The iceberg phenomenon. The see the records being set, they don't see or ignore all the other work that went into it.
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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.
