Crash dive?

[uwxplorer]

Right so the autopsy results and conclusions were also wrong?

Read the "Scuba related Court Cases" thread on Horizon Divers, where statements and documents (computer logs) were provided. They clearly show that there never was an O2 issue. It has always been a mystery how the coroner office had been able to conclude that hypoxia was involved.

As far as regulations are concerned, rEvo dropped the name of the person involved from their list of instructors.

As far as cults go, are you suggesting government-run churches?

 

[Scott McWilliam]

Thank you for your post, I have reviewed the materials on the Horizon Divers thread with great interest. Also, with the greatest of respect, this is drifting into litigating the action on the internet it is beyond the scope of this thread, pointless, and a digression. In brief Horizon Divers has been named as a co-respondent in the action and they have a vested interest in the matter. As such to rush to judgement biased on an internet posting without the introduction of alternative points of view is foolish. Again, it is not my place to judge and I believe in the courts. Alternatively, the coroner appears to have a degree in science, an MD and specialization as a cornier, seven or eight years of education and many years of experience why discount his point of view for that of a dive charter operator? Also, as Mr. Stewart did not freeze to death, die as the result of trauma or starvation and was recovered from a little over 200' of water there is a strong and compelling argument that lack of oxygen had somewhere along the way resulted in death.

rEvo dropped Peter as an instructor? Who says rEvo gets to certify instructors? It may very well take specific technical instruction to dive there equipment and they can certainly supply that but what makes that person any kind of diving instructor unless they are certified elsewhere. They are technical support personal and nothing more.

Government run churches? I think not but government regulated, well. I think so. I do not think human sacrifice, even if it is part of your religious belief system should be tolerated. (Vested interest my neighbors are Aztec.) Diver training agencies are made up of diving wise men and women as opposed to a diving Messiah.

Interesting thoughts by my attention returns to the question at hand. What kind of message is Peter sending after surviving an event like this and then producing a video entitled Add Helium, How to Dive to 200 Meters?

 

[Wookie]

rEvo dropped Peter as an instructor? Who says rEvo gets to certify instructors? It may very well take specific technical instruction to dive there equipment and they can certainly supply that but what makes that person any kind of diving instructor unless they are certified elsewhere. They are technical support personal and nothing more.

Have you heard of the RESA? The Rebreather Education and Safety Association? They are the folks who say who gets to train whom. The manufacturers don't want to go have to buy product liability insurance, so they came up with RESA and they severely limit who can train on their units. Read up on it.

 

[Scott McWilliam]

Thanks Frank I will check it out.

 

[Bubblesong]

What kind of message is Peter sending after surviving an event like this and then producing a video entitled Add Helium, How to Dive to 200 Meters?

Although this sounds like a rhetorical question that should only be answered, “A bad message”, I decided to check AddHelium website, and they are all about serious preparation. In fact this article describes 8 months of preparation: Add Helium Dive Team completes dive to 652 feet/200 meters
You mentioned Rob Stewart, who was not on a depth challenge dive, yet something went wrong anyway.
My take is that many divers have been lost, but we try to improve our safety strategies, and making educational videos about those strategies seems to be part of the industry.
Therefore the message he’s sending, is “get educated” I am not a rebreather owner, but if i was, ADDhelium WOULD be the people I’d go to to get training. Just because they challenge themselves to go to 200 meters does not mean I have to follow them down.

 

[Wookie]

Although this sounds like a rhetorical question that should only be answered, “A bad message”, I decided to check AddHelium website, and they are all about serious preparation. In fact this article describes 8 months of preparation: Add Helium Dive Team completes dive to 652 feet/200 meters
You mentioned Rob Stewart, who was not on a depth challenge dive, yet something went wrong anyway.
My take is that many divers have been lost, but we try to improve our safety strategies, and making educational videos about those strategies seems to be part of the industry.
Therefore the message he’s sending, is “get educated” I am not a rebreather owner, but if i was, ADDhelium WOULD be the people I’d go to to get training. Just because they challenge themselves to go to 200 meters does not mean I have to follow them down.

I have never said anything bad about Mr. Sotis, as I don't know him well enough to know anything bad about him. I've had dinner with him a number of times, I've been to his shop, I've met his staff, I've chartered my boat to him, and I've taken his clients diving. I am friends with some of his instructors. I am very good friends with one of his 200 meter divers, in fact, his first one, and I still consider her a good friend. She no longer dives, because it's dangerous.

Peter's problem is that he is the smartest man on the planet, and he will teach you to be as smart as he is. IMO, what he forgets is that we aren't all as physiologically capable of diving as he is. I know a number of other divers with the same issue, divers whose names you would recognize. Divers who dive 90/10 helitrox and set their dive computers to air. Divers who set their gradient factors to 90/90 in the face of all research. Divers who get away with with it because they aren't as prone to physical problems as a 325 lb man aged 55 might be.

I also consider some of the finest diving researchers in the world to be friends. Folks who have done research on my ship. Folks who have come up with data point after data point stating what the gradient factors should be. Who, after presenting their research to one of the largest and most popular dive computer manufacturers in the world, the manufacturer switched the default gradient factor to the researcher's recommendation.

It isn't that Peter is evil, or wants bad things to happen to his clients. Nothing could be further from the truth, dead clients don't spend money. Peter is sure he's right, and he applies his baseline to all of us. Maybe not all of us, he is convinced old fat men such as myself shouldn't be diving. And I haven't been as deep as Peter, but if there was a reason to go to 100 meters tomorrow, I wouldn't hesitate. In my experience, there isn't much left at 100 meters that I need to see. I would like to see the Ozark, and maybe I will. I do have my own boat. But the point is that Peter is like the dive operator that thinks he is just a taxi driver to the dive site and back. The world has moved on and left you, taxi driver. Now, boat captains need to be more than the guy who drives the boat to the site, calls roll, and drives the boat home again. Same for dive instructors. Peter isn't doing anything that commercial divers weren't doing 40 years ago. He's just doing it with a misunderstanding that sometimes things go wrong, and you need a comfortable margin from disaster to make the outcome right. He flies too close to the sun.

I have friends who teach for Peter. I would never, not in a million years, take a course from any one of them.

 

[Bubblesong]

On the subject of age and weight, we find discussions of hypertension, heart attacks and strokes.
1) What would the dive industry think if there was a Pharmacy-style blood pressure/heart rate check at marinas and dive shops that told people, “Blood pressure under 125/75 or you shouldn’t dive!”
2) There won’t be an age/weight/dive depth recommended limit chart, but there could be, we have enough tragic “statistics” Heck, I could make one as a poster:Franny’s Fatties’ and old Folgies’ Fatality Figures,
However, what you and Scott have said is that the guy is “emphatic in his speech” not that he is taking noobs to the ocean trenches to pick up their egos.

 

[Wookie]

@Wookie, I was quoting Scott, not you, but you still have time to edit your post.

I get that. I was responding to you saying that you would go to add helium for your training. And giving the background for my response.

 

[Scott McWilliam]

Have you heard of the RESA? The Rebreather Education and Safety Association? They are the folks who say who gets to train whom. The manufacturers don't want to go have to buy product liability insurance, so they came up with RESA and they severely limit who can train on their units. Read up on it.

Well I read the RESA page and their minimum rebreather diver standards. I agree that they are minimum. Also, I did not find the section on How to Dive to 200 meters. While I went through all of the material it was really not necessary to read more than the first couple of paragraphs. They are an organization of volunteers that just magically popped up at the behest of diving rebreather manufactures. They have a pejorative. It is a, “who’s your daddy,” question they serve their masters as does NOAA. Who do you trust? By analogy, did your doctor go to a medical university? Or did she train at Pfizer? and I see your point.

 

[Bubblesong]

Well I read the RESA page and their minimum rebreather diver standards. I agree that they are minimum. Also, I did not find the section on How to Dive to 200 meters. While I went through all of the material it was really not necessary to read more than the first couple of paragraphs. They are an organization of volunteers that just magically popped up at the behest of diving rebreather manufactures.

The website says that RESA is the group of manufacturers working together to make industry standards safer, (while trying to maintain competitive advantage, no doubt), while it is History | Rebreather Training Council
That are from the training organizations like PADI and SSI, that are also working together to increase rebreather safety and standards in training.
I am sure representatives from RESA and RTC both will be handing out stickers and swag at upcoming Dive Shows, and unless there is a better way to move forward in rebreather safety, I am hoping they have success.