers on that boat. It would be instructive to hear from others who were there and who may have had longer dives and could describe more thoroughly the conditions over the whole site.

 

[Akimbo]

gcbryan, I think your list of incapacitating medical problems is a really light. There are all kinds of circulatory problems (strokes and aneurisms), types of heart failure, disorientation, and other stuff I am clueless about. Who knows what time-bombs we are lurking within us and don’t go off because something else kills us first? Sometimes your number is just up.

 

[Ayisha]

Breath holding (not likely at all in this case) is a major problem mainly during the last few feet in which case you would end up on the surface.

Breath holding isn't the only way an embolism can occur, nor only in the last few feet. Even if someone has a cold or other respiratory illness, it can prevent the lungs from venting effectively, and can trap air, hence why we shouldn't dive when feeling congested. Whether you would immediately end up on the surface is also not cut and dry, depending on whether you over-compensated for the ascent by deflating a drysuit or bc and then sinking, or at what depth a rapid ascent and significant pressure differential may have occurred, which does not need to be near the surface.

 

[LeadTurn_SD]

The more I think about this situation the more puzzling it is to me....

It's hard to imagine something that wasn't an issue when she was last seen becoming an issue seconds later...

.

That's what is puzzling to me too.

But whatever "happened" would have had to have occurred just after Peter last saw her, or already happening but was not obvious to Peter.

My reasoning is that she would have gone through the exact same buddy-separation drill as Peter did, just as soon as she realized she could not see Peter, which I'd guess would have occurred at about the same time Peter noticed Lynne was "missing". Logically they should have surfaced at almost the same time.

Putting catastrophic health events aside for this question (even though I think that a sudden health issue is still the most likely cause), and being very clear that this is wholly speculation, for those who know her typical equipment configuration:

Is there any single equipment failure that could have prevented her from surfacing? Is there any failure that could account for a rapid, un-correctable loss of buoyancy?

Could a drysuit inflator failure result in a a rapid descent and a suit "squeeze" significant enough to prevent her reaching her wing inflator?



Thanks.

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

I have never used a dry suit. If a diver is vertical and venting a dry suit, I assume through a raised arm, and a severe medical event (like a heart attack) occurs, does the venting action stop or continue?

It depends on how loose the arm vent is set. I had Swedish valves on mine and I could turn a bezel on the arm vent counterclockwise to reduce pressure on the spring and it would auto vent when pressure built up.

 

[BRT]

If she went unconscious from an embolism/heart attack/something else right after over venting her suit that would put her on the bottom. She was last seen venting her suit. If I am venting my suit to stop an unintended ascent I'm going to over vent it. Every thing is happening too fast to hit perfect buoyancy in that situation. Anything that makes you unconscious then leaves you on the bottom.

Notice I'm only offering an example that would fit the situation not a diagnosis of what happened.

 

[gcbryan]

gcbryan, I think your list of incapacitating medical problems is a really light. There are all kinds of circulatory problems (strokes and aneurisms), types of heart failure, disorientation, and other stuff I am clueless about. Who knows what time-bombs we are lurking within us and don’t go off because something else kills us first? Sometimes your number is just up.

Yes, I'm not a doctor and I didn't intend for the list to be complete..."heart attack" is just a stand-in for any medical problem that can end up blocking your heart or brain.

---------- Post added September 1st, 2015 at 09:16 PM ----------

Breath holding isn't the only way an embolism can occur, nor only in the last few feet. Even if someone has a cold or other respiratory illness, it can prevent the lungs from venting effectively, and can trap air, hence why we shouldn't dive when feeling congested. Whether you would immediately end up on the surface is also not cut and dry, depending on whether you over-compensated for the ascent by deflating a drysuit or bc and then sinking, or at what depth a rapid ascent and significant pressure differential may have occurred, which does not need to be near the surface.

Yes, I understand that you can end up on the bottom as well as on the surface but my point was that Lynne would be trying to end up on the surface if there was any time at all to push an inflator button.

---------- Post added September 1st, 2015 at 09:19 PM ----------

.

That's what is puzzling to me too.

But whatever "happened" would have had to have occurred just after Peter last saw her, or already happening but was not obvious to Peter.

My reasoning is that she would have gone through the exact same buddy-separation drill as Peter did, just as soon as she realized she could not see Peter, which I'd guess would have occurred at about the same time Peter noticed Lynne was "missing". Logically they should have surfaced at almost the same time.

Putting catastrophic health events aside for this question (even though I think that a sudden health issue is still the most likely cause), and being very clear that this is wholly speculation, for those who know her typical equipment configuration:

Is there any single equipment failure that could have prevented her from surfacing? Is there any failure that could account for a rapid, un-correctable loss of buoyancy?

Could a drysuit inflator failure result in a a rapid descent and a suit "squeeze" significant enough to prevent her reaching her wing inflator?



Thanks.

In my opinion, no. Suit squeeze is uncomfortable if not dealt with but that's all it is, particularly when wearing thick undergarments.

I did a dive once with an inoperable drysuit valve. I didn't have to call the dive but it was uncomfortable.



---------- Post added September 1st, 2015 at 09:20 PM ----------

It depends on how loose the arm vent is set. I had Swedish valves on mine and I could turn a bezel on the arm vent counterclockwise to reduce pressure on the spring and it would auto vent when pressure built up.

I keep mine open all the time. It still only vents when it is the highest point so if she became unconscious it's likely to stop venting as that's not a very natural position for the arm to stay at.

 

[Ken Kurtis]

There are very few things I can think of where the body wouldn't end up on the surface and that doesn't appear to be the case.

This is going to be a little graphic so some of you might want not to read this:

Bodies are recovered on the bottom post-accident a fairly high percentage of the time. There can be a myriad of reasons for this but usually it involves - especially with a wetsuit which will provide flotation - not ditching weights. As the body starts to decompose (and I don't know what the time frame would be), the wetsuit may trap some of the decomposition gasses and eventually the body comes to the surface.

But this could be different in the case of a drysuit. Depending on the amount of undergarments worn and the buoyancy of same, the drysuit assembly in and of itself may not have much positive buoyancy, or it could have the same as a wetsuit. Depending on the depth where the body comes to rest, compression from the pressure will lessen the buoyancy and possibly even to the point where it didn't matter if the weights were ditched or not.

But you would think that when the body decomposition starts, because it's a drysuit and a sealed system, that would more likely trap the gasses and bring the body to the surface. However, the same act of body decomposition likely means skin is shrinking/shriveling and that likely means the seals will break, flooding the suit, and likely losing whatever bouyancy the suit could provide as well as losing the buoyancy of the now-soaked undergarments.

So it's possible a body never reaches the surface. We had a fatality here a number of years ago at one of our off-shore oil rigs. The wetsuit-clad body sank into 700 feet of water. It was discovered five or six years later by an oil company ROV that was doing survey work at the bottom of the rig. The body had not come up on it's own and if not for the ROV, would still be down there to this day.

So not every body necessarily comes back up.

- Ken

 

[Kevrumbo]

In her own words -a vital opinion, advice & reminder to us all from an experienced diver and ER Dept Physician- Lynne did not discount the insidious nature of CO2 retention leading to acute Hypercapnia at depth under extreme physical exertion:

Overbreathing the regulator MEANS a CO2 hit . . . It means the increased work of breathing of using a regulator is enough, at the current demand, to prevent you from exhausting all your CO2. All regulators can deliver more gas, faster than you can use up oxygen, but the small increase in resistance involved in trigger the inlet valve and opening the exhaust valve can make the difference between being able to keep your CO2 normal under heavy work loads, and not being able to keep up.

http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/ad...8-panic-experienced-diver-20.html#post6414337

CO2 in the bloodstream is completely determined by minute ventilation, assuming the gas you are breathing does not contain additional CO2. Bailing to open circuit definitely makes it POSSIBLE to reduce the blood CO2 level, assuming you can achieve a higher minute ventilation than what's required to keep the CO2 where it is (which is in part related to level of exertion). It may not, however, be possible to reduce CO2 fast enough to clear your head and get rid of the panicky feeling, in part because the natural tendency when panicky is to breathe as fast as possible. On scuba, this means reducing the efficiency of the ventilation, because too much of it is just going to exchange gas in the trachea and large bronchi, which don't exchange gas. That's why we are taught in OW that, if we begin to "overbreathe our regulator" (meaning the diver feels short of breath despite breathing as much as he can), we are to STOP, hang onto something (reduce exertion) and breathe SLOWLY and DEEPLY. It is then possible to reduce CO2. What may not be possible is to stay rational long enough to do it.

http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/ad...8-panic-experienced-diver-16.html#post6135411

Other than from natural causes (Myocardial Infarction; Cerebral Vascular Accident etc), combined adverse pathological & accidental conditions in Scuba such as CO2 Toxicity and/or Alternobaric Vertigo can cause incapacitation and unconsciousness.

CO2 Retention and Narcosis

. . . [Increased] Gas Density & Work-of-Breathing at depth; then throw in Physical Exertion or a Stress Condition, resulting in overbreathing the regulator --all leading to the Vicious Cycle of CO2 Retention and sudden Narcosis [aka "the Panicky Feeling" or "The Dark Narc"]. Can result in severe cognitive impairment at depth or worst case stupor and ultimately unconsciousness. . .

Taken from Undersea Biomedical Research, Vol 5, No. 4 December 1978 Hesser, Fagraeus, and Adolfson:
"Studies on the narcotic action of various gases have shown that the ratio of narcotic or anesthetic potency of CO2 and N20 approximates 4:1, and that of N2O and N2 30:1. From these figures it can be calculated that CO2 has at least 120 times the narcotic potency of nitrogen. Our data would suggest that the narcotic potency of CO2 is even greater, i.e., several hundred times as great as that of nitrogen."
​

 

[gcbryan]

Thgis is going to be a little graphic so some of you might want not to read this:

Bodies are recovered on the bottom post-accident a fairly high percentage of the time. There can be a myriad of reasons for this but usually it involves - especially with a wetsuit which will provide flotation - not ditching weights. As the body starts to decompose (and I don't know what the time frame would be), the wetsuit may trap some of the decomposition gasses and eventually the body comes to the surface.

But this could be different in the case of a drysuit. Depending on the amount of undergarments worn and the buoyancy of same, the drysuit assembly in and of itself may not have much positive buoyancy, or it could have the same as a wetsuit. Depending on the depth where the body comes to rest, compression from the pressure will lessen the buoyancy and possibly even to the point where it didn't matter if the weights were ditched or not.

But you would think that when the body decomposition starts, because it's a drysuit and a sealed system, that would more likely trap the gasses and bring the body to the surface. However, the same act of body decomposition likely means skin is shrinking/shriveling and that likely means the seals will break, flooding the suit, and likely losing whatever bouyancy the suit could provide as well as losing the buoyancy of the now-soaked undergarments.

So it's possible a body never reaches the surface. We had a fatality here a number of years ago at one of our off-shore oil rigs. The wetsuit-clad body sank into 700 feet of water. It was discovered five or six years later by an oil company ROV that was doing survey work at the bottom of the rig. The body had not come up on it's own and if not for the ROV, would still be down there to this day.

So not every body necessarily comes back up.

- Ken

Just to be clear, I wasn't implying that most bodies end up on the surface. I was implying that if conscious under most circumstances Lynne would be trying to get to the surface and if she had time to do anything (inflate) then the body would end up on the surface, conscious or not.

Therefore, there must have not been time to do even that much and therefore that eliminated a lot of causes.