Another fatal record attempt in Lake Garda, Italy

Please register or login

Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.

Benefits of registering include

  • Ability to post and comment on topics and discussions.
  • A Free photo gallery to share your dive photos with the world.
  • You can make this box go away

Joining is quick and easy. Log in or Register now!

And people dive to well over 1000 feet all the time. They just do it on propper gear, which is surface supply with a dive bell. And then they go to work welding stuff.

It's like trying to break the land speed record on a bike, but instead of using a bike designed for it, they are using their BMX bike from when they were 12, because "no one has gone 85 miles an hour on a Huffy before!"
 
And people dive to well over 1000 feet all the time. They just do it on propper gear, which is surface supply with a dive bell. And then they go to work welding stuff.

It's like trying to break the land speed record on a bike, but instead of using a bike designed for it, they are using their BMX bike from when they were 12, because "no one has gone 85 miles an hour on a Huffy before!"

As much as I hate these record attempts, your analogy is off. It's not attempting to USE a Huffy to break the land biking speed record. It's attempting to set a land speed record FOR a Huffy.

I mean, I have a buddy who was just on the Titanic in a submersible. Is that relevant or any sort of depth record? Did my buddy do something more impressive than a commercial diver in a hard hat, because she was so much deeper?
 
Nobody goes into the water planing to die that day.
No, but it can be surprisingly close.

A friend who is an avid mountain climber told me that back in the early to mid 20th century, the climbers attempting the serious peaks (Everest, etc.) knew that the odds were greater than 1/3 that they would die on the attempt.

That is a mindset so far from mine I simply cannot imagine it.
 
Gabar, Starnawski, Swierczynski all planned their record dives for months if not years, cancelled the attempt because of bad conditions and survived.
These guy plan them over a beer.

The iceberg phenomenon. The see the records being set, they don't see or ignore all the other work that went into it.
success_iceberg.jpg
 
The iceberg phenomenon. The see the records being set, they don't see or ignore all the other work that went into it.
View attachment 747143
I think this is very apt, and a look at a previous record attempt fatality will indicate it very well.

The attempt was done in St. Croix, and the diver was known as "Doc Deep." He was a medical doctor who went to St. Croix, IIRC, to avoid alimony or something like that. He got OW certified, and he was soon preparing for a record OC deep dive record. (A picture of him showed him diving with a helmet with a canister light screwed onto the top with a Goodman handle.) His attempt was announced with fanfare on ScubaBoard, and the announcement was met with a chorus of "Don't do it!" and "You're gonna die!" from the veteran tech instructors here. He was not dissuaded, though. He did make the attempt, and he did die.

In the aftermath, the analysis showed how truly ill prepared he was, but more importantly, it showed how ill prepared his entourage was. IMO, the entourage was the problem.

The laudatory biographical sketches told how quickly he had moved from OW diver to a record breaking attempt. In one telling sentence, they said that he had soon surpassed his tech instructor's deepest dive of 215 feet. To put that into perspective, as a tech instructor, I must take my students past 250 feet for trimix certification. In other words, for most agencies, the most knowledgeable diver training him for deep diving would not have qualified as a full trimix diver, let alone an instructor.

The biographical sketch also said that in those couple years from OW to record attempt, he had learned so much that "he knew more about technical diving than anyone on the planet." That is so absurd it would be laughable if it weren't so very tragic. The people egging him on were simply clueless.

And were they egging him on? They certainly were! There was a video promoting his attempt produced by the dive center sponsoring him, and one of the instructors did that sort of thing professionally. The video featured the guy (a professional voice actor) talking like a commercial for an upcoming stock car race, with the echoed shout of "Doctor Deep!" How can anyone back out after that, even after getting the good advice from ScubaBoard?

The event reminded me of a story I read in a biography of Jim Morrison of The Doors. He and his friends went to one of the crew's house for a dinner party, and when it started, the host proudly set a liter of Courvoisier cognac, his favorite, in front of him, indicating that it was all his to drink. He drank it. He eventually passed out, wetting his pants in the process. When he came to, he was furious. He blamed the guy for giving him the bottle with the clear message, "You're the drinking man!" That was a challenge--he had to live up to that reputation. He did not want to get so drunk he pissed in his pants, but he felt he had to live up to the image. "You guys are killing me!" he said.
 
IMO, the entourage was the problem.

^ This. Exactly this.

And that's why I criticize these divers - far more qualified than me - here in a public forum. Because there is no scuba police. All there is is community consensus, commentary and peer pressure.

So if peer pressure is going to be the final guardrail, it might as well be coming from voices of reason. Like @boulderjohn and others.
 
So how does an experienced CCR diver dies before going past 10m?

Aside from going hypoxic, I am not sure, and that would mean that his O2 sensors were wrong? I imagine that any CCR diver would check the PPO2 readings and do a pre-breathe?

(Sorry if these are silly questions, I am not CCR trained)

Referring to this post:

He left the beach at 8am to commence the dive and started to return shortly after for unknown reason. I'm told he didn't get below 10m. Apparently no obvious equipment faults.
 
Aside from going hypoxic,
Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?

:)

Sorry!

Seriously, not to derail the topic here, but shallow (or even on the surface) is the most dangerous time to be on a rebreather from that point of view, especially with hypoxic diluent. Anything that interrupts the flow of O2 is likely to be rapidly fatal, as the PPO2 in the loop drops below a level compatible with life. Yes, there are all sorts of checklists, alarms, and procedures to avoid that. And of course, I have no idea what happened in this particular case.

Here's something good to watch if you want to learn how a CCR diver died on the surface, and how it's often not as simple as "an experienced diver made a mistake".
 
So how does an experienced CCR diver dies before going past 10m?

Aside from going hypoxic, I am not sure, and that would mean that his O2 sensors were wrong? I imagine that any CCR diver would check the PPO2 readings and do a pre-breathe?

(Sorry if these are silly questions, I am not CCR trained)

Referring to this post:
Probably hypoxic mix as diluent and didn't turn his O2 on. Complete guess, but that has killed more than one CCR diver. Anyone doing a 1000' solo dive with no team probably doesn't have the highest regards for safety procedures and checklists.
 
Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?

:)

Sorry!

Seriously, not to derail the topic here, but shallow (or even on the surface) is the most dangerous time to be on a rebreather from that point of view, especially with hypoxic diluent. Anything that interrupts the flow of O2 is likely to be rapidly fatal, as the PPO2 in the loop drops below a level compatible with life. Yes, there are all sorts of checklists, alarms, and procedures to avoid that. And of course, I have no idea what happened in this particular case.

Here's something good to watch if you want to learn how a CCR diver died on the surface, and how it's often not as simple as "an experienced diver made a mistake".
Sorry I didn’t mean to derail the convo, but I don’t believe we will stop anyone who wants to beat records as they would not be focusing on the warnings they could read here, so I am only trying to learn here :)

Thanks, I forgot to think about the diluent. For 300m, it’s pretty insane what O2% you’d need to be under 1.6. (Used 1.6 as an example)

So when you start doing down the first 10m, you’d have to wait for the solenoid to add O2 the mix as the diluent compensate the volume in the loop? I.e. the diluent will bring down the PPO2 very quickly if added to compensate for the loop volume?
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/perdix-ai/

Back
Top Bottom