A FB friend posted his brother died today in Ginnie Springs

[Taliena]

Unless you have a MOD sticker on it with big reflective numbers in low vis or dark environment is hard for your buddies to see whether its white, clear coat, brushed no coat, yellow, pink or gray-burgundy-blue color your tank is painted into.
Not having a mod sticker you are removing an essential verification tool.

Yes, so that is why I always mark them directly after filling. and check them again at the divesite. But I have a white one for oxygen, officially I can use all of my stages for oxygen, but I always use my white one.

 

[elan]

Yes, so that is why I always mark them directly after filling. and check them again at the divesite. But I have a white one for oxygen, officially I can use all of my stages for oxygen, but I always use my white one.

you probably missed my point. The color does not make any difference especially in dark and low vis environment. As a buddy I cannot see it. But I can see a mod sticker especially when its reflective

 

[PfcAJ]

Some day, you might end up with oxygen in another colored tank. BOOM the system is broken.

Dedicate. Tanks.

 

[imasinker]

When a few of us were discussing this on Saturday at the the Crowsnest in Tobermory, we were all perplexed by the apparent "newbie" mistake of taking an O2 bottle into deep water. This was not the Carlos we knew. I have described as sometimes cocky and so on, but the guy knew what he was doing. I tossed out the idea of an intentional act. Everyone went silent for a moment and then everyone universally dismissed it, including me. (The people there were some of his closest friends, including his original Instructor.)

Carlos had life by the b*lls and loved his family and diving, in that order. He ran a successful business and enjoyed a comfortable lifestyle. I've never met his wife, but I have met his little girl a few times since her high-diving class shared a training pool we use sometimes.

The final conclusion we came to is that there is simply no way he would have taken his life intentionally because he brought his family with him to Florida. They were at Disney when this happened.

Amen brother ! Amen.....

 

[Hatul]

It's sad and ironic that a simple mistake made by such an advanced and experienced diver resulted in his death. It's also one of the few fatal accidents where we understand the cause and how to prevent it so soon after the accident.

 

[divereh]

Push the Devil?

Jesus, that's a little unfortunate. Smacks a little of Hubris.

So, what can we learn from this incident? What mistakes were made that we can take note of a avoid?

Diving is a sport where you have to learn to walk before you run, people get too complacent and begin to omit critical steps in preparation, in this case I understood it was was incomplete gas analysis, as far as I know that should be step 1. Also 3 years diving technical caves and your pushing limits? Sorry that doesn't work. You want to make a name for your self in this sport by pushing limits beyond your capabilities, It is just a matter of time. I called it 3 years ago.

 

[elan]

Diving is a sport where you have to learn to breath and stand before you walk or even run,

Fixed it for you

 

[Doppler]

It's sad and ironic that a simple mistake made by such an advanced and experienced diver resulted in his death. It's also one of the few fatal accidents where we understand the cause and how to prevent it so soon after the accident.

The fact is that complacency kills experienced divers. This statement is contained in more or less that direct a form in most technical diving textbooks. This incident is sad... a family without a dad/husband/son/brother et al... but neither ironic nor should it be surprising that a certified cave and trimix diver died doing a dive that was WELL within the scope of his training and experience. As slight as that experience may have been.

Diving is a sport where you have to learn to walk before you run, people get too complacent and begin to omit critical steps in preparation, in this case I understood it was was incomplete gas analysis, as far as I know that should be step 1. Also 3 years diving technical caves and your pushing limits? Sorry that doesn't work. You want to make a name for your self in this sport by pushing limits beyond your capabilities, It is just a matter of time. I called it 3 years ago.

Diving is an activity that requires some restraint because it is so easy to push beyond one's capabilities... as Steve Berman once said -- and I paraphrase -- any twerp can get to the back of a cave. But not everyone can manage the journey back out.

I did not know Carlos... never even met him... but I do know the fella who taught him to cave dive and a couple of buddies had dived with him during the past couple of years. He had progressed from open-water punter to trimix and cave in a short space of time. He had the money, time and desire, and the over-arching assessment from the people I know who knew him was that he was very confident... perhaps too much so. But so what. He was certainly enthusiastic. To complete 100 cave dives in a couple of years when you live 16-20 hour drive from the caves is going some. He had not been diving long, and he certainly did not have vast experience even though he had ticked off several "big" dives in his logbook. But I do not believe any of that had anything to do with him being dead right now.

Experience whispers strange things in our ear. I have lost many, many friends to diving, and have seen many people who I did not know personally... like Carlos Fonseca... die in the water. Part of the job I do involves picking through the debris they leave behind to identify what went wrong and making sure others know and understand so that nobody makes the same ****ing error. Sometimes this is difficult and it is usually painful... the resulting analysis is always difficult for some to accept.

A buddy of mine is a lawyer who specializes in cases where some poor bastard has died, and he tells me his staff have a kind of open pool going to see how long it is before a friend or relative says, writes or posts on the internet something along the lines: "He was the best diver in the world... I simply do not understand how a thing like this could happen..."

Someone always says that, even when the diver is a total novice... just like that kid who died in California a couple of years back trying to do an air dive to 80 metres. He was a divemaster... maybe, I forget. Anyhow, he had ZERO training to do that sort of dive but the boy's father insisted his son was a "professional" and would not accept evidence to the contrary... or that his son had probably been lulled into complacency and hubris by his slightly more experienced and certainly older dive buddies.

In this case, we know what went wrong and we have evidence that the victim ignored warnings from his fellow divers. He certainly ignored best practice. He is not the first diver to make such a rookie mistake. However, the fact that a few years ago he knew **** all about diving is truly irrelevant. He knew what SHOULD be done. He had sat through training and certainly wrote exam questions on gas management. HE CHOSE TO IGNORE WHAT HE KNEW. This is not because of lack of experience or because he progressed rapidly. He simply ignored what he knew to be the right thing to do... that's a function of character, poor judgement, pressure or stress: take your pick.

 

[HIGHwing]

When a few of us were discussing this on Saturday at the the Crowsnest in Tobermory, we were all perplexed by the apparent "newbie" mistake of taking an O2 bottle into deep water. This was not the Carlos we knew.

Two points here. He didn't think he was taking a high mix into the cave. Also, there have been a number of thefts of O2 cylinders by redneck idiots in this particular cave. It's not entirely uncommon for someone to take a mix into the Devil's Cave farther than common protocol in an attempt to assure the bottle will be present upon your return from the dive.

I'm a growing fan of dropping bottles farther back in the cave just to prevent theft. You never know, you might get delayed and really need that gas.

 

[openmindOW]

. . . there have been a number of thefts of O2 cylinders by redneck idiots in this particular cave.

I'd heard that. Sad.