I hate to ask a stupid question but what is the motivation behind the press conference? The sheriff is giving it? I guess I can see why Mike is inviting divers.
Fourth Diver this year dies at Gilboa
- Thread starter Busdiver
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group hug.
4 deaths here in a few months, the sheriff has to make some kind of public feel-good stance doesn't he?
You don't have to many any sense, come up with any plan or make a difference, ya just gotta make it look good.
Kinda why you wouldn't bother going anyway.......
4 deaths here in a few months, the sheriff has to make some kind of public feel-good stance doesn't he?
You don't have to many any sense, come up with any plan or make a difference, ya just gotta make it look good.
Kinda why you wouldn't bother going anyway.......
Even an eternal optimist like myself knows a sheriff ain't going to amount to anything in scuba land........he just needs to have a reason to justify the growing chopper, fire and ambulance budget
diver_paula
Contributor
wb416:
There'd be no question in you mind if you had been there. The only shower was an outdoor one with no walls. It was great to be able to rinse off after a weekend of diving but that water was sulphur laden as well. You'd still stink after taking a shower! LOL
Paula
JEScholz
Contributor
Anyone mind if I throw in a little reality reminder here??? Too bad, I am going to do it anyway!
Who among us has not done a solo or "same ocean" "buddy" dive? Can anyone tell me they never surfaced with less than 1/3 of their initial air supply? (1/3 out, 1/3 back, 1/3 safety margin) Who has not gone deeper on their own than they did with an instructor? How many of us have gone into the plane or other "overhead" environment without a safety line, back up light and redundant air supply?
My point is that we constantly stretch our experiences to gain new experience. We push our limits to find out where we are comfortable and where we are not. Diving is about exploring and learning otherwise, we would never go beyond the shallow end of the pool. Exploring brings risk and each of us need to find our own comfort zone. For some it is clear warm, tropical waters, for others it is the Andrea Doria. People make mistakes and accidents happen. Let's just understand the risk and make informed decisions.
Who among us has not done a solo or "same ocean" "buddy" dive? Can anyone tell me they never surfaced with less than 1/3 of their initial air supply? (1/3 out, 1/3 back, 1/3 safety margin) Who has not gone deeper on their own than they did with an instructor? How many of us have gone into the plane or other "overhead" environment without a safety line, back up light and redundant air supply?
My point is that we constantly stretch our experiences to gain new experience. We push our limits to find out where we are comfortable and where we are not. Diving is about exploring and learning otherwise, we would never go beyond the shallow end of the pool. Exploring brings risk and each of us need to find our own comfort zone. For some it is clear warm, tropical waters, for others it is the Andrea Doria. People make mistakes and accidents happen. Let's just understand the risk and make informed decisions.
We just went over all this in a post not too long ago and it was split off to allow further discussion on the agency side. It was quite a bloodbath, and this is going the same way. Anyone wishing to learn more about the agencies' disregard for proper training should go there and read all night long.
http://www.scubaboard.com/showthread.php?t=195676
This incident starts off much like many before it. The diver left their buddy, now that could have been a moot point should this turn out to be a health issue, but a buddy might have been able to do something?!? This is all we know so far, and agencies be darned at this point. When we can correlate a direct association between the divers training agencies' deficiencies and this accident, maybe then we can chew on the agency.
Mike at Gilboa runs a great operation, it's as safe as a cold/deep hole in the ground can be. The training platforms to the right of the plane are HUGE. I bet you can get 80 students on the one long platform. There are 2 small platforms right off the dock for newer students to use and not have walk across the bottom to a larger platform. There is a quick response from lifeflight and ambulance services. There's no current, shore within 250 yards no matter where you are and ropes to about everything so you can't get lost and go in the deep end.
I just did some tech checkout dives there about 3 weeks ago and I can't think of another place I'd rather be to test my skills in cold, dark and deep water. The day I did my checkouts they had a medivac chopper land for a training session. Practice makes perfect.
I wonder how many people would train at a less accessible site with longer emergency response times should Mike close up shop?
What in the world else can Mike do to make a safer facility? Oh, maybe not allow diving........
Anyone who wants to point fingers at Mikes' operation might want to get a grip and find out the facts before making accusatory remarks. If Mike didn't care there would be no rules, no yelling at speeders, no expulsion of divers caught diving the deep side without an approved plan, no safety training or upkeep of the facilities.
http://www.scubaboard.com/showthread.php?t=195676
This incident starts off much like many before it. The diver left their buddy, now that could have been a moot point should this turn out to be a health issue, but a buddy might have been able to do something?!? This is all we know so far, and agencies be darned at this point. When we can correlate a direct association between the divers training agencies' deficiencies and this accident, maybe then we can chew on the agency.
Mike at Gilboa runs a great operation, it's as safe as a cold/deep hole in the ground can be. The training platforms to the right of the plane are HUGE. I bet you can get 80 students on the one long platform. There are 2 small platforms right off the dock for newer students to use and not have walk across the bottom to a larger platform. There is a quick response from lifeflight and ambulance services. There's no current, shore within 250 yards no matter where you are and ropes to about everything so you can't get lost and go in the deep end.
I just did some tech checkout dives there about 3 weeks ago and I can't think of another place I'd rather be to test my skills in cold, dark and deep water. The day I did my checkouts they had a medivac chopper land for a training session. Practice makes perfect.
I wonder how many people would train at a less accessible site with longer emergency response times should Mike close up shop?
What in the world else can Mike do to make a safer facility? Oh, maybe not allow diving........
Anyone who wants to point fingers at Mikes' operation might want to get a grip and find out the facts before making accusatory remarks. If Mike didn't care there would be no rules, no yelling at speeders, no expulsion of divers caught diving the deep side without an approved plan, no safety training or upkeep of the facilities.
Meister481:
I'll give you a direct association. Two of the deaths at Giboa this year are thought to have been caused by free flowing regs. Many of the rapid ascents/injuries/ems responses there in the past have started with free flows also.
Now lets look at how that relates to agency standards. Some agencies don't teach free flow management at all. PADI is actully one of the ones that does require it. Hhowever, it isn't required that it ever be done in a diving context. I think that if you go watch a bunch of classes you'll see that students usually practice it while solidly planted to the bottom on their knees.
When it happens on a real dive we're usually midwater and controling your position while managing a free flowing reg is a completely different ball game. Very often the result is an uncontroled/rapid ascent. Some of those rapid ascents result in injury.
I'll give you another direct association. Several incidents at Gilboa over the years have involved AOW students diving with an instructor on a "deep dive". We've been all over the minimal requirements in the OW standards especially as they relate to actually having to dive midwater, buoyancy control, trim ect. Now lets look at the fact that the AOW deep dive may be the students 5th lifetime dive. The point is, we demonstrably have a student who has never been required to demonstrate that they can dive well shallow and they can be doing a 100 ft training dive in 40 deg water. Lets throw one more point in there and that is that you can become an instructor only having done one dive below 60 ft (the instructors own AOW deep dive). So HOT DOG, the instructor and his/her student can do their first 100 ft dive together. Now, should we be surprised that we DO see AOW students getting hurt?
Lets not stop there though. The AOW deep dive usually consists of kneeling on the bottom and doing a puzzle and then maybe a shallow tour. No real deep diving going on here but now the student has this AOW card. That AOW card and filling out a "deep dive plan" gets them a ticket to the deep side. They may actually even think they are qualified and prepared. According to the text they are right. That AOW deep dive (and it's prerequisites) has to be the biggest travesty in all the diving world.
Now we've sort of gone full circle and lets ask what the training background was of the two divers who got killed when they're regs free flowed. I don't really know the answer but I'd be willing to put up a modest amount of money that says my first guess wouldn't be very far off.
Meister481:
I haven't seen anyone here point a finger at Mike. There isn't anything else he can do that I can think of. He is at the mercy of the divers, instructors and agencies.
On the other hand, if he heated the water, covered the bottom with course, non-silting sand and requireded everyone to dive with a guide like Cozumel it would be a closer match to what the recreational dive industry is geared for. Things might go better then.
BubblesUp:
Some of my favorite stuff there...the PADI deep diver specialty doesn't include much that is of any use on a deep dive. It's shallow diving with shallow diving equipment only done just a little deeper. You do things like look at changing colors with depth, compare depth gages with your buddy and a simple navigation excersize and practice breathing from a hang tank which is completely useless. most importantly, there are no performance requirements related to technique (you can bounce around the bottom and pass). There is absolutely NO training concerning problem management like free flows or other reg malfunctions. There is no real gas management. The only redundant breathing source that is talked about or required is hang tank at safety stop depth. That hang tank crap is total nonsense in OW where you don't have any guarantee that you'll be surfacing anyplace near it especially if there's a problem.
If that diver was lead to believe that she was qualified for that dive on the basis of having done the PADI deep diver specialty...what can I say...maybe Steve R is right and it really is criminal. Sure the divers made mistakes...just EXACTLY as they were taught! When you do things exactly as you were taught can you consider it a diver mistake? Everything she was taught/not taught (text and standards) set her up for the failure she suffered.
There may be others but I'll mention a couple of commonly available courses that will actually help prepare a diver for those depths and conditions and can be taken by recreational divers with recreational equipment. They would include classes like the IANTD deep diver/advanced nitrox and the GUE rec triox or OW level two (or whatever they're calling it these days). Those courses have real honest to goodness performance requirements that address real diving skill and training in real gas planning and real problem management. The GUE course is no-stop diving with a max depth, I think, of 120 ft and the IANTD course has a max depth of 130ft. the IANTD course is primarily no-stop diving but if it's combined with the advanced nitrox, a minimal amount of decompression is allowed (like 15 minutes). There is just a WORLD of difference between those courses and the PADI deep diver specialty. I'm not trying to plug for those two agencies and there may very well be other courses out there that are comparable but those are two courses that I'm familiar with.
Just read the standards for the PADI deep diver course and the standards for the courses I mentioned above and compare them yourself. It can be hard to get a copy of the PADI standards unless you are a professional PADI member. Even then you have to purchase them and they aren't cheap. The GUE and IANTD standards are available for anyone to view on their respective websites.
wb416
Contributor
So... aside from all the forms and current equipment requirements/recommendations that are currently in place, what are the "real world" options for Mike at Gilboa to consider?
Should he only allow those with Recreational Helium certs (e.g. IANTD, GUE, NAUI) and above (e.g. Tech certs) to dive on the deep side?
Should someone have to have a certain quantity of dives at Gilboa to be eligible for the deep side?
Should a person need to be "guided" on their first Gilboa Deep dive(s) with someone that Mike W. trusts?
How does he make "the rubber meet the road" here without closing the place down?
Should he only allow those with Recreational Helium certs (e.g. IANTD, GUE, NAUI) and above (e.g. Tech certs) to dive on the deep side?
Should someone have to have a certain quantity of dives at Gilboa to be eligible for the deep side?
Should a person need to be "guided" on their first Gilboa Deep dive(s) with someone that Mike W. trusts?
How does he make "the rubber meet the road" here without closing the place down?
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