Finnish diver missing in Swedish mine

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I'll do a WAG here. So all is well and you start to enter a tight restriction, your dry suit inflator hits the bottom and the suit is self inflating to the point that you are getting stuck and it blows the suit off your feet. (not due to self inflation but had the boots and fins blew off my feet) You are feeling stuck and it is harder to breath and you are getting no pay with your kicking. Panic sets in and you go into flight mode and start using your hands to aid in getting the heck out of here.
Sorry, can't buy that. I have a really hard time believing that a fairly experienced (which, if we are going to draw any conclusions from the reports about her experience, she was) cave diver would react like that to a minor issue like getting too much air in their feet. If you dive in the Nordics, you dive dry. Every time. Being in a drysuit is about as much of an issue as having a reg in your mouth. And if you're an experienced diver in drysuit country, becoming a little light in the feet is a familiar experience and nothing to panic about.

Problem is, while I just can't believe that hypothesis, I don't have a better explanation for her panic attack that obviously was the triggering factor for her death.
 
Sorry, can't buy that. I have a really hard time believing that a fairly experienced (which, if we are going to draw any conclusions from the reports about her experience, she was) cave diver would react like that to a minor issue like getting too much air in their feet. If you dive in the Nordics, you dive dry. Every time. Being in a drysuit is about as much of an issue as having a reg in your mouth. And if you're an experienced diver in drysuit country, becoming a little light in the feet is a familiar experience and nothing to panic about.

Problem is, while I just can't believe that hypothesis, I don't have a better explanation for her panic attack that obviously was the triggering factor for her death.

That's why the "facts" and the "assumptions" that some have don't add up. I think that there is a missing block here.
 
I really get your reply and I said it was just a WAG. I remember my cave instructor telling us about a guy who had the same problem a the first restriction at Cow. If you have never dived there it is really a bear the first time. He said that a guy got stuck due to his dry suit inflator adding air into his suit. They almost went to cutting him out of his suit.
Do we know if the team was in SM or BM?
 
Sorry, can't buy that. I have a really hard time believing that a fairly experienced (which, if we are going to draw any conclusions from the reports about her experience, she was) cave diver would react like that to a minor issue like getting too much air in their feet. If you dive in the Nordics, you dive dry. Every time. Being in a drysuit is about as much of an issue as having a reg in your mouth. And if you're an experienced diver in drysuit country, becoming a little light in the feet is a familiar experience and nothing to panic about.

Problem is, while I just can't believe that hypothesis, I don't have a better explanation for her panic attack that obviously was the triggering factor for her death.
A very experienced cave diver once mentioned to me that, over his many years of diving, he'd seen pretty much everyone you think of when you talk about well known cave divers pinned to the the ceiling of a cave at one time or another. You deal with and you drive on.

But yeah, without another explanation...
 
The team was in Backmount Double 12 liters, and they had a stage(alu80 I believe) with same gas as backgas.
 
Sorry, can't buy that. I have a really hard time believing that a fairly experienced (which, if we are going to draw any conclusions from the reports about her experience, she was) cave diver would react like that to a minor issue like getting too much air in their feet. If you dive in the Nordics, you dive dry. Every time. Being in a drysuit is about as much of an issue as having a reg in your mouth. And if you're an experienced diver in drysuit country, becoming a little light in the feet is a familiar experience and nothing to panic about.

Problem is, while I just can't believe that hypothesis, I don't have a better explanation for her panic attack that obviously was the triggering factor for her death.

I have read and reread your reply several times. I have to say that I am a caver and I have been diving a dry suit for almost every dive since 2004. (I actually had to buy a wet suit for last year's Cozumel trip). We, as technical divers, are not impervious to oh crap moments, fear and panic. I would be shocked to find someone, who has put their time into some real technical dives, say that they have never been spooked. There is also the zero to hero factor. They say that they are a cave diver and we often assume that they know what they are doing. I am in the corner of those that believe some are going too fast and too far. So, I'll continue to stick with my WAG. It hard to accept but it happens.
 
To me it reads like the diver she normally was, that diver was clrearly no longer 100% there when the odd hand movements and violent kicking started. Those movements seem to have no reasonable, intended purpose, they were more like a reaction. To what, no one may ever be able to do more than speculate. Apparently to nothing her buddies were able to notice, or have since been able to find.

I thought it sounded like the loss of bouyancy control was a result of losing one or both fins, after the wild and inexplicable behavior had started. Bouyancy problems may have added to her stress, but I didn't get the impression that they had anything to do with the onset of the odd behavior.

When you lose one or more of the heavy jetfins or similar that these divers typically wear (very typically, but yes: fins= jetfins or similar is my assumption with no real evidence), keeping your feet/legs down from a prone position gets quite challenging on a good day, when you have no other concerns. Esp. because not having one (possibly not having either) fin makes it hard to maneouver. Your problem is created by losing your best tool(s) for solving the problem! This movement of gas/pooling of gas in the lower/wrong areas is both worse and harder to prevent if the legs and feet of your drysuit are too large.
 
In one moment she was leading the dive. Shortly after she was using her hands to back her off. And at that time she had already lost the control of herself. She had panicked for a reason unknown. I don't what there is to add up

Isn't this strange that a supposedly certified cave diver uses their hands to back off and not use

Speculation: If CO2 buildup from improper breathing

Diving related, the report quite clearly conveys that loosing fins due to inefficient and uncontrolled kicking were actions of an already panicked diver who was not in control of herself anymore. What triggered the panic is not known.
It is very common knowledge in diving that a panicked diver is not able to perform up to the level of his/her training and certifications.

She was panicking, fighting her buddies trying to rescue her, kicking frantically, etc. Her dive buddies spent 20 minutes trying to save her before she drowned herself in her panic(at the end she was trying to tear off her equipment in sheer blind panic), at which point the visibility was down to half a meter(20") from all the activity kicking up

Panic sets in and you go into flight mode and start using your hands to aid in getting the heck out of here. Breathing is labored due to the squeeze as well as over breathing the regs. Now CO2 is building up. . .
Labored, inefficient, stressed and increased breathing rate (tachypnea and/or dyspnea) exacerbated by panic will initiate the spiraling vicious cycle of metabolic CO2 retention/poisoning into Hypercapnic stupor and unconsciousness, along with the increased risk of Oxygen Toxicity Syndrome & Convulsions.

You must stop whatever physical exertion or cognitive discomfort (i.e. panic) that is causing the increased breathing rate, and take some time try to regain a normal respiration rate of slower and full inhalation/exhalation breaths in order to expel the excess metabolic Carbon Dioxide build-up.

Unfortunately, this Diver could not break out of this out-of-control CO2 build-up cycle. . .

[Eanx 28; ppO2 1.3 atm and gas density 5.6 g/L @36m depth; maximum breathing gas density at depth found to cause detrimental work-of-breathing CO2 build-up: 6 g/L and higher (see article, https://divenewzealand.co.nz/advanced-knowledge-series-the-gas-density-conundrum/)]
Rule Out: CO2 Retention/Poisoning leading into acute Hypercapnia with possible secondary Oxygen Toxicity Convulsions:
. . .Symptoms and signs of early hypercapnia include flushed skin, full pulse, tachypnea, dyspnea, extrasystoles, muscle twitches, hand flaps, reduced neural activity, and possibly a raised blood pressure. According to other sources, symptoms of mild hypercapnia might include headache, confusion and lethargy. Hypercapnia can induce increased cardiac output, an elevation in arterial blood pressure, and a propensity toward arrhythmias. Hypercapnia may increase pulmonary capillary resistance. In severe hypercapnia (generally PaCO2 greater than 10 kPa or 75 mmHg), symptomatology progresses to disorientation, panic, hyperventilation, convulsions, unconsciousness, and eventually death.
 
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To me it reads like the diver she normally was, that diver was clrearly no longer 100% there when the odd hand movements and violent kicking started.
As far as i can understand, the hand sculling that the witnesses report is an indication that things had already gone south.

When you lose one or more of the heavy jetfins or similar that these divers typically wear (very typically, but yes: fins= jetfins or similar is my assumption with no real evidence), keeping your feet/legs down from a prone position gets quite challenging on a good day, when you have no other concerns.
OTOH and IME, if you're in a drysuit, just getting out of trim and lowering your feet will make your feet less buoyant due to air travel. I'm just a modest rec diver, but I'm pretty convinced that even in a mine or a cave, just getting some 45 degrees or so away from horizontal will make your feet negative enough.
 
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