Carolinas: Broad River: Diver In Critical, Any News?

[USdiver1]

One other question, which bears asking; are today's regulators too good? By that I mean that the use of totally balanced regulators with both the first stage and second stage balanced gives no warning of OOG situation as an immediate hazard. With the refinement of these regulators, a diver can breath the tank down to zero pressure without a noticeable restriction in breathing. This is great in situations where there is a high physiological demand on the diver, to deliver tremendous amounts of air at very low inhalation effort. But along with that is the intentional loss of any ability to sense impending OOG situations. Is this being currently taught, or discussed at all? I have used the Healthways Scubair on its restrictor orifice setting, and when I felt the restriction at about 22 feet headed toward the surface so that the restriction disappeared as I ascended, and ended up with 600 psig still in the tank.

SeaRat

You make an interesting point on the ease of modern regulator breathability. Having recently participated in "Sea Hunt Forever" where all participants were using 1950s - early 1960s double hose regulators, the vast majority of us with Voit VR1 Sportsman, VCR2 and VCR5 50 Fathoms, or V22 Polaris unbalanced single stage, double hose units, I have an observation from that experience.

The Voit 50 Fathoms are a downstream design, meaning that they get progressively more difficult to breath when tank pressure drops. As the Sea Hunt reenacting required us to dive without spg or flotation devises, it became imperative to either use a j-valve constant reserve, or a Voit 50 Fathom (to give ample warning via "hard" breathing) to avoid OOA. The Voit would get harder to breathe with each successive inhalation when the cylinder pressure was under 200 psi, if you really pushed it, it was possible to keep breathing down to less than 100 psi, but the point is that even without a reserve, the regulator would inform the diver that it was time to ascend with the safety of having a few hundred pounds of air in the tank.

Yes, modern, balanced, upstream regulators can give divers little or no warning that they are fast approaching 0 psi, which I think is exactly your point.

 

[Bob DBF]

The Voit 50 Fathoms are a downstream design, meaning that they get progressively more difficult to breath when tank pressure drops.

Downstream, or upstream for that matter, regs do not get progressively more dificult to breathe as the tank pressure drops unless they are unbalanced.

Let me know what modern upstream seconds exist, it should be a small list. Most regs made now give little or no warning of OOA because they are balanced, not due to being upstream or downstream.


Bob

 

[chris.evans]

Charter company that sponsored fatal dive doesn’t have business licenses

Latest update, looks like the dive shop didn't have a business license and the charter may not have had a captain's license. None of the divers had an SC hobby diver's license allowing them to dive for fossils.

 

[John C. Ratliff]

Downstream, or upstream for that matter, regs do not get progressively more dificult to breathe as the tank pressure drops unless they are unbalanced.

Let me know what modern upstream seconds exist, it should be a small list. Most regs made now give little or no warning of OOA because they are balanced, not due to being upstream or downstream.


Bob

Bob, what USDiver1 was trying to relate was that single stage, upstream valve double hose regulators breath much easier at low tank pressure that at high pressure. The US Divers Company Mistral is an example, and Voit had several that were used in the Sea Hunt series. It must be used with a J-valve in order to give the diver an idea of low tank pressure.

But at times during the Sea Hunt demonstration dives they were diving with K-valve single steel 72 tanks, and for those demonstration dives they needed to dive with the Voit 50 Fathom double hose regulator. This single stage double hose regulator, designed by Emile Gagnan, was the only example (with its plastic housing namesake) of a downstream single stage double hose regulator, which got much harder to breath at low tank pressures.

There are no single hose, single stage regulators (the last one made in the USA was the Scott Hydro Lung full-face unit). Again, he was talking about 1950s double hose regulators used in the Sea Hunt series.

Current regulators are usually downstream second stage regs, and are very easy breathing, even at very low tank pressure. There is no warning for distracted divers in zero visibility (where they cannot monitor their SPG/computer), in cold water (hoods dampen the sound of a dive computer's alarm). This is a plausible explanation as to why this diver went OOG.

John

 

[Steve_C]

Yes the meg ledge diving is different in several respects. The meg ledge is right at 100 ft. You can dive with a buddy if you want. I have each time. Visibility never got below 10-20 ft. The line is so you can find your way back to the anchor. The bottom tends to be short on distinguishing landmarks. In your immediate vicinity you can see fine. Personally I tie into a rock that is close to the anchor and not to the anchor itself. For buddy divers we may run one line per buddy pair. Many divers carry a pony including myself. Most dive larger tanks such as HP 100s or bigger and all dive Nitrox. An SMB is required so that if you do have to do an open water assent you can signal the boat. The tooth ledge is actually pretty flat. It is more an area. There are no entanglement hazards like a river might have. We have some other ledges, also at 100 ft that really are ledge like that are popular dive sites. They are covered with coral and marine life. They are the NC equivalent of a coral reef. Sue's and 23 mile are especially popular. The tooth dive is no different EXCEPT that you are looking for fossils. If you can remember first that it is a dive to 100ft and you will be slightly narced and secondly that you are looking for teeth it is as safe as any other of the dives we do to 100 ft..

 

[kelemvor]

Charter company that sponsored fatal dive doesn’t have business licenses

Latest update, looks like the dive shop didn't have a business license and the charter may not have had a captain's license. None of the divers had an SC hobby diver's license allowing them to dive for fossils.

Yikes, sounds like that captain is in trouble...

If the divers were diving for fossils without a required license, I wonder if that might screw up a life insurance claim. Not that I think it should, but insurance people do what they can to get out of holding up their end of the bargain...

 

[John C. Ratliff]

Yikes, sounds like that captain is in trouble...

If the divers were diving for fossils without a required license, I wonder if that might screw up a life insurance claim. Not that I think it should, but insurance people do what they can to get out of holding up their end of the bargain...

It may be worse than that:

The Port Royal business license office had record of a 2014 business license tied to Sea Island Divers’ old location at 873 Robert Smalls Parkway. But the office advised that location had been closed for over a year and that the building that once housed it had been demolished to make way for a waterfront apartment complex.

Read more here: Charter company that sponsored fatal dive doesn’t have business licenses

They may not have had insurance, since they were not a registered business. It pays to check out the businesses that you are hiring.

SeaRat

 

[myshadeofred]

I don't want this to come off sounding too harsh dmaziuk, but running out of air - at ANY depth - is absolutely the stupidest thing a diver can do. Let me give you some cold, hard facts to back that up.

DAN did a study of ten years worth of fatalities (this was published in 2010). Of the 947 actual cases studied, the trigger (what started the accident) was identified in 350 cases. Of those 350, 41% of the time the thing that got the accident chain going was the diver running out of air.

Underwater is underwater. You can drown in 2 inches of water, 2 feet of water, 20 feet of water, 200 feet of water. To think otherwise is simply folly and hubris, not to mention dangerous. The ocean (or a river) is a fickle mistress that doesn't care who you are. When you make a mistake, it can/will chew you up and spit you out. If you don't respect that, you go from being a diver to being a victim.

I've ranted about OOA before and I'm sure I'll rant about this again. Stupid, stupid, stupid. What's even worse is that, as an industry and a dive culture, we give lip service to not running out of air ("Don't ever do it") but then tolerate it with a wink and a nudge ("Don't do it again"). Why we don't ban people who can't monitor their air supply from diving is beyond me. It's not tough to do and the consequences of doing it wrong are horrific for everyone involved.

And before anyone wants to excoriate me for taking too tough a stand, if you want to flog me about this, make sure you've pulled at least one OOA diver out of the water and tired to save their life. Because if you haven't, you simply don't know what you're talking about.

- Ken

I dove a lot while stationed in Hawaii and a few of my friends were guides and one good thing was they would get a feel for their customers and constantly verified air on the dives. Unfortunately, sometimes you would have "those" people that took it to the limit. Because the dive guides regularly checked I was never on a dive with issues. Once surfaced, the dive guide would discuss this offline with the customer. But again, some people are hard headed and think the pressure left is just a suggestion. Safety first no matter the depth.

 

[dmaziuk]

I dove a lot while stationed in Hawaii and a few of my friends were guides and one good thing was they would get a feel for their customers and constantly verified air on the dives. Unfortunately, sometimes you would have "those" people that took it to the limit. Because the dive guides regularly checked I was never on a dive with issues. Once surfaced, the dive guide would discuss this offline with the customer. But again, some people are hard headed and think the pressure left is just a suggestion. Safety first no matter the depth.

Last month on Roatan the rule was the usual "on the boat with 500 psi" and we did write our reading down on the roll sheet after each dive. However, the DM's amendment to the rule was "I won't mind it if you breathe your tank down to less than that, as long you do it at the safety stop, near the anchor line, I see you do that, and you don't hold back the whole boat". So yeah, safety first -- but the relationship between safety and the SPG reading is only straightforward in the YOUR GONNA DIE universe.