Cozumel Incident 9/4/11

[scubawife]

So just descend normally. Not adding air to your BC will allow you to descend plenty fast without hard exertion. When at some suitable depth, descend horizontally or heads up. You don't have to approach your target depth head down swimming furiously.

That wouldn't be a bounce dive. The goal with a bounce is to get down fast and "bounce" back up toward the surface as quickly as is safely possible. Think of bouncing a ball. That's what divers who do these dives are mimicking. They aren't looking to properly plan and execute a moderately based deep dive, they're after the thrill of hitting a predetermined depth that they know is beyond what you're supposed to go in recreational diving. Most people who do this are after the adrenaline rush, and thrill of successfully pushing the limits. Like any crap shoot, sometimes your luck runs out. The odds can't always be with you.

 

[Chris Brown Tech]

You guys are missing the fact that the dive should not have been conducted in thd first place. Wrong equipment, wrong gas, insufficient gas, depth inappropriate for training, inadequate dive plan.

Claiming they should have had better buddy skills is like saying a drunk drivers friend should have spotted the red light before he ran through it

Let's not forget what I think is the single most broken rule in diving - not staying close to your buddy. Had Opal and her dive buddy remained within close proximity of each other there would have been no need for Gabi to have had to go another 100 ft deeper to have rescued her.

This is very important. You have a woman and two guys. One is an employee of the woman who is loved by all. The other guy is reported to be her "boyfriend." Certainly he would be watching her intently whenever they got to a point where it became risky. Actually both guys should be watching her closely.

Plus you have a planned depth of 250' - 300'. Would you not slow down around 240' to assess each persons condition before going deeper? If fine at 250' then drop to perhaps 275' to see if all is well before trying 300'? If I were doing it I would be vertical (heads up) by 250' and stay that way while in an area that is new and hazardous.

Given these two factors that would have all three close together, how does the woman drop lower without being stopped soon?

 

[Mike]

Absolutely. They were a buddy team and should have been in closer proximity. That brings up a scary thought in my mind. What if Opal made this dive as a solo dive? Would she have just kept descending until she was OOA? I have felt the early effects of nitrogen narcosis, but I haven't felt the need to keep descending, which is something I am hearing is common at a certain point of being narced. What is it that causes that?

I can't tell you for sure, I can only speculate on it, but basically to get to greater depths as was surely the dive plan, you dump your air at the surface as usual an you start your descent, as we all know the deeper you go the more compression and loss of bouancy, (remember to go to your safety stop from depth, you don't put air in your BC or once you get shallow you will pop up like a cork), this same principle means as you get deeper you don't need to do anything to keep descending, you just keep going down with no effort.

So I'd speculate that as Opal was descending, 100-200-250 ft she is just enjoying the ride, nice and easy no kicking just checking her gauge now and then as she keeps going. When narcosis hits that's all it takes to keep going deeper, you forget to check your gauge ever 10 seconds, suddenly has it been 10 seconds since I checked last or was it 60 seconds? That's all it would really take for narcosis to effect your depth, you just aren't sharp and before you know it, you're staring at your gauge and does it say 300? That can't be, 10 seconds ago I was at 200, that's narcosis effecting your mental abilities. By the time your fuzzy brain starts working on the problem you've gone 50 more feet deeper and getting more narc'd in the process, wouldn't take long for Opal to have gotten to 500 and beyond...

You guys are missing the fact that the dive should not have been conducted in thd first place. Wrong equipment, wrong gas, insufficient gas, depth inappropriate for training, inadequate dive plan.

Claiming they should have had better buddy skills is like saying a drunk drivers friend should have spotted the red light before he ran through it

You're actually missing the point. Nobody is condoning anything. But I can almost guarantee you that had Opal not have slipped from 300 to 400 feet, if you give back the air burned by both Opal and especially Gabi in his efforts to reach her, and had they both started back from 300 ft, this accident might never have even happened. Being at 300 ft is of course just less worse, it's obviously better for nobody to have ever splashed off that boat that day, but the facts are probably true that had Opal been close to her buddy that 300-400ft mad dash to save her might never had been required, there would have been a lot more air and time to ascend properly, do a deco obligation even.

 

[tadawson]

Really? I've never had it mentioned in any of the my courses. In my experience it's just presumed that it's an understood thing.

There are LAWS prohibiting drinking and driving and there are still millions of DUI convictions annually. Everyone knows they exist and still people make the decision to drink and drive.

Don't kid yourself. People do drink and dive. They also get stoned and dive... are hungover and dive... dehydrated and dive...take cold, allergy and decongestant meds to dive, etc., etc. It's all good until that one dive that your luck runs out and you pay for your poor judgement.

My daughter just took NAUI Open Water and I think of the 13 or so chapters in the book, at least 5 beat you over the head with don't drink (or whatever) and dive. I recall my OW class from PADI back in the 70's covered it as well, but not so severely . . .

And from NAUI, the book was enough, but the DVD that came with was ruthless . . . over and over and over don't drink and dive, etc.

But you are correct . . . you can't legislate stupidity. In diving, I tend to think of it as more of a Darwinian process . . . Anyone who persists in being that stupid will eventually remove themself from the gene pool . . .

- Tim

 

[DandyDon]

Report posters who are trying to get all the facts from this story?.........again.....speechless

Nope, not what I said at all. I said "I will certainly agree with stop the hinting about such. Click Report if you see it." I think you were the first to suggest it, but that post was deleted.

You guys are missing the fact that the dive should not have been conducted in thd first place. Wrong equipment, wrong gas, insufficient gas, depth inappropriate for training, inadequate dive plan.

Claiming they should have had better buddy skills is like saying a drunk drivers friend should have spotted the red light before he ran through it

Correct. Thanks. They are all three friends of mine, but it was a lame plan, dangerous dive, which has been well established I think. Expanding the discussion based on real facts may serve some purpose, but it goes home to that.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

You're actually missing the point. Nobody is condoning anything. But I can almost guarantee you that had Opal not have slipped from 300 to 400 feet, if you give back the air burned by both Opal and especially Gabi in his efforts to reach her, and had they both started back from 300 ft, this accident might never have even happened. Being at 300 ft is of course just less worse, it's obviously better for nobody to have ever splashed off that boat that day, but the facts are probably true that had Opal been close to her buddy that 300-400ft mad dash to save her might never had been required, there would have been a lot more air and time to ascend properly, do a deco obligation even.

We can speculate that had this or that not happened, they'd have surfaced OK. But diving like this only works if nothing goes wrong ... and making that assumption violates one of the most basic tenets of dive planning. Things DO go wrong ... and what gets you back to the surface is your ability to have planned and prepared for dealing with that failure. This type of dive ... whether to 200 feet, 300 feet, or 400 feet ... cuts your margins for dealing with error too thin. Experience and expertise will only get you so far ... eventually you will still have to answer to the demands and limitations of your body.

Expanding the discussion based on real facts may serve some purpose, but it goes home to that.

Here's the only two facts that matter, to my concern ...

1. Gabi may eventually recover ... but if he does, it will probably take years, and almost certainly mean he forever loses the ability to dive again. He has to live every day with the knowledge that he has lost the ability not just to do something he loves, but to care for and support the people he loves.

2. Opal may not live ... and given her condition, living may turn out to be worse than the alternative. A young, vibrant woman has permanently lost her ability to live out her life with any semblance of normalcy.

That's too high a price to pay ... WAY too high ... for a "personal best" depth dive. I'm having a hard time imagining a worse outcome.

People do dives like this all the time. They find endless ways to rationalize why they're OK. Well, if anyone reading this thread is thinking that way, ask yourself this ... what makes you think that what happened to Opal and Gabi can't happen to you? What would you do if it did?

Is the risk of spending the rest of your life like that worth it?

If you want to dive deep, then invest in training and equipment to give yourself a reasonable chance of making the dive successfully. Because it's not just you that's affected if you have an accident ... it's everybody who loves you. In Gabi and Opal's case, that appears to be a lot of people ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[alex300]

The awesome part of deep diving on air is equal to free dive for 3 or 4 minutes... its pushing your own limits, preparing yourself to get to those depths and remaind under control...perhaps knowing that not that many people had being there before...
...there are not pretty fishes to look at...no time for pictures... its the rush to be in a place where you dont suppose to be.
Once again: deep dive on air at 300 ft is not an "impossible" thing to do....you just have to know what are you doing and assume all the consequences.
Its not something that every diver should do...there is a flavor for all kind of tastes. I love dives around 60 ft when I take divers out....long dives, plenty of light, long bottom times.... but I also enjoy the deep dives and fully understand that for some divers the balance reward vs risk is not worth it...
At the end is the rush...the joy of feeling alive after the dive what makes the dive worth it... thats for me.

No disrespect and I know each to their own but unless you are down deep for a specific reason how is deep diving awesome? Perhaps a deep diver can explain what is so awesome that it makes the added risk worth it?



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[ScubaSteve]

Where in here did relate the feeling of 300' on air to "300' - 400' on air on a single small tank with no back up plan"? Just curious because that is what this thread is about.

The awesome part of deep diving on air is equal to free dive for 3 or 4 minutes... its pushing your own limits, preparing yourself to get to those depths and remaind under control...perhaps knowing that not that many people had being there before...
...there are not pretty fishes to look at...no time for pictures... its the rush to be in a place where you dont suppose to be.
Once again: deep dive on air at 300 ft is not an "impossible" thing to do....you just have to know what are you doing and assume all the consequences.
Its not something that every diver should do...there is a flavor for all kind of tastes. I love dives around 60 ft when I take divers out....long dives, plenty of light, long bottom times.... but I also enjoy the deep dives and fully understand that for some divers the balance reward vs risk is not worth it...
At the end is the rush...the joy of feeling alive after the dive what makes the dive worth it... thats for me.

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[boulderjohn]

The awesome part of deep diving on air is equal to free dive for 3 or 4 minutes... its pushing your own limits, preparing yourself to get to those depths and remaind under control...perhaps knowing that not that many people had being there before...
...there are not pretty fishes to look at...no time for pictures... its the rush to be in a place where you dont suppose to be.
Once again: deep dive on air at 300 ft is not an "impossible" thing to do....you just have to know what are you doing and assume all the consequences.
Its not something that every diver should do...there is a flavor for all kind of tastes. I love dives around 60 ft when I take divers out....long dives, plenty of light, long bottom times.... but I also enjoy the deep dives and fully understand that for some divers the balance reward vs risk is not worth it...
At the end is the rush...the joy of feeling alive after the dive what makes the dive worth it... thats for me.

It is a phenomenon that has long been recognized in psychology. It has been explained in different ways with different terms. It is commonly called a "death drive." It has sometimes used the term thanatos, a reference to the ancient Greek personification of death. For some reason, some people get a nearly sexual thrill from coming close to death and surviving. Those who do not have that feeling cannot understand it.

Those who have it are found in almost any sport in which it is possible to push the envelope to the very edge. Skiing, rock climbing, base jumping--they all have a small percentage of participants who will throw away caution to feel that thrill.

I am not one of them. I do dive deep--very deep--but not like this. I take all the precautions necessary to make the dive as safe as possible.

 

[Mossman]

If I descend horizontally without effort I can only do so at a pretty high speed if I am overweighted. I cannot attain the needed speed. When I am in a situation where I am dive bombing a wreck, for example, if I don't swim down I will miss it.

For those of you who don't know what I mean by "dive bombing," if one is planning to hit a specific site, like a deep wreck, in a heavy current, you suck the air out of your BCD to remove any buoyancy in it, and when you hit the water you swim down hard. The experienced captain has estimated the speed of the current and made his best guess as to where to drop you off so that your descent in current will let you hit the target. If you drift down, you will miss it. The difference in speed is significant.

But they weren't dive bombing. I can easily get to 100' in less a minute just from a normal "let air out of BC and exhale deeply" ascent, with a light kick, I could be at 150' in the same amount of time, so say 300' in two minutes with a light kick, at which point I would high-five my buddies and we'd start our ascent, fast at first, then slower. There's no reason to kick hard. Anyone knows that could cause CO2 retention and increase N2 absorption.