Audrey Mestre's final dive, by Francisco Ferreras

[IndigoBlue]

My wife loves freediving, and she loved Audrey Mestre as well. When Audrey died, my wife brought the news article over to me, and she read it aloud to me, while were were driving to a freediving group outing of our own.

My wife's take on Audrey's death was that Pepin was trying to help Audrey "too much," and that Audrey should not have relied on anyone else to fill her pony bottle, and she should have checked it herself, as a part of her own pre-dive gear check.

The impact of Audrey's death on my wife has been that my wife now trusts no one to check her own gear, she does it religiously all by herself.

I do not blame Pepin for trying to be overly helpful. But I have learned to not be overly helpful to my wife either. Everyone needs to be responsible for their own gear and their own pre-dive checks.

 

[freediver]

At least, it sounds like she blacked out first and went peacefully.

If only it were that simple, death by drowning is far from peaceful but yes she would have blacked first.

 

[Mako Mark]

I met Audrey a number of times. The most memorable was underwater in Honduras.

I was at diving at about sixty feet when she swam past me and settled down to meditate on a sandy patch in the reef twenty or thirty feet below me. I timed her for over a minute and a half, when she made a little shake of her head while waking up, flashed a smile, then swam away horizontally. I have never seen anything in the world like that before or since.

It is one of the most memorable and personal diving experiences I have.

 

[FreeFloat]

I met Audrey a number of times. The most memorable was underwater in Honduras.

I was at diving at about sixty feet when she swam past me and settled down to meditate on a sandy patch in the reef twenty or thirty feet below me. I timed her for over a minute and a half, when she made a little shake of her head while waking up, flashed a smile, then swam away horizontally. I have never seen anything in the world like that before or since.

It is one of the most memorable and personal diving experiences I have.

Outstanding.

Would that this is how we were all remembered.

Thank you very much for sharing that moment in time..............

 

[ShoalDiverSA]

...
It is one of the most memorable and personal diving experiences I have.

Thank you for sharing this. What an awesome experience. It is humbling to see and hear of the devotion people have for their sport.

As I said before - she will be missed.

Cheers,

Andrew

 

[verona]

I have actually trained with Tanya Streeter and safety is her first concern but even she will tell you that it is impossible to completely ELIMINATE all risks. The only sure way is to refrain from diving.

Agreed but you can MINIMISE risk. In this tragic case it seems there were a couple of steps which weren't taken to do this which, if they had been, could have avoided the accident. The whole thing is very sad.

 

[freediver]

Agreed but you can MINIMISE risk. In this tragic case it seems there were a couple of steps which weren't taken to do this which, if they had been, could have avoided the accident. The whole thing is very sad.

Agreed wholeheartedly. Also, thanks for sharing cancun mark.

 

[simonk999]

Someone pointed out that one ought to learn from one's mistakes. It seems that the main mistake was that the lift bag tank wasn't checked to be full.

In the main article, Ferraras writes about how they handled the lift bottle: "that system, however haphazard it may have looked to other people, had always worked for us. Until then".

In one of the accompanying articles, entitled "Still pointing fingers", Ferraras is quoted as saying "There was not enough pressure to lift [Mestre] from the bottom. It happened to her and me many times during practise dives."

So obviously, it hadn't worked on previous occasions, but no corrections were made. This was a situation waiting for a death to happen, and unfortunately, one did.

Also, just to address a question previously raised, that I wondered about before I read the article (question was, why didn't Mestre share air?): sounds like during the initial problem, she didn't want to, and when she needed to, there wasn't a diver nearby.

-Simon

 

[PRL]

I saw a special on HBO a while back along with the video of the incident. One of many things that struck me is that there was no attempt to administer oxygen in any form to Audrey on the surface. Did they even have oxygen on board? From the reports it seems that Audrey had a pulse and was attempting to breathe on the surface.

One mistake to cause the incident and many mistakes to control the incident were made. It seems that the driving force of this dive was the record not safety. In the end, it is the diver who is responsible for the dive and in my opinion the biggest mistake made is that the diver did not call the dive off.
Indigo has a good point, but we all are trained not to trust anybody with our equipment and our dive. Should it take a tragic accident like this to remind us of that?

Audrey will be missed by all of us

 

[wetdoc]

One video can more than thousand words: the last 10 minutes of Audrey Mestre.

http://www.masdebuceo.com/videos/mestre/video_mestre.htm

Omar Sanchez, from Buenos Aires.