Czech Diver dies in Austrian lake

[Potapko]

I am writing this including the man's name because neither his family nor close friends understand a word of English and there is no chance they will ever see this. For anybody who reads German of Czech you can search for the Attersee dive accident and find the link. If it is important I can post them.

Josef Picha did not surface from our dive in the lake Attersee in Austria. We entered the water at 10:00 AM on Saturday two weeks ago, at the site known as schwartze Bruke (sp) This site is a beautiful wall that falls to approx 100 meters. From 30 meters down the water gets clear as crystal. On this dive Josef went alone as was his normal plan. I went to a max depth of 55 meters while others of the group stayed above 40m. While I was at 55 meters depth I saw Josef still descending below me. He was looking around and seemed to be in good shape. After a few short minutes of looking around I decided to begin my ascent. I could tell I was narced and wanted to work my way to shallower waters. I finished my dive after 50 minutes and was the first out of the water. The other 4 divers also exited shortly after me but there was no sign of Josef. Well, there were bubbles from several locations which led us to believe that he may be doing his deco nearby. After 2 hours the leader of the group called the rescue personnel. Josef's body was found two days later with the help of a search robot at 70 meters depth. His 12 liter doubles were empty, his decompression stage tank was full. He had run out of air and drowned.
His computer showed his max depth to be 93 meters. Apparently he had been to that depth and had run out of air on the way up.

I am writing this now, 3 weeks after the event in order for others to learn from this tragedy. This was a senseless death. He should have gone home to his friends and family but he died. Why?

Sitting in our penzion the evening before we had been discussing safe diving limits for air. Josef bragged and showed us his vr3 with profiles to 70m and 80m in the warm waters of the red sea. He espoused the belief that a person could "train" themselves to exceed the O2 limits as well as to not be affected by the high concentrations of nitrogen. I had personally tried to correct his thinking but was cut off by another "friend" of his that came to his defense. He spoke about wanting to try and get to 100m using only air. This may be what he attempted that Saturday in the lake. We do not know. The official COD was listed as drowning, mostly because his tanks were empty and this is the final cause.

What caused his death imo were serious errors in thinking and reasoning. he thought the limits didn't apply to him. He thought he was big enough and strong enough to "handle" the narcosis and the high pp of O2. He was wrong! How very sad.

What can we learn from this? Respect the limits! How many dives were made to compile the tables we use today? How many people suffered DCS to give us the no-deco dive limits and toxed on the high pp of O2 to establish the safe diving limits for oxygen we have today? how many dealt with debilitating narcosis so we could understand how deep to go with various gases?

Now, he has entered into eternity and stood before God. He died without hope and without Christ. For him it is too late, what about you?
DP

 

[TSandM]

In many ways, this reminds me of the death we had in the Sound last year, the young man who did the 200 foot dive on air in an Al80.

Although there are a lot of people who make a point of pushing the limits on diving (the WKPP, for example), but they do it with extensive preparation and very careful attention to safety.

It's really sad to hear of what seems like such an unnecessary loss of life.

 

[*Floater*]

When I took my nitrox class the instructor told a story about an acquaintance of his who was a smart person in general (a lawyer by profession), but he too had embraced the belief that you could develop a tolerance to O2 and therefore dove beyond the limits. As a backup he wore a full face mask so that even if he experienced convulsions he'd still have nitrox available. However that didn't stop him from sinking once he convulsed and running out of gas. IIRC he was solo too or at least no one was there to bring him up when it happened.

The book 'Recreational Nitrox Diving' summarizes a study in which a diver was placed at 21m (70 ft), 65 deg F/18C, at rest breathing O2 twice a week for three months. The onset of oxtox symptoms varied from 7 min to 148 min. Apparently there was no development of tolerance, just one day the diver started toxing within 7 minutes while other days he could last over 2 hours.

 

[z3r0c00l]

Well the top air divers seem to develop tolerance for narc levels more than anything. I suspect O2 tolerance may depend in part on your physical condition, or on just good genetic predispositions - but the most important thing deep air divers do is dive very carefully. They use the MDR, they breathe without a mask in cold water for a while, they also are very deep, slow breathers at depth - just a few breaths per minute.

Anyway are there really any indications of a O2 hit here? I dont think the results suggest that, if I can speculate for a minute. If he ran his tank dry, that sounds like narcosis and maybe paranoid attempts to decompress or figure out which way was up. 90 meters on air is plenty to drive some people batty. But that begs the question why not at least try to take some decompression gas? Even 50-50 side gas is worth a shot at whatever depth he found himself, I mean maybe it will give you just enough time to get to shallow emergency decompression stops. Better than drowning. But O2Tox would more likely result in a spit reg and tanks with some air, right?

Anyway, I have to wonder why a person would attempt a deep air dive at all (but who am I to try and stop anyone?) past 190 feet, but the key point is if you are going to at least ask a trimix friend to go with you.

Anyway I would love to see his profile, see if he was actually trying to decompress (which would have not called for much time below 100 feet btw) or just swimming in paranoid circles. I mean he hit 300 feet, I could count on my fingers the number of people who regularly take air to that depth.

 

[RonFrank]

Very sad, and for what? Going deep for the sake of going deep IMO is foolish.

I enjoy deep dives when there are things to enjoy deep. However I would not attempt 300ft without a lot of training (Trimix), and a support group or buddy team. Even then there would have to be something at that depth to make it worthwhile.

There are some forms of toxins where people can build a tolerance. I do not believe O2 is one of them. When I meet divers with this type of Cowboy mentality (rare), I have to pose the question, is it worth your life?

I do know divers who routinely hit 200~270feet on training dives, but they are tech, properly trained, and do so in buddy teams. They hit these depths in their pursuit of diving deep wrecks on holiday. This is dangerous diving even with training, but maybe the moral of the story is if you want to dive deep for whatever reason, do so with the proper equipment, the proper training, and a good support team in case things go south.

 

[z3r0c00l]

Ever since I saw that video of the Rec guy at the arch (I dont know the back story so I wont try to describe more) who just kept sinking and sinking and finally getting narced to death I wonder why would you ever want to recreate that. Do you even remember a dive to 300 feet? I know the early deep air guys (Jacques et al) started to simply forget dives.

 

[The Chad]

Based upon your accounts it sounds like that would have been the end result at one point or another. Unfortuanatly he made that decision for himself 3 weeks ago. I would be curious to find out the extent of his training, gear, and dive plan. It would seem there wasent much of a plan or a team in place to complete the dive sucessfully (since the call went out some +2hrs 50min later) and not knowing his intent...your dive could easily have been a normoxic trimix dive. Eitherway, there is nothing anyone can do about it now. My heart goes out to his family and friends.