Deep Diving on Air

[smellzlikefish]

NWGD-Five graves, Shark's cove, (and Portlock) etc. are not very deep overhead environments, but the YO-257, Sea Tiger and a number of deeper ledges around Oahu that weren't mentioned are over 100' and dived primarily by recreational divers wearing singly 80's from cattleboats.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

Perhaps I should always answer all of NW's silly Q's ...

http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/ad...advanced-recreational-cavern-cave-diving.html

Then perhaps you can answer another one ...

What does a thread extolling the virtues of a vest BCD and snorkel for overhead diving have to do with the topic at hand?

You may not have noticed, but I didn't even waste my time participating in that thread ... for reasons that should be obvious.

Equipment choices ... and even gas choices ... matter a lot less than the thought process that goes into how you approach your dive. I frankly don't care what equipment you prefer ... as long as it doesn't compromise the safety of your dive it's a complete non-issue.

So what, then was your point?

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

NWGD-Five graves, Shark's cove, (and Portlock) etc. are not very deep overhead environments, but the YO-257, Sea Tiger and a number of deeper ledges around Oahu that weren't mentioned are over 100' and dived primarily by recreational divers wearing singly 80's from cattleboats.

I saw quite a bit of diving practices in Hawaii that I thought were not well-advised ... it's among the reasons I haven't gone back. Folks are free to dive however they choose. I'm free to choose not to associate with them if their diving practices make me uncomfortable. They're free to extoll the virtues of their approach. I'm free to disagree with them ... particularly on a public forum.

Hooray for freedom of choice ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[boulderjohn]

Well, in your opinion Agnes was not diving beyond her training, but for me to understand your opinion you will have to provide links to the cave training that trains one to change the plan, abandon redundancy and squirm through a significant restriction, solo.

OK, let's get this straight. the terminology is precise, and if you follow the logic, you will see that it works against you.

Agnes was one of the most highly trained and skilled cave divers in the world. Cave diving in general was well within her training and experience. Over the years, cave divers have developed a number of protocols for safe diving--not very many, actually. In the history of cave diving, only Parker Turner is believed to have died without violating at least one of those rules. Agnes is not an exception. While on a dive, she made a deliberate decision to ignore the rules on which she had been thoroughly trained. In doing so, she cut her safety margin too thin, and she died when something went wrong.

She was not diving beyond her training--she deliberately violated her training.

She did exactly what this thread is all about. She violated technical diving protocols, cut her margin too thin, and was not able to recover when something went wrong.

In my post you call an accusation I typed "yet often SB Staff has pretty much defended them" - which is not exactly "defended their actions" and again I will point out that in your opinion you don't see a single quote defending her actions, while in my opinion those quotes do include defense of actions.

1. First of all, the quotes refer to her acting in her role as an exploration diver, a role for which she was thoroughly trained and which many other similarly trained divers do regularly. I do not see a single post that defended her final decision that led to her death.

2 You do not identify the SB staff members who made these quotes. the last quote is really interesting. We have no idea of the context of the quote, who it is talking about, or who said it. Hard to make a judgment about it.

3. Yes, in my opinion these quotes about Agnes do not relate to her decision to leave one of her tanks behind and explore a tight restriction without redundancy, a decision that not a single person in that thread endorsed. In your opinion these quotes all support it. I know I won't change your mind, but I don't care. The people who matter are the people who are reading this and making a judgment. I am pretty sure that they can read well enough to judge for themselves.

As for the Tom Mount quote, it was used by the MOD of record to answer this question;

"What is it about diving in caves that is so alluring that some folks are willing to do what this woman did?"

1. There is no such thing as a MOD of Record. I have no idea what you mean by that. A moderator is allowed to participate in a thread the same way anyone else is. When they do, they essentially lose their moderator status for that thread. The only people who can moderate a thread are people who have not participated in it.

2. The people who can read will easily be able to see that the Tom Mount quote relates to the first half of the sentence, not the part that you bolded. As someone who helped formulate the rules Agnes broke, I am pretty confident tom Mount would not endorse her final act.

 

[lamont]

So, let's explore the speeding analogy a little more:

Back in 1974, a year after the first "oil crisis" in the USA, Colorado's typical Highway max speed decreased from 70 mph to 55 mph. In '75 or '76, I was driving my bug (stock '65 motor) on straight, sunny, divided, Hwy 50, with foot flat on floor (SBOP). Glancing in my mirror, Sgt. Johnson, of the CHP, was on my bumper. This most rigid of the local enforcers, also father of my sister's best friend and neighbor of ours up to a year earlier, did not have his lights flashing, but I knew "stopped on the shoulder" was the eventual outcome, so I signaled and stopped. He also signaled and stopped, and "then" turned on his lights.

Approaching my window, he asked incredulously "Steve, how fast were you going?" I meekly answered "about 71 sir." He shook his head and muttered that the tail wind did not seem strong enough, but that his speedometer agreed. He then proceeded to take me on a tour around my bug; pointing out a missing tailpipe, putting the right exhaust point inside the body dimensions (CO danger), the thin tread on the right front tire, and told me that a wobbly right rear wheel was the real reason he "caught up" to me from his last ticketing that I drove past 5 miles back. Yes, there had been a recent "hard landing" off the rack at my High School auto shop class.

I had a bug load of teenage boys with me, and the lessons we learned were that the "real safety" equipment was more important to Sgt. Johnson than some bureaucratic line in the sand. All of the occupants of that bug that day have violated speed regulations habitually for nearly 40 years, but all still walk, talk and drive today.

Yeah, lets explore the speeding analogy a little more...

You've got a german sports car and you can easily cruise on some of the 3-lane blacktop out here at 90 mph safely. After all these are cars that were engineered for the Autobahn and the suspension and handling can more than deal with that.

Now it fogs up on a cold night and you take a corner at 90+ mph and hit some black ice... Good luck with that... Newton's first law is a bitch once all your friction goes away...

Same thing with diving on air. It'll continue to work until one dive you build up too much CO2 and spiral into a CO2 hit...

And CO2 is much more difficult to predict than black ice. I know that on a 60F night that there's not going to be any black ice on the pavement, but on any given dive to prevent CO2 you really need to simply get in good shape and keep your effort level on the dive low.

But most of the deep air solo people who rationalize aren't going to be the triathlon types -- they're more likely to be over-50, out of shape and fooling themselves... Which is like driving 90 mph on a foggy 35F night all the time just hoping that the road isn't a few degrees colder enough to ice up on you....

 

[MauiScubaSteve]

OK Bob, in case you haven't noticed, as we surpass 300 posts in this thread there are now more than one "topics at hand" and you remind me of a cartoon version of a rabid pit bull with regards to this particular topic at hand.

Deep air is a continual debate, one thing that's not debatable is the fact that redundancy is a requirement for ANY kind of overhead regardless of virtual or not

Let me list some very, very popular Hawaii tourist recreational overhead dive sites where redundancy "other than your buddy" is practiced by less than 1%:

Tunnels, Sheraton Caverns, Shark's Cove, Five Caves, First and Second Cathedrals.

ANY time someone thinks their opinion is not debatable, rational intelligence seems debatable to me.

How many of those are deep dives ... even considering maximum distance out of the overhead?

In which ones would narcosis be a factor?

Bob, I quoted the post I was directly typing to.

...

CaveMD did not type "One thing that is not debatable is the fact that, for deep air dives with possible narcosis problems, redundancy is a requirement for ANY overhead regardless of virtual or not."

If CaveMD had typed "One thing that is not debatable is the fact that, for deep air dives with possible narcosis problems, redundancy is a requirement for ANY overhead regardless of virtual or not" my rebuttal post would have been worded directly at that typing.

You didn't answer my questions.


As I recall, Five Caves is quite shallow, and the caves quite small.

What does that have to do with deep air ... or even overhead? You can practically freedive them ... I daresay some people do.

What do any of those dive sites you named have to do with the topic at hand?

Perhaps I should always answer all of NW's silly Q's ...

http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/ad...advanced-recreational-cavern-cave-diving.html

Then perhaps you can answer another one ...

What does a thread extolling the virtues of a vest BCD and snorkel for overhead diving have to do with the topic at hand?

...

So what, then was your point?

I doubt this post is worth following along with for the vast majority, and considering that one post out of 77 posts, in the thread I linked to answer one of your silly Q's, brings up snorkel, I doubt even you will be able to follow this post well enough to see that you are causing this "topic at hand" that I now have to help you understand that the point of the linked thread is answering your silly Q.

 

[boulderjohn]

Just from a couple threads ...

I went through the Agnes Milowka thread from which you filled the first three quotations. The first two come from TSandM, when they had just discovered the body and the exact nature of what happened was still unknown. The rest of the quotes from her after things became known related to normal dive protocols for that situation and how they should have been followed.

The third quote is from Cave Diver explaining why people dive in caves, which is really not even related.

I have no idea what thread the other two quotes come from or who made them. There is no way that I can see that they are examples of SB staff defending someone for diving beyond his training.

So I am still waiting.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

But for the last two months the techspurt argument has been...

OK Bob, in case you haven't noticed, as we surpass 300 posts in this thread there are now more than one "topics at hand" and you remind me of a cartoon version of a rabid pit bull with regards to this particular topic at hand.

I doubt this post is worth following along with for the vast majority, and considering that one post out of 77 posts, in the thread I linked to answer one of your silly Q's, brings up snorkel, I doubt even you will be able to follow this post well enough to see that you are causing this "topic at hand" that I now have to help you understand that the point of the linked thread is answering your silly Q.

Hmmmm ....

Kind of interesting to see which members most often seem not to adhere to this part of the TOS...

"Profane, racial, insulting or mean spirited language is simply not allowed here and this includes any sort of harassment or cyber bullying."

Yes indeed ... it is kind of interesting to see that ... odd that you'd admit to it, though ... Mr. Techspurt ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[MauiScubaSteve]

OK, let's get this straight. Yes, my terminology was precise enough that we should be past this "small hijack" and back to more pertinent topics at hand, with regards to this thread.

There have been a number of SB members, or good friends / dive buddies of SB members, who have died recently diving beyond their training, yet often SB Staff has pretty much defended them and SB has not been sued over such "advocacy" of unsafe diving practices.

If we have to follow the logic, you will see that my post #167 (partial quote above) could have easily not been such a now prominent topic at hand. I work long days Tuesday through Thursday. By the time I got back to this thread my "next" post was #294, typing at your post #290. Instead of discussing the current topic at hand, the "speeding" analogy you once again sadly bring up in that post #290, you chose instead to "smoke screen" with an off topic hijack based on a post from days ago.

OK, let's get this straight. the terminology is precise, and if you follow the logic, you will see that it works against you.

Agnes was one of the most highly trained and skilled cave divers in the world.

How old was Agnes and how many years had Agnes been a scuba diver?

She was not diving beyond her training--she deliberately violated her training.

She did exactly what this thread is all about. She violated technical diving protocols, cut her margin too thin, and was not able to recover when something went wrong.

Charlie59 made a quick descent to 175', with a buddy who has experience deeper than 200', then ascended soon enough to make a total dive time of 62 minutes. Now, not only do you seem to be saying that Charlie59's dive is exactly like Opal's tragic last dive, Charlie59's dive is also exactly like Agnes's tragic last dive.

And it also seems to me that we have now muddied definitions such that we have to pick nits between "deliberately ignoring your training" and "diving beyond your training".

It is beyond my scope of understanding why the Cave and other Tech divers continually demand that non cave and tech divers have to speak Cave and Tech when speaking of non tech dives deeper than 40 m. Sure, I get the lawyer/insurance "technicalities" of agencies not interested in publicly endorsing "air" below 40 m, but are individuals discussing "air" below 40 m in a web forum really so dangerous that a forum proprietor will only allow trainwreck discussions of "air" below 40 m?

The only way it makes sense to me is that the forum proprietor makes money by selling advertising, and "trainwrecks" sell advertising. And it also seems that many of the trainwreckers make money, or have friends that make money, selling Cave and Tech training and equipment.

 

[MauiScubaSteve]

Yeah, lets explore the speeding analogy a little more...

You've got a german sports car and you can easily cruise on some of the 3-lane blacktop out here at 90 mph safely. After all these are cars that were engineered for the Autobahn and the suspension and handling can more than deal with that.

...

But most of the deep air solo people who rationalize aren't going to be the triathlon types -- they're more likely to be over-50, out of shape and fooling themselves... Which is like driving 90 mph on a foggy 35F night all the time just hoping that the road isn't a few degrees colder enough to ice up on you....

90/55 = x/100

x = 163.6%

163.6/100 = y/132'

y = 216'

lamont, this thread is about a 175' max depth buddy dive that had a total dive time of 62 minutes; this thread is not about a solo dive to 216'.

Perhaps adults would have educational and pertinent discussions about buddy diving to 175' if they were allowed to have adult discussions about buddy diving to 175'.