Oh come on, I don't know the details of that wreck but based on the video, it looks like swiss cheese. It looked more like an advanced swim through that OW divers are escorted through all the time. It certainly wasn't any Andrea Doria penetration dive.
Blazinator already made a comment that, as tech instructor, I am probably more safety-orientated than others.... and I think that is a very fair comment.
The further I progressed in my dive career, the more dangers I have become aware of... the more
real incidents I have had to deal with...
Experience replaces ignorance...and that changes your attitude.
I am not, by nature, a 'safety-consious prissy'.... I have enjoyed a long list of challenging and inherently risky experiences in my life...ranging from jumping out of planes, to deep technical dives, to climbing mountains.....the list goes on.
As a military veteran, my appreciation of 'combat' changed a great deal once I had experienced it. It is a good analogy to diving. Until you have experienced something, it is easy to scoff at it or create fantasies about it.
Oh come on, I don't know the details of that wreck but based on the video, it looks like swiss cheese. It looked more like an advanced swim through that OW divers are escorted through all the time. It certainly wasn't any Andrea Doria penetration dive.
I knew people who died inside of wrecks. I read fatality reports about wreck diving deaths on a regular basis. I was on a dive boat when we found the corpse of a very experienced diver who had been lost 2 years previously in a wreck. I teach technical and recreational wreck diving.
Divers may want to dismiss certain penetration dives as "
swiss cheese"....but people still manage to die regularly on
swiss cheese dives. That's why the industry have strong recommendations on the training, equipment and limitations imposed on wreck penetration. Those limits evolved from the deaths of people who didn't know better.
Now...we can either learn from those diver's sacrifices or we can ignore them and face the same possibilities ourselves.
People dismiss these 'recommendations' due to ignorance. As ignorance is replaced by experience, people tend to change their views....and some die before they have sufficient experience to replace the ignorance.
Personally, I could guarantee that anyone who did wreck training with me would never voice opinions like mkutyna's. Why? Because I would show them the risks and dispel their ignorance. It is amazing to see the change in a student during the course.....
I can only hope to do as thorough training with my daughter as Dumpster is doing with his sons.
To add some balance to my posts.... I would also like to state that I am absolutely sure that Dumpster has trained and educated his son to an exemplary level of diving. I am sure that Dumpster, as trained diving professional, conducted a reasonable risk assessment on his activities and fully considered the strengths and capabilities of his son. I am also sure that Dumpster was fully capable of controlling and responding to any emergencies that could have arisen.
However, on
prinicple I still do not agree with what Dumpster did.