Diving incident at Eagles Nest Sink

[CptTightPants21]

No diluent does not mean you're breathing pure O2. It just means you have no onboard means of lowering your PO2 with the exception of ascending (which is not always possible with overhead). As long as you do not descend and you do not vent your loop, you can finish a dive with no diluent. You can also drop your PO2 by bailing out to offboard gas and adding that gas to your loop when you go back to it.

His on board dil tank was empty and his offboard bailout was empty. He was the very definition of zero dil and no means of lowering his PO2.

Although, from the description of the location, he was pretty close to one of their safety bottles and then eventually their deco bottles.

 

[oya]

the ability to understand and share the feelings of another

I very much agree with the spirit of you above post, but I'm reluctant to just say that folks are completely lacking in empathy. I'd argue it's a lack of experience (obviously, there's, what a couple dozen people in the world who have experience in these sorts of matters?) and a lack of imagination.

One of the things I've been trying VERY hard to do among the volunteer divers under my purview is to instill in them all an "anything can happen at any time" attitude. I recently had a conversation with a new-ish recreational instructor who is among these folks about something that happened while they were on vacation.

A diver came up some distance from their boat freaking out, full-on panic by the description. This new-ish instructor explained that in that moment he was sure he was suddenly crushed by the feeling that he was going to have to go into the water to recover a body. He had gone from, "Isn't this tropical water nice on my lovely vacation" to "I have to go retrieve a body and spend the rest of the day, if not the rest of my life, dealing with that" in the period of seconds. No warning. No preparation. NOW!

All turned out well, thank god. It was a somewhat simple incident with no injury not worth explaining further here.

But this person who has been listening to me (for years) try to wrap his and his fellow volunteers heads around that emotional shift and weight... this person with professional diver training and experience... this person who is an excellent diver and an excellent person... he had no idea. It was alarming, it was painful, it was scary. He didn't like it. We talked about it for a long while.

It wasn't a lack of empathy, it was a lack of exposure and a lack of imagination. It's hard to sit down and really think a situation like that through. We don't want to, because none of us want to be there or do it.

Bringing this train of thought back to this situation:
Most people on this board don't know what goes into an Eagle's Nest dive. Most people full-stop don't know. They've seen pictures of lots of tanks and maybe know some people who do something like it, but for the most part, they don't know first-hand.

I'd like to repeat my thanks to the recovery teams for their sacrifices, for their dedication to the community and the sport. I'd also like to thank those of them that had the emotional/mental space and wherewithall to put their thoughts not only to the official reports but into these various threads which I very much hope are enlightening to people who wouldn't otherwise know.

Now they haven't been there, they're probably not capable of doing what needed to be done... but they have a more vivid mental image of what goes into it and what the sacrifice looks like. Their imaginations are more fully armed to put themselves in such a situation of going from, "This dinner is lovely" to "I need to gear up for one of the most challenging dives on the planet and go deal with dead bodies with no concrete dive plan RIGHT NOW" with no warning or preparation.

Hopefully that will help them empathize more fluently.

 

[Bobby]

I have been involved in recoveries in caves, wrecks, & open water. Edd and I were going to breakfast Sunday morning and having heard that there were missing divers in EN & not knowing the situation, we wondered if either or both would get a call. Any recovery at EN is a major under taking so calling in people from a wide area with deep and restriction diving experience is likely.

Hats off to those involved in the recovery. Glad that it was done safely. For the small team the time to recover the divers and all gear is admirable.

Also a big well done on getting accurate information out so quickly. This is helpful to the community and has already started discussions of various topics that will likely help many people make better decisions moving forward.

Having been on both sides of the situation, I understand the recovery teams frustration towards people asking for information & I also understand peoples frustration with past incidents and the lack of information. For many years, with cave diving incidents, the IUCRR did the community a great service by publishing non-biased factual reports on their website. Then for many years the information ceased to be published at all. Now it seems that the information is coming out more, however the format is possibly a concern. My hope is that in time, after fact checking and such, that this and future reports are again posted on the IUCRR website. Having one source to obtain incident reports is IMHO a huge benefit to the entire diving community. When I taught (a long time ago) I would use the IUCRR incident reports to emphasize important issues. Even today I will use a report if I'm trying to convince someone that they may be planning a dive beyond their experience and/or abilities. Unfortunately human nature is to discount what is not current. Having a consistent time line that shows, even with training and certification, the same basic cave diving rules can be broken and result in an incident and helps get a point across.

Wreck diving & OW incidents, for many reasons, are not nearly as well documented. It would be nice if, as an industry, we could work on developing ways to better document, analyse, and learn from all diving incidents. DAN has made a lot of progress on this front. I believe though that cave diving incidents will remain the best source to learn and improve.

Hopefully as we move forward the past will fade and we will have both better information coming out and more confidence and patience from others that the information will come out so we can reduce the noise ratio as well as the negativity, anger, and hurt feelings.

Again my "THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE" and "WELL DONE" to all involved with this incident on ALL COUNTS.

 

[CuzzA]

@kensuf and @Kristi@CCDS I don't know what has been posted on other boards or social media, but I went back and read from the beginning of this thread and I don't see where anyone has demanded instant information or even made wild speculation. It sounds like perhaps there is something else going on outside of this thread.

Again, I think I can speak for all of us when I say we are grateful that you guys do and did what you did. That sucks someone took a hit and I hope they have a speedy recovery. Doing this dive appears to be an amazing feat in and of itself. Doing this dive at the drop of emergency phone call is simply amazing. Clearly a diver has to be pretty damn good to pull off a recovery mission like this.

So with that said, I'd like to encourage you to remain active on this thread and ScubaBoard. If someone posts something inaccurate you guys are the source to clarify. You are essentially the voice of the victims. Whether you realize it or not, not only did you rescue the victims, but the information you provide can further advance the safety of our sport. You can also provide some warnings and reassurances for up and coming divers who have the desire to do these types of dives. We appreciate that.

We appreciate what you do and hope you'll bear with everyone as we have a desire to understand what happened. I think it's also worth noting that in my experience with message boards, if I post a question, I don't expect an immediate answer. This form of communication is always a little unique in that the timeline progresses only when someone happens to read it and respond. It could be instant, hours, days or weeks. Nevertheless, when you do respond, you are doing a great service and should take pride in that along with successfully recovering the victims.

Again, I hope you'll continue to participate and help us understand what went wrong.

 

[doctormike]

I think that there is a bit of a straw man here.

I looked over this thread, and I don't see anyone "demanding" anything. I also think it's unrealistic to expect people in the dive community to simply ignore something like this (that's being discussed in the general media) until a formal report is available. At our dive club meeting the other night, everyone was talking about it. Why would SB be any different?

Every fatal accident is obviously incredibly traumatic for the family, for buddies and for the recovery team. What that team does is truly superhuman, and is appreciated by everyone in our community. But that doesn't mean that this discussion is inappropriate. I really hope that those involved in the highest level of diving (the recovery team) don't withdraw from contributing here, that doesn't help anyone.

Accident analysis, including discussion of possible errors and failure modes is one of the most valuable things a diver can do to keep safe. This includes discussion without all of the details of a particular case, some of which will never be known by anyone but the deceased. That's why we have an A&I forum. Every discussion thread here has a grieving family or a traumatized buddy at it's core, but we still do it because it saves lives. To imply that those of us discussing it lack empathy is really unfair.

As far as requesting that non-cave, non-trimix non-ccr divers "shut up" implies that no one other than people in this particular community has anything to learn from this discussion, or has any right to ask questions to help us understand the issues involved.

I'm a new JJ diver, doing my first ocean dive on the unit this weekend. Don't you think that I have more than a passing interest in learning everything that I can about this particular accident, even thought I'm not a cave diver? I know that no one owes me anything, but I'm certainly looking at all of these discussions very closely, and learning a lot.

 

[Redshift]

I would like to start by thanking those involved in the recovery and for the information being released.

I think some of the explanations about what was done and when info was being released (even if info was being released) could have been done earlier in a pre-emptive manner. This would have prevented people from fearing things would not come to light or speculating too much. A recovery of this kind is a project that cannot neglect communication. I think it would have prevented a lot of the unfortunate animosity we have witnessed.

 

[Colliam7]

***** MOD POST *****
Folks, discussions concerning tragic situations and events such as this are always a bit challenging. And, the discussions can easily become quite emotional. Please maintain a civil tone, and avoid succumbing to the urge to 'lash out' at posters with whom you may disagree. Several posts have been deleted, and others edited, to remove references to already deleted posts. The actions are not personal nor directed at individuals, just taken in an effort to keep this discussion moving forward in an objective manner.

*********************

 

[drrich2]

Unfortunately human nature is to discount what is not current.

This little point bears repeating. Many people won't go to DAN or other resources researching old reports, but will follow 'current events,' and maybe learn something. That's harder for some of us who don't have the training to understand the decision process and gear choice/implementation of the complex technical diving involved in this case, but divers come in a range of experience and may still benefit.

If nothing else, we can learn something about how search & extraction of missing divers is done, and about the personal cost to the volunteer divers involved.

None of us are reimbursed for diving gas, sorb, gear, fuel, lost wages from work, etc. All of us had to juggle the demands of our families, work, school, around the circus that this event unfolded into.

Then I'm doubly appreciative of what you guys do. Seems like there ought to be a system for reimbursing at least the cost of gas, sorb, etc..., especially for dives of this nature.

Richard.

 

[Caveeagle]

Ken, Kristi... I am not sure if everyone understands the cost involved for all the volunteers who participated in this recovery. Maybe some folks here could demonstrate some good will, concern, or interest by throwing a few bucks into the hat to defray at least some of the monetary burden.

I for one would sure like to make a modest contribution.

 

[vinegarbiscuit]

I believe there is scope to donate to the IUCRR: contributing - IUCRR