Fiona Sharp death in Bonaire

[CuzzA]

From my dives on the site, once you get to the sand, to exceed 4m/min you’d have to be swimming hard. It’s pretty flat, at least to 170’-180’ (as deep as I’ve hit out there). Obviously once you hit the reef it goes up more quickly.

Perhaps she did a surface swim further out? I've never dove there, so you would know better than me. Here's a chart of the area. The yellow line is roughly the 300 ft. contour. The map distance key in the bottom right is 118ft. I think it would really be helpful to see the logged profile of the dive. I won't hold my breath.

Edit: Updated chart with heading for reference to depth. Note: I have no clue what her actual heading was. This is just to illustrate the average distance to get to 300ft. deep.

 

[tursiops]

Perhaps she did a surface swim further out? I've never dove there, so you would know better than me. Here's a chart of the area. The yellow line is roughly the 300 ft. contour. The map distance key in the bottom right is 118ft. I think it would really be helpful to see the logged profile of the dive. I won't hold my breath.

Edit: Updated chart with heading for reference to depth. Note: I have no clue what her actual heading was. This is just to illustrate the average distance to get to 300ft. deep.

View attachment 546857

According to the last person that saw her alive, she was swimming straight out underwater on approximately that heading.. The bits and pieces seem to point to a slow descent to 91m to be her game plan. The descent out and the trip almost all the way back apparently went well.

One minor thing re the chart: she departed from the stairs just north of the two docks, not from the southern dock.

 

[silent running]

Which CCR brand do you use and how deep have you gone? You mentioned 200' depth by accident, I assume you just use air during that time and you didn't get into nitrogen narcosis?

Prism 1/Topaz, 105 meters/trimix. Yes, the accidental dive to 200’ was on air, no I did not feel narced, but I’m sure I was.

 

[Dan]

Prism 1/Topaz, 105 meters/trimix. Yes, the accidental dive to 200’ was on air, no I did not feel narced, but I’m sure I was.

Thanks for the reply!

So, have you heard a CCR diver with air diluent in 2 40s for diving to 91M survived to tell the story?

 

[dmaziuk]

Perhaps she did a surface swim further out? I've never dove there, so you would know better than me. Here's a chart of the area. The yellow line is roughly the 300 ft. contour.

Google maps says it's roughly 4,000 ft to Klein. So 300' is only a quarter way across, not half-way as I thought.

There's a wreck in ~100' on the other side of that reef: "Front Porch", that's how far I ever got. (And I expect most other "vacationers" too.) On that side it's a relatively gentle sand slope all the way to Den Laman (a little off the bottom edge of your map); on Buddy side it's the reef and much steeper. Looks like the sand starts at around 100' there, so 80' is already on the reef?

Edit: and by that I mean much steeper reef to the sand. Once you're down on the sand it's a very gentle slope, looks almost flat, into the channel between the main island and Klein. I.e. if the reported depths are correct, she's made it all the way back across the sand, a 1000' swim, and started up the reef, to end up in 80'.

 

[silent running]

Thanks for the reply!

So, have you heard a CCR diver with air diluent in 2 40s for diving to 91M survived to tell the story?

Absolutely not, that is no kind of dive planning I’ve ever heard of. My suspicion is that her reported max depth of 91m was accidental or unplanned at the very least.

 

[Remy B.]

I cannot imagine planning an 90m dive on air or 20/20.
First, if you go down fast and not breathe the oxygen away, then the PO2 will way too high. The inspiration has a hud that will be blinking RED, AND an extremely annoying buzzer that will make you crazy on problems. So I cannot imagine you plan a dive this way.


And with an inspiration that is working, the buzzer will for sure make you awake that something is wrong if the hud does not do.

This all makes that it doesn't like a planned dive.

A sad loss.

Apparently she was deaf person, maybe possible that the blinker light failed ???

Does the dive computer from the inspiration have a vibration mode ??

Maybe she wanted to say 90ft and by mistake she said 90m, I know the resort is full of yanks and maybe she got it wrong explaining, it doesn't seem logical that a experience diver like her will plan a dive to 90m with that setup.

 

[fsardone]

Apparently she was deaf person, maybe possible that the blinker light failed ???

Does the dive computer from the inspiration have a vibration mode ??

Maybe she wanted to say 90ft and by mistake she said 90m, I know the resort is full of yanks and maybe she got it wrong explaining, it doesn't seem logical that a experience diver like her will plan a dive to 90m with that setup.

The inspiration does not vibrate.
The light do not fail ... they are fiberoptics directly from the controllers.
Two different independent controllers running independent lights brought in the hud by fiberoptics.
To miss the issue of two controllers failing you need to loose sight of the hud and fail to monitor the display.

If you do that you have no business diving rebreathers. Since she was an experienced diver I would exclude lack of situation awareness but there is something not right in the decision making that brought a few inexplicable fact about the dive planning/profile and the choice of gases and their amount.

 

[doctormike]

Apparently she was deaf person, maybe possible that the blinker light failed ???

Does the dive computer from the inspiration have a vibration mode ??

Good question.

The first thing that you learn diving a CCR, and probably the most important, is always know your PO2. It is certainly possible for both of your readout systems to fail, even with redundant electronics. But in that case, you would either get off the loop (bail out) or possibly go to "SCR" or "open loop" mode, which is a way of giving you a short time using your diluent to thumb the dive and ascend. In this particular case, those options would not be available at depth, since she had no gas that was safe to breathe right out of the tank at 300 feet, which is what SCR or open loop require.

So for even a new CCR diver, let alone one with such experience, losing the PO2 readout wouldn't be something that you would miss, even without hearing or a vibration system.

 

[KenGordon]

Good question.

The first thing that you learn diving a CCR, and probably the most important, is always know your PO2. It is certainly possible for both of your readout systems to fail, even with redundant electronics. But in that case, you would either get off the loop (bail out) or possibly go to "SCR" or "open loop" mode, which is a way of giving you a short time using your diluent to thumb the dive and ascend. In this particular case, those options would not be available at depth, since she had no gas that was safe to breathe right out of the tank at 300 feet, which is what SCR or open loop require.

So for even a new CCR diver, let alone one with such experience, losing the PO2 readout wouldn't be something that you would miss, even without hearing or a vibration system.

I have made mistakes worse than that. People make mistakes.

Why Divers Do Stupid Things - SDI | TDI | ERDI | PFI

Yesterday I was at a talk by Simon Mitchell who talked about mistakes and conscious violations. One of the examples was also very hard relate to, involving ignoring (ie actively suppressing) alarms and all sorts of forehead slapping stuff.

To really understand how fatal accidents happen you need to ask people who get away with things what they were thinking and why they decided a particular risk was worth taking.