I thought this might be of interest.
Ralph
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http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/sports/4432690.htm
COMMENTARY / SUSAN COCKING
Freedivers must work to minimize safety hazards
scocking@herald.com
Susan Cocking
Three weeks after the drowning of freediver Audrey Mestre during a world-record attempt off the Dominican Republic, there still is no official word from the International Association of Free Divers on the investigation it promised into the circumstances leading to her death.
Mestre, 28, of North Bay Village, held her breath and rode a weighted sled down a cable 561 feet off La Romana on Oct. 12. She was supposed to inflate a lift bag at the bottom to rocket her to the surface. But something went wrong on the way up, and she floated unconscious off the sled.
A safety diver, Pascal Bernabe, carried her part way to the surface, where he was met by Mestre's husband, Francisco ''Pipin'' Ferreras, who was wearing a scuba tank.
Ferreras brought his wife to the dive boat. Efforts to revive her -- at sea and on shore -- failed.
An autopsy report by two forensic pathologists with the Dominican Republic Department of Health and Social Aid declared Mestre's death an accidental drowning.
The report satisfies no one, particularly the freediving community, which is demanding to know why Mestre, a highly trained and healthy diver, didn't make it back to the surface alive.
In a posting on the IAFD website,
www.iafdusa.com. Ferreras refuses to discuss the tragedy.
''After some deliberation, Audrey's parents and I have decided not to disclose any information whatsoever about Audrey's accident and its causes,'' Ferreras' open letter reads. ``This will only increase the morbidity of the enemies that both Audrey and I have. Personally, with everything I am going through, I have given orders to my relatives and closest friends that in case someday this kind of accident should happen to me, they tie me with my weight belt and let me fall into the ocean, with no investigation at all.''
A statement on the website by IAFD president Carlos Serra goes a bit further. While not discussing possible causes, Serra defends the actions of safety divers, medical personnel and the dive boat crew in responding to Mestre.
Serra names the nine people with rescue training who were at the scene (including himself), as well as the 12 safety divers -- both freedivers and those on scuba -- who were with Mestre. He notes Mestre was wearing an Ocean Sensor dive computer, which should provide clues as to what happened at what depth.
Serra told me Thursday the analysis of the data from the dive computer was not complete, but he said the IAFD is leaning toward the theory that the balloon that was supposed to take Mestre quickly to the surface failed.
Serra confirmed safety diver Bill Stromberg's Internet report that it took Mestre about 1 minute 42 seconds to ride the sled to the bottom. The bag took 25 seconds to fill with air, slower than normal, Stromberg wrote.
According to Stromberg, and confirmed by Serra, Mestre rode the sled up with the inflated balloon to 538 feet, where the sled stopped for about 30 seconds. Serra said safety diver Pascal Bernabe tried to inflate the balloon with air from his regulator.
Nearly four minutes into the dive and at 394 feet, according to Stromberg, Mestre blacked out and drifted off the sled. Bernabe caught her at about 407 feet and carried her to 295 feet, where he waited about 1 ½ minutes until Ferreras dived down and brought Mestre to the surface. Then Bernabe had to return to depth to decompress.
Stromberg and Serra say Mestre was submerged for about 8 minutes 40 seconds. The dive should have taken only about 3 ½ minutes.
Certainly, Mestre's attempt to go deeper than any breath-hold diver, male or female, had gone before was fraught with risk. Mestre and her husband, a world champion freediving pioneer, no doubt understood those risks better than anyone.
But it seems there are a few things that could have been done to minimize the hazards.
When freediver Tanya Streeter made her AIDA-sanctioned world-record dive to 525 feet in August off the Turks & Caicos Islands, each member of her team of safety divers was equipped with a liftbag that could be attached to a safety harness Streeter was wearing.
The safety harness also was attached to the dive rope so the safety diver could send Streeter and her entire rig back to the surface in case she got in trouble. Key members of the dive safety team had climbing-rope clamps that could be attached anywhere along the dive rope to send everything below straight up.
Said Streeter: ``It is important to know that every member of my team knows to never offer me a regulator underwater because I will not take it. They know they should concentrate on assisting me to the surface with a liftbag and that I will not panic because I know that [panicking] is completely prohibitive. They know that I will wait calmly and possibly even black out while I wait because I believe that is the body's safety mechanism and far safer than breathing.''
Mestre's dive team was not equipped with independent lift bags, and Mestre was not wearing any kind of a safety harness like the one Streeter described.
The sport of freediving has been lambasted worldwide since Mestre's death. But I believe that is misguided. Participants and those who sanction it are responsible for doing everything they can to minimize the hazards wherever possible. They need to show the world that testing the limits of human performance can be accomplished safely.
scocking@herald.com
