Doc Deep dies during dive.

[Redshift]

How did he come up to the conclusion that having a dry suit was too costly in terms of gas needs when others before didn't? I also noticed that Nuno Gomes and Ahmed had 4 cylinders on their back.

 

[tursiops]

FYI: oceanographic data from near St Croix (curve b) suggests the water temp at 400m is about 15 deg C, about 59 deg F.

 

[Hetland]

I was thinking 15°C = 59°F. To me, it looks closer to 17°C, which would be 62°F BIG difference between that and 45°F. Thanks for finding this.

I still would have worn a shell drysuit with undergarments.

 

[infieldg]

Hi guys, I'm basically a noob with 17mths experience and 108 dives so please take this as the genuine question it is!

Pretty much everyone is discounting his experience as if it was nothing, with Andy claiming 10x the experience which in terms of hours of being wet is obviously true, but in the context of a discussion on deep diving aren't 35 dives below 150m worth more than 350 dives "under 100m"?

Would adding the experience of 5000 uneventful dives over 20 additional years have saved Guy Garmin? I can't imagine why it would, but maybe what you guys are saying is that what he lacked wasn't the experience of uneventful dives so much as the experience of the countless underwater emergencies that people like Andy must have been faced with over the decades?

I'm thinking out loud now sorry If that's the case then it would make the most sense for someone chasing a record to do countless dives at each depth before moving slightly deeper rather than leap frogging the way he did - that last jump to 1200ft was pretty ambitious but maybe his two years of planning didn't include the goalposts shifting in 2014?

The reason I asked in the first place is that I did some dives on the Coolidge a couple of weeks back with a group of highly experienced (recreational) divers, plus a friend/buddy with the same limited experience as me. We both brought decent sidemount kits which most of these guys had never seen before and they ripped on us non-stop to the point that good natured tho it was, p1ssed me off pretty badly - especially since I couldn't get them to agree that taking a single tank of air on a 62m/203ft wreck dive wasn't great planning.

It did stop eventually though. The last dive was an easy 58m penetration dive but the guide got distracted and we exited at 53m after 20mins with 61mins TTS and I ended up with a 101 minute runtime, mostly spent looking around at a chaotic scene of buddy pairs clasping spare tanks with regs dangling everywhere.

There weren't enough drop tanks to deco them all AND the group who'd just done the 62m stern drive, now all on the same rope, and if the skipper hadn't gotten worried and dropped in for a look-see after we ran over time he wouldn't have phoned for a second boat full of tanks and the only two divers NOT bent or dead would have been the INexperienced guys.

Hence the question. But for all I know they've handled more blown o-rings at depth than I've had hot dinners and would be vastly better when faced with a challenge. I still haven't faced any real challenges and wish I had so I know how I'll react.

I've probably answered my own question haven't I His experience WAS relevant and shouldn't be discounted BUT he hadn't had to deal with enough problems and variables in 595 dives to truly prepare him.

 

[Akimbo]

I was thinking 15°C = 59°F. To me, it looks closer to 17°C, which would be 62°F BIG difference between that and 45°F...

Then there's the respiratory heat loss due to the low oxygen level required for an acceptable PPO2 and the high thermal conductivity of rich Helium mixes. You can't believe how cold 82° feels in a sat chamber at 850'... teeth chatter.

 

[tursiops]

I was thinking 15°C = 59°F. To me, it looks closer to 17°C, which would be 62°F BIG difference between that and 45°F. Thanks for finding this.

I still would have worn a shell drysuit with undergarments.

Oops. Yes, 59 F. I corrected my post. Thanks. If you get nitty-gritty, 1200 feet is 366m, which if you scale that off of the plot is just a hair over 16 C, which of course is not quite 61 F. The point is, it is NOT the 40 F people have been assuming.

 

[jcaplins]

FYI: oceanographic data from near St Croix (curve b) suggests the water temp at 400m is about 15 deg C, about 59 deg F.
View attachment 214895

edit: {geez.... several responses before I can type my question}


Pardon my ignorance....
Can I assume he was breathing a very high helium mix?
I thought the bell/chamber for sat divers on a high helium mix was kept at something like 90 degrees F to keep the divers comfortable.
If so the comfort level of 77 would be fine on air, but not helium. What would it be comparable to? (77 at the surface on air would be like XX at depth on helium. XX = 40, 50 , 60 degrees?)

 

[Mr. Black]

Hi guys, I'm basically a noob with 17mths experience and 108 dives so please take this as the genuine question it is!

Pretty much everyone is discounting his experience as if it was nothing, with Andy claiming 10x the experience which in terms of hours of being wet is obviously true, but in the context of a discussion on deep diving aren't 35 dives below 150m worth more than 350 dives "under 100m"?

I was thinking the same thing when David Shaw happened and I realized that my logbook was about the same size as his and I am still doing OC NDL dives...

At the time I gave it the benefit of a doubt and told myself that there are dives and there are DIVES.

My 200 dives may be only worth the next person's 50 dives.

Cold water drift dives may be worth more experience points than Tropical Lagoon dives. Dives in a good team (holler @ TSandM et al) may be worth 2 x the same experience points as doing the same dive with a random slob from the cruise ship.

But this is all very difficult to quantify.

I think what it comes down to is TIME. Slowly building up the level of your diving and slowly, along the way stuff will go BOOM. But because you are well within your "zone" you will probably handle it, survive it and learn from it and most importantly learn something about yourself. All of that will probably make you more conservative.

Going from a personal record of 800 feet to a goal of 1200 feet and having "only" done a few hundred dives you probably haven't had a lot of stuff go boom on you and you are way beyond your zone.

Having said that...

Notice how we have a couple of guys on here with commercial saturation diving experience and extensive hyperbaric medicine experience and their consensus seems to be that there comes a point where doing an OC dive in a wetsuit you will simply die no matter what. And past 1000 feet seems to be where the likelihood of that happening becomes very real.

Someone with a lot more experience may well have died that day, too. But we would view it differently. I think the key thing is that someone who has extensive experience and know themselves really well would simply not have done this profile with the (inadequate) level of preparation and support that were available in this case.

 

[Akimbo]

Experience is a complex question. I have known divers who were never underwater before commercial diving school (like 8 months long) and their first job had them in at 400' in sat... but they were certified welders. They also had a team of supervisors and technicians to keep them alive. You can learn deep diving very quickly with sufficient interest, motivation, mentor/teachers, and the right personality-type.

 

[Jax]

Experience is a complex question. I have known divers who were never underwater before commercial diving school (like 8 months) and their first job had them in at 400' in sat... but they were certified welders. They also had a team of supervisors and technicians to keep them alive. You can learn deep diving very quickly with sufficient interest, motivation, mentor/teachers, and personality-type.

Fully trained to do exactly what they were doing, and an - I assumed experienced support team of supervisors AND technicians.

Using procedures that are well-known and documented, I would also guess.

And tried and true equipment that is used at depths greater than that probably daily.


Sounds a lot less iffy to me!