Doc Deep plans 1200' Dive

[tridacna]

Don't disagree about poor planning-that's obvious. But surely they must have at least contemplated how they were going to prove that he had reached that depth. Hearing that the anchor is 'embedded' and that hauling it up is almost impossible just gives further creed to how stupid this entire endeavor was. I also wonder how much he spent on this inane project.

 

[tracydr]

Maybe he was grabbing cards that were pre-placed on the line to bring up?

 

[KathyV]

All this talk about how difficult it is to retrieve the line makes no sense. Assuming he was able to get to 1,200 feet and return. I thought that he was going to clip something on the line at that depth as proof. How would that have been retrieved afterwards? Surely they planned for that. Can anyone explain?

You are mistaken if you think that any of this was well-planned.

Don't disagree about poor planning-that's obvious. But surely they must have at least contemplated how they were going to prove that he had reached that depth. Hearing that the anchor is 'embedded' and that hauling it up is almost impossible just gives further creed to how stupid this entire endeavor was. I also wonder how much he spent on this inane project.

Maybe he was grabbing cards that were pre-placed on the line to bring up?

'Stellar diver' disappears into the deep - News - Virgin Islands Daily News

..."He also had a clip-on little marker that he would have clipped on the line," Buckley said. "Then we go back and retrieve that line and then you can measure. That's what it would take to satisfy the Guinness people that it was a true record."...

 

[Rhone Man]

Other than that, however, record setting dives are just for getting your own wiki page

Just noting the irony of Diver0001's prediction:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Garman

 

[thez_yo]

Hoping not to add fuel to the fire, but exactly how deep did he actually get?

It mentions that bubbles disappeared very soon after he actually got in the water... Unless he was seriously taking the mafia + lead boots route to descending, I can't imagine he got more than a few hundred feet? It might be a good future deterrent for this sort of thing if there's a mortality datapoint at, say, 300', vs people who have actually been down to 700'+ for saturation work telling them 'I did it and I'm still alive, but you can't because of [xyz]'. The people who tend not to listen to and understand [xyz] reasons because of various fingers-shoved-into-ears reasons might respond better to 'this guy tried to do it and died so don't do it' instead.

 

[Storker]

I'm not quite on line with the bubbles argument.

I've been a safety officer on a few of our club's outings, and frankly, with a little bit of waves (you don't need even a half-decent chop), you just won't see any bubbles if the diver(s) are below 20 meters or so. Seeing noticeable bubbles is a pretty good sign that people are ascending and will surface in a short time.

 

[Rhone Man]

I'm not quite on line with the bubbles argument.

I've been a safety officer on a few of our club's outings, and frankly, with a little bit of waves (you don't need even a half-decent chop), you just won't see any bubbles if the diver(s) are below 20 meters or so. Seeing noticeable bubbles is a pretty good sign that people are ascending and will surface in a short time.

I am not too sure of the exact situation either, but here I would have thought that there was a better argument in this case that no bubbles = big troubles.

Firstly, they were all on a vertical line for the purposes of the attempt (and Garman was, I believe, physically attached to it). But I appreciate bubbles do wash in a current.
Second, water is a lot clearer in St Croix than Norway. Not suggesting that gives them Superman like vision, but if the bubble trail disappears early, that has to be a bad sign.
Third, again, slightly working off the vertical water column theory, when he was at 30 ATAs, each breath exhaled is going to be a pretty large bubble by the time it ascends as high as the safety divers.

We can't be sure, but if I am a safety diver and I stop seeing bubbles quickly, I am pretty worried.

No one has released any info which suggests at what stage he died. My best guess would be that he suffered chronic HPNS due to rapid descent, was unable to deploy his wing, went flying past the 1,200 foot mark, and hit the bottom at 1,300 and died there soon after (if true, then ironically he does now hold the record for the deepest ever scuba dive...). Cause of death is given as drowning, and an educated guess would be he lost his mouthpiece either due to HPNS tremors and/or blacking out. Clues which may suggest how long he survived will be how much gas he has left, and whether his mask imploded.

 

[Akimbo]

… Clues which may suggest how long he survived will be how much gas he has left, and whether his mask imploded.

Interesting thought. I “suspect” that soft tissue would be pressed into the mask causing a severe face squeeze rather than imploding the lens. Has there ever been a recovery where the mask imploded?

Given the very low compressive ratio below 1000’, another possibility would be that gas and/or bodily fluids from the lungs would be forced into the mask with a loss of consciousness. Unfortunately, the tissues are probably pulverized from explosive decompression.

 

[Diver0001]

Hoping not to add fuel to the fire, but exactly how deep did he actually get?

I don't think anyone knows. There seems to be some indications that he may have died during the descent as opposed to during the ascent but I'm not sure if that's just speculation or what. In any case it would seem more logical for something to go horribly wrong during the descent phase.

After the body was recovered it should have been possible to see remaining gas pressures and especially which stage bottles had been opened or not to get a rough idea of the phase of the dive he was in. Computer and Gopro data should be able to fill in some of the blanks as well but at this point I don't suppose any of that will be made public.

The deep support divers apparently reported that the didn't see exhaust bubbles but according to one site the body washed ashore although I find this hard to believe given the weight of the gear he was wearing. However, if it were the case then there is a chance they didn't see bubbles because he was off the line.

R..

 

[boulderjohn]

The deep support divers apparently reported that the didn't see exhaust bubbles but according to one site the body washed ashore so there is a chance they didn't see bubbles because he was off the line.

The only source I know of for ihe story about the body washing ashore was a very highly unreliable and partisan web site that has been filled with clear misinformation. I wouldn't give it any credence without a more reliable source.