American missing off of Batangas - Philippines

[Dan]

Trying to piece this together, I wonder if the sequence events went something like this:

Wing detaches from backplate (?).
Diver can't ascend.
Diver drops lead to gain buoyancy.
Diver starts rising uncontrollably
Instructor intervenes as noted.

However, I'm not sure why the body doesn't then float to the surface as opposed to being difficult to find?

How could he drop lead if he didn’t have it since he used BP/W?

 

[Jack Hammer]

How could he drop lead if he didn’t have it since he used BP/W?

The 2 aren't mutually exclusive.

 

[Maverick17]

More likely a failure in his inflator or hose (stuck) would cause ascending uncontrollably. Detached suggests a inflator came off, or the hose between wing, or even an argon bottle coming off.

Assuming they were still pretty deep, at or near 100 meters, should still have gas left for a long ascent, right? But instructor found victim without air. Does that match what Jack Hammer says then, something to do with a hose failure?

 

[infieldg]

Yeah it does sound like a sidemount thing if the wing detached doesn't it, poor guy. I'll be checking my screws every dive from now on, when the o-ring in the bolt goes awol they're pretty useless.

I screw a weight plate on top of the wing so if my wing detaches then 9kg of weights are gone (neoprene drysuit) so I'm going up no matter what.

So maybe as mentioned earlier he's one of the many sidemounters who use conventional weight belts, possibly going up while trying to reach the deflator, and perhaps at some point it disconnected making him positive

 

[Jack Hammer]

Assuming they were still pretty deep, at or near 100 meters, should still have gas left for a long ascent, right? But instructor found victim without air. Does that match what Jack Hammer says then, something to do with a hose failure?

I was speculating and trying to decipher the articles. The reports contradict themselves, give different versions of events, and generally don't make much sense. They open up many more questions than they answer.

 

[Freewillow]

TRIMIX TRAINING dive @ 100 m with current. Maybe not a great idea

 

[infieldg]

The writing is a bit hard to understand, but having read it a number of times this is what I get from it:
1 - instructor sees victim out of control of some sort but is able to get to him
2 - sees the gear problem
3 - also sees he's out of gas, so gives him the "travel gas"
4 - instructor keeps ascending, but victim is now unable to ascend further and unable to deal with current, for whatever reasons

Practically speaking I don't know if any of that makes sense. I'm not a good diver and never used a wing etc. But that's what it seems to me the writing is trying to convey. Those of us who've spent time in this forum though know writers often don't know how things work and make mistakes, so maybe it's off (or I'm off).

Also just noting a tagalog language page said the victim was living in Manila for six years now.

I think you're mistaken about one thing sorry - you ARE a good diver cos you follow this forum - contributing so humbly pretty much proves it!