Doc Deep dies during dive.

[Storker]

I meant there's no difference between the atomic mass of helium and the molecular mass of helium, because helium is a monoatomic gas.

Note to self: Next time, read for full comprehension.

 

[Akimbo]

Note that to compare WOB for different gases, you need to compare their molecular masses (or molecular weights), not atomic masses...

Very true, I stand corrected. Thanks.

 

[TLRRHOBO]

Some people, are thinking of Mt Everest. Some thing he tried doing his mountain.... Don't be a hater...

 

[Nuribromanski]

Some people, are thinking of Mt Everest. Some thing he tried doing his mountain.... Don't be a hater...

climbing everest is one thing, but jumping off it because ur so convinced u can fly is another

 

[Diver0001]

Some people, are thinking of Mt Everest. Some thing he tried doing his mountain.... Don't be a hater...

I think this is a pretty relevant comparison, to be honest.

Climbers die on Mt. Everest every year as well because they are under trained, under experienced, and under prepared. On the worst years maybe on the order of 10 climbers have died because of this.

But if you dig down to the root causes then what's really happening on Mt. Everest is that what serious mountaineers would call "casual" climbers have started thinking in fairly large numbers that Mt. Everest is a "bucket list" climb.

My contention is that this is exactly the attitude Garman applied to this dive. He was getting older, he knew in another 10 years that when he DID have the training, experience and preparation necessary to do this dive safely that he would be too old.... so (my interpretation) the mid-life thing took over and he started seeing it as a "bucket list" item.

Just like dozens of what are now frozen (and for the most part forgotten) corpses on Mt. Everest.

Good comparison.

R..

 

[descent]

Some people, are thinking of Mt Everest. ...

I made the analogy to climbing Everest so I could point out exceptional human physiology, not to mock any particular person or second-guess their motivations.

Specifically, I was wondering if an HPNS-resistant superathlete might appear someday.

I still do not question motivation, but I have been (and will continue to be) critical of judgment. I think a chamber onshore would have been a more reasonable place to look for this ability.

But where's the drama in that?

Best regards.

 

[Diver0001]

But where's the drama in that?

You know... I think the drama is actually in dying on Everest if your oxygen runs out.... or to die on a scuba dive when people were telling you 4 months ahead of time that your plan was flawed. I know every pioneer does something that is by definition unique and hard to understand by the mainstream, but successful pioneers throughout history have a history of "learning from the mistakes of others" and "listening to peers". Garman would appear to have done neither.

The problem I believe happened here is that Garman had convinced himself -- and those close to him -- that he had no peers and even when he talked to other divers who had made record dives and those divers declined to help him..... He didn't take the hint. He reminds me in some ways of that crazy mofo who tried climbing Mt. Everest with no legs and ended up getting carried down the mountain by other climbers who put their own lives at risk so that he could live..... and you know what, instead of learning from that the guy said, "I'll be back next year".

This is the kind of personality I think we're dealing with here. Whose lives was he planning on risking next year? The guy they passed on the way down who died 500m from camp? The guy who lost his finger tips? The guy who broke off his own climb (and you don't make this climb for $20) to do the right thing because he personally believed that a human life cannot be counted in dollars? Who does he feel has a right to inconvenience and/or endanger "next year"?

This is the kind of personality we're dealing with here, if you ask me.

Mountain climbing and extreme diving do seem to share common ground. Reinhold Messner, a German climber who is the same age as my mother (but obviously wasn't at the time of his climbs), climbed all 14 of the mountains world wide that peak at over 8000 meters. Each and every one of them.... without oxygen. In fact, I think he was the first and possibly only climber to have ever climbed Mt Everest solo without oxygen. I can't even imaging how hard that must have been. The highest I've ever been was about 6000m and I was puking and felt like hell..... I honestly don't think I could have climbed to 8000m even though "technically" I could have done it if the peak had been at a lower altitude.

Messner was a climber who was trained, experienced and prepared. I think there are parallels to be drawn here between guys like Messner and certain people in our sport who WERE trained, experienced and prepared to make the dives they did..... That's why Messner was successful where so many have died and why certain divers have been able to dive to extreme depths and return successfully while guys like Garman die predictably.

R..

 

[Centrals]

Mountain climbing and extreme diving do seem to share common ground. Reinhold Messner, a German climber who is the same age as my mother (but obviously wasn't at the time of his climbs), climbed all 14 of the mountains world wide that peak at over 8000 meters. Each and every one of them.... without oxygen. In fact, I think he was the first and possibly only climber to have ever climbed Mt Everest solo without oxygen.

The feat has been repeated at least by Churim Sherpa, a Nepalese woman, in 2012. She first climbed it with a group on May 12 and repeated the climb 5 days later ALONE.
Alison Hargreaves(English) is the first woman to do it without supplement O2 in 1995. She lost her life in climbing K2 later.

The youngest person(13yr) and oldest person(80yr) are the record age to scale Everest. I won't be at all surprised that someone somewhere want to break it.

---------- Post added September 11th, 2015 at 05:55 PM ----------

Reinhold Messner, a German climber ....

He is Italian from South Tyrol.

 

[hargikas]

There have been a couple of deaths recently and this is one that was expected, predicted and completely unsurprising. That doesn't make it any less painful and bitter to his friends and loved ones but to the community as a whole it registered pretty much as a non-event.

R..

---------- Post added September 5th, 2015 at 02:49 PM ----------

BTW, I should mention that it's worth your time to read back through this thread. There are actually a couple of people on Scubaboard with real-life experience at these depths -- Akimbo in particular -- and their speculation about what could have happened is as close as we'll probably ever get to having answers.

R..

I think the same with you, I have read this thread and I liked it. You can gain a lot of info out of this! But we live in an era where the image and the video takes primary role in most people. If we could have access to the GoPro footage (showing signs of HPNS or Compression Arthralgia), it could give a clearer message about the fatal technique of diving in these depths on SCUBA.

Actually someone could create (and post) a video (side by side) of this diver (Narced, HPNS, Arthralgia) and a Saturation Diver (with his mental capabilities ok and the ability to do physical labour down there). It would give a clear message, that these depths are well researched on human physiology and the diver attempting it is not helping the science, the research or the scuba community.

Even famous training agencies don't tell the true story.

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

You know... I think the drama is actually in dying on Everest if your oxygen runs out.... or to die on a scuba dive when people were telling you 4 months ahead of time that your plan was flawed. I know every pioneer does something that is by definition unique and hard to understand by the mainstream, but successful pioneers throughout history have a history of "learning from the mistakes of others" and "listening to peers". Garman would appear to have done neither.

The problem I believe happened here is that Garman had convinced himself -- and those close to him -- that he had no peers and even when he talked to other divers who had made record dives and those divers declined to help him..... He didn't take the hint. He reminds me in some ways of that crazy mofo who tried climbing Mt. Everest with no legs and ended up getting carried down the mountain by other climbers who put their own lives at risk so that he could live..... and you know what, instead of learning from that the guy said, "I'll be back next year".

This is the kind of personality I think we're dealing with here. Whose lives was he planning on risking next year? The guy they passed on the way down who died 500m from camp? The guy who lost his finger tips? The guy who broke off his own climb (and you don't make this climb for $20) to do the right thing because he personally believed that a human life cannot be counted in dollars? Who does he feel has a right to inconvenience and/or endanger "next year"?

This is the kind of personality we're dealing with here, if you ask me.

Mountain climbing and extreme diving do seem to share common ground. Reinhold Messner, a German climber who is the same age as my mother (but obviously wasn't at the time of his climbs), climbed all 14 of the mountains world wide that peak at over 8000 meters. Each and every one of them.... without oxygen. In fact, I think he was the first and possibly only climber to have ever climbed Mt Everest solo without oxygen. I can't even imaging how hard that must have been. The highest I've ever been was about 6000m and I was puking and felt like hell..... I honestly don't think I could have climbed to 8000m even though "technically" I could have done it if the peak had been at a lower altitude.

Messner was a climber who was trained, experienced and prepared. I think there are parallels to be drawn here between guys like Messner and certain people in our sport who WERE trained, experienced and prepared to make the dives they did..... That's why Messner was successful where so many have died and why certain divers have been able to dive to extreme depths and return successfully while guys like Garman die predictably.

R..

To me the difference between a "pioneer" and what Garmin did are quite different. In pioneering people venture into an 'unknown' territory of knowledge or geography or physics, or some other unknown scientific territory to break a barrier of some previous record to gain further knowledge.
In Garmin's case there was already an extensive body of scientific fact that what he was planning to do was simply not going to work.
There was no "pioneering" in what he did.
That's probably why many considered it a suicide. However, many are now skeptical of his knowledge and full understanding of what it was he was proposing to do so in his case it probably wasn't suicide, it was just a really bad uninformed decision. In a suicide you have to know positively that what you are doing will kill you, and you then purposely go ahead with it to end your life.