Freediver dies providing safety - Blue Hole Arch, Egypt

[Jiminy]

Yea I meant the DSMB would send them up and someone else would take care of them at the surface.

In something like the Blue Hole tunnel it is probably not ideal though.

What does any of this have to do with the accident? They both surfaced

It can be supposed, looking at Stephen's computer dive profile, that Stephen almost made it to the surface. Both Alessia and Stephen have similar ascent graph curves from -40m. We could suppose that Stephen blacked out between -10m and the surface. If Stephen blacked out at -10m he would still have ascended with a speed of +-1m/s, being positively buoyant (and wearing no weights for his VWT dive).
Once SCUBADIVER_C saw things going wrong from her position at -35m depth, she decided to come up straight away. Arriving at -5m she saw Stephen face down, unconscious on the surface

 

[BlueTrin]

What does any of this have to do with the accident? They both surfaced

Sometimes it useful to read the context of replies like my reply before and the reply I was replying to before to reply yourself ?

 

[wgw04024]

Free diving to 50 meters, with even TEN safety divers, does not even sound safe... It seems like every safety diver would also need a safety diver, and then those safety divers would need safety divers, and so on...

 

[martincohn]

Plan the dive....dive the plan. Very sad that a man lost his life. Especially as a result of a 10-20 sec deviation to the plan at the last minute.

Its the details that will always get ya...

 

[stuartv]

Scuba divers are limited by ascend rates and at those depths also the deco ceiling so they are not able to bring to victim to the surface quickly.

For a scuba diver that descended and ascended with the freediver, I don't see where the "normal" ascent and descent rates would really apply. A scuba diver that drops to 185' with a freediver and then comes right back up with said freediver is not going to incur a deco obligation. Especially so, if the scuba diver were on a CCR (though I'm not experienced enough on CCR to say whether that would be particularly wise).

I just ran a plan with a 100ft/min descent to 200' and 100ft/min ascent. On open circuit, with air. No ceiling violation. I don't know what ascent and descent rate serious freedivers go up and down at, though.

I think the only real issue would be that you wouldn't want to have a safety diver doing that multiple times per day.

For the record, I know a number of serious tech divers who descend that fast or faster on a regular basis and mostly they come up to their "off-gassing point" or around half their max depth or somewhere near their first deco stop (totally depends on the person and the dive) that fast, too. For descents, pointing a DPV at the bottom and hitting the trigger seems not at all unusual among deep (>200ft/60m) wreck divers.

 

[Rollin Bonz]

Plan the dive....dive the plan. Very sad that a man lost his life. Especially as a result of a 10-20 sec deviation to the plan at the last minute.

Its the details that will always get ya...

Another lesson...

If a 10 to 20 second deviation in timing (arriving late to mark the exit) can easily result in a failure of the plan (diver misses the exit and continues away from the exit line - seemingly a well known and discussed possibility), come up with a better plan (mark the exit with a strobe, or other fixed method).

Seems like any plan that hinged on 2 free divers meeting at a poorly marked (at least for one diver), specific location, at that depth, within a 20 second window, should have raised some questions.

 

[Jiminy]

Another lesson...

If a 10 to 20 second deviation in timing (arriving late to mark the exit) can easily result in a failure of the plan (diver misses the exit and continues away from the exit line - seemingly a well known and discussed possibility), come up with a better plan (mark the exit with a strobe, or other fixed method).

Seems like any plan that hinged on 2 free divers meeting at a poorly marked (at least for one diver), specific location, at that depth, within a 20 second window, should have raised some questions.

I agree its a strange solution I am sure there were no lack of tech divers at the blue hole its a big tech training center. The planners could have easily added a fourth diver (maybe with a DPV) to the safety plan, for the purpose of guiding her to the line if she became disoriented. Its possible this got missed because the divers were only used to operating in a vertical plane 99% of the time .With this dive there was a horizontal swim through and a overhead.

 

[dmaziuk]

Seems like any plan that hinged on 2 free divers meeting at a poorly marked (at least for one diver), specific location, at that depth, within a 20 second window, should have raised some questions.

I read it somewhere that's how Russians explained away their failure to put the man on the moon first: shooting the lander up with no fuel (or breathing gas) reserves hoping to hit the orbiter hundreds of miles away within a 20 second and few kilometers window... has raised some questions.

 

[Rollin Bonz]

I agree its a strange solution I am sure there were no lack of tech divers at the blue hole its a big tech training center. The planners could have easily added a fourth diver (maybe with a DPV) to the safety plan, for the purpose of guiding her to the line if she became disoriented. Its possible this got missed because the divers were only used to operating in a vertical plane 99% of the time .With this dive there was a horizontal swim through and a overhead.
View attachment 501421

I think DPVs would have been very helpful. However, according to the accident report, "Marine scooters are at the moment illegal to import in Egypt. Stephen was still looking for a way to import a couple"

 

[BlueTrin]

I think DPVs would have been very helpful. However, according to the accident report, "Marine scooters are at the moment illegal to import in Egypt. Stephen was still looking for a way to import a couple"

Is that because they could be harmful to the sea life ?

So if one was produced in Egypt you could use it ? You could import the various components separately maybe as a loophole ?