Diving incident at Eagles Nest Sink

[Storker]

They won't be warm when soaked with water.

Good grief.

Depends on how flooded you are. Even if it's so wet that water literally drips from it when you doff the suit, your undergarment may well have some air left. Yes, the heat loss through a soaking wet undergarment is a lot worse than through a dry undergarment, but there's a more than fair chance it's still better than no undergarment.

 

[Dan]

Dan, here's a question for you.

How much time does searching for 5mins add to your overall dive time when you're at 290ft?

That's a trick question. Isn't that depending upon the total bottom time? If the Table 14-7 from http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/fm/20-11/chap14.pdf
is the correct one to use, my wild guess is it could add 30-60 minutes to the overall time.

I'm a non-decompression diver, the deepest I've done is 147', just like to learn more about what you guys are talking about. So, I'm glad you are poking at my ignorance, but that is how I learn & stay alive after 11 years of diving & logging 550+ dives. Deep diving, cold water diving & cave diving are not the things I like to do. But I like to learn from someone's mistakes so I know how to avoid when S**T happens to me while diving.

 

[doctormike]

Excuse me while I climb up on this high horse.

OK. There.

The point of accident analysis is to try to work back to the root cause of an event so that later divers can be armed with this information and avoid the root cause.

A lot of this thread has been second-guessing the actions of a couple of people who were, by accounts, trained and experienced for this type of diving.

To speculate on "what if" or "what I would do" especially when talking from a point of ignorance (as most of us are for this level of diving) is utterly pointless even as an academic exercise.

OK, my turn on the horse!

I wasn't trying to be disrespectful to you, to the experts here or to the divers who died. In general, I really like your posts. But as I said before, it's a bit of a straw man to paint the whole discussion in a negative light.

The learning that happens in these discussions is not limited to what you do if you lose your rebreather at 300 FFW behind a cave restriction. For example, the discussion of dry suit and exposure issues is helpful to lots of divers, not just the tiny number who would ever consider a dive like this. The discussion of off board dil and team bailout was interesting to me, even though I'll never take my CCR into a cave. It's really not pointless at all.

The reason we have these discussions here, in public, is so that EVERYONE in our community has the opportunity to learn. It's not a legal deposition. And implying that because someone isn't CCR/Trimix/cave certified that they shouldn't be talking about it at all seems unrealistic and not in keeping with the purpose of this forum.

 

[Basking Ridge Diver]

So far we can get as far back as, "Don't take your rebreather off." Why did the rebreather come off? There are a couple of ideas bouncing around, probably the diver having gotten stuck. But is there a logical path any further back than that? Probably not.

Question - when dives of this magnitude are made - are there any hand written or electronic notes?

I guess my basic question is I have heard of extreme side mount exploration where no mount diving can occur. With a re-breather would either of these divers intentionally remove a re-breather and try to progress past a restriction that would not allow a RB to stay on their backs?
Is there any possibility of finding notes somewhere that could help in understanding the dive plan?

 

[Dan]

If they knew the whereabouts of the gear they wouldn't have left it behind...

Oh, and I hope you're not serious about the drysuit.

After all of the drysuit education you guys given me, I stay away from drysuit

 

[cerich]

Question - when dives of this magnitude are made - are there any hand written or electronic notes?

I guess my basic question is I have heard of extreme side mount exploration where no mount diving can occur. With a re-breather would either of these divers intentionally remove a re-breather and try to progress past a restriction that would not allow a RB to stay on their backs?
Is there any possibility of finding notes somewhere that could help in understanding the dive plan?

this wasn't planned no mount exploration based on everything I have heard.

At this time any notes would be in the possession of the sheriffs office.

 

[thoga00]

NO they didn't, they had another diver in the system who was doing a solo dive with a less extreme profile.

Plus..did somebody move cave country dive shop even anywhere close to the nest?

Interesting point. Cave Country is a couple hours away, but There is an Open Water Dive shop within 45 minutes of Eagles Nest. Diver City Aqua Vertical in Brooksville. As well as Hudson Grotto maybe a little further away. In the case of an extended unplanned Deco, would it not be possible to get some O2 out there in order for it to make a difference if an alarm were raised? I know this is not pertinent to this case but Theoretically?

 

[cerich]

Interesting point. Cave Country is a couple hours away, but There is an Open Water Dive shop within 45 minutes of Eagles Nest. Diver City Aqua Vertical in Brooksville. As well as Hudson Grotto maybe a little further away. In the case of an extended unplanned Deco, would it not be possible to get some O2 out there in order for it to make a difference if an alarm were raised? I know this is not pertinent to this case but Theoretically?

sell the movie rights.

 

[PfcAJ]

View attachment 384219

That's a trick question. Isn't that depending upon the total bottom time? If the Table 14-7 from http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/fm/20-11/chap14.pdf
is the correct one to use, my wild guess is it could add 30-60 minutes to the overall time.

I'm a non-decompression diver, the deepest I've done is 147', just like to learn more about what you guys are talking about. So, I'm glad you are poking at my ignorance, but that is how I learn & stay alive after 11 years of diving & logging 550+ dives. Deep diving, cold water diving & cave diving are not the things I like to do. But I like to learn from someone's mistakes so I know how to avoid when S**T happens to me while diving.

My point is that you aren't taking all the things into consideration. Making statements like "However, it might be surviveable and a trade-off with a better buoyancy to search for the gear" neglects all the other factors on a 300ft cave dive.

You might (or might not) get your gear. Then what? Flooded suit, monumental decompression obligation, already suspect amount of OC gas leftover (4:1 bottom to deco time or worse) if you don't find your gear or can't get back into it. Its HARD to get back into a rebreather underwater.

What they had clearly wasn't enough, and now somehow the discussion has devolved into making the situation worse be flooding the suit to go into a dirt cloud on open circuit at 290ft while holding onto a (single) steel 95 that has somewhere between 12-17mins of gas in it? Jiminey christmas.

Can you see how these ideas are a little frustrating? Everything about this makes it worse.

 

[cerich]

My point is that you aren't taking all the things into consideration. Making statements like "However, it might be surviveable and a trade-off with a better buoyancy to search for the gear" neglects all the other factors on a 300ft cave dive.

You might (or might not) get your gear. Then what? Flooded suit, monumental decompression obligation, already suspect amount of OC gas leftover (4:1 bottom to deco time or worse) if you don't find your gear or can't get back into it. Its HARD to get back into a rebreather underwater.

What they had clearly wasn't enough, and now somehow the discussion has devolved into making the situation worse be flooding the suit to go into a dirt cloud on open circuit at 290ft while holding onto a (single) steel 95 that has somewhere between 12-17mins of gas in it? Jiminey christmas.

Can you see how these ideas are a little frustrating? Everything about this makes it worse.

naw, I bet the 95 would last about 8 mins if tha at the rmv the diver would be pulling