Ft Myers diver dies

[CBulla]

Pulled from - www.NBC-2.com

FORT MYERS — A Fort Myers man died while diving in the Gulf of Mexico on Friday. Several men were spear fishing about 71 miles off Marco Island. According to reports, 23-year-old Carson Young dove into 140 feet of water, but never re-surfaced. His friend went down after him and brought him to the surface, but Young wasn’t breathing. Young was declared dead at the scene. The friend who attempted to rescue him was hospitalized for decompression sickness.

I don't quite know what to say about this. If this is the gentleman I think it is, he is who regularly filled my tanks at my LDS.

Non reported details are that the captain of the vessel and this divers buddy were also diving and spear fishing. The captain and his buddy surfaced, this divers gun had surfaced (fish embolized and went on its merry way to the top). The other 2 divers saw the gun on the surface and bubbles and figured he was on his way up. When the diver did not surface within a few minutes, his buddy went down after him, unable to locate, they dropped a marker and called in USCG for assistance. His buddy did one more dive to locate and found the drown diver.. however he got bent from his efforts. Something else that should be mentioned was this event occured on their 4th repetitive dive.

If more details surface, I'll post them up. If anyone else has details, by all means share..

 

[FredT]

CBulla once bubbled...

If more details surface, I'll post them up. If anyone else has details, by all means share..

Sounds like a bunch of folks screwed the pooch on this one.

http://www.spearboard.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=4477

http://www.spearboard.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=4486

FT

 

[CBulla]

Thanks FredT, much better information than I recieved 2nd hand last night at our local club meeting..

 

[Genesis]

I've read the threads over there, and what stands out is that he had an EMPTY tank when found.

Now it is possible that he had some kind of problem and freeflowed the rest of the gas.

But its far more likely that he ran out of air chasing that last fish, attempted an emergency swimming ascent, and failed to make it (possibly embolizing on the way up.)

There is always another day, and the fish will still be there.

This is a horrible event, but it can happen to any of you - or me. Paying attention and not going beyond safe limits when we dive is very important.

Its very, very easy to rationalize it - I caught myself thinking about it Friday, in fact, as I was videoing a Jewfish, swimming pretty hard to keep up with him and get the video, looked at my gauge, saw 900 psi, and started thinking "I've got another 300 psi before I have to stop."

It was very tempting to follow that little demon in my head, even though I knew that I would be pushing safety limits.

I didn't follow that little demon; instead, I turned the dive and headed for the line, taking the footage that I already had and calling it a dive.

I got back to the surface with >500 psi left, so I really did have the other 300 "to burn". But what if something had gone wrong? A freeflow at 80' can burn off 300 psi in seconds.

It was my third dive of the day, I was loaded with nitrogen, and a safe, slow, ascent profile with deep stops was mandatory (at least in my view!) to do that dive safely. If the water had turned brown at that moment, or I had some kind of gear problem down there......

When I'm spearing, I won't shoot with much under 1000 psi in my tank at depth, even if its an "easy" fish. I won't shoot an AJ or other "fighting fish" with less than about 1/2 of my backgas remaining. I've been tempted before to shoot while on the way back to the line (or even on the way up!) and come up with the fish on the spear rather than fight and bag it at depth, but I've resisted that temptation so far... and now I have an object example defining the reason why its the right call to make.

It only takes one bad shot to kill you. One time you push the limits and find yourself on the wrong side of the line and you're done.

From what I've read this guy was a very experienced diver and spearfisherman. He stepped up to the line and found himself on the wrong side of it. My heart goes out to his family - I hope that all of us learn something from this, as it can happen to any of us if we are less than attentive to where the line of safety is, or rationalize stepping over it - just a bit - in persuit of that perfect photograph, artifact or fish.

Its easy to shoot arrows at the USCG here, but the salient question is whether it would have mattered had they been on-scene as fast as they could have mustered. The answer is, sadly, probably not. By the time Carson was brought to the surface odds are he was already dead and gone, with the rapid ascent and overstay of his original planned time being the coup-de-grace.

Kudos to his friend who put himself at great personal risk, and in fact bent himself, trying to save his friend's life. Condolances to Carson's family.

Really, your only chance in such a situation is if you have a recompression chamber on the boat - which none of us do - and even then, the odds are way, way long if you are brought up not breathing. You've got 4 minutes, roughly, from the time you stop breathing until the final curtain falls, and that ignores the damage done from the rapid "rescue" ascent if you've overstayed your welcome on the bottom in the first place during the event.

A sad day for all...... be careful out there.

 

[CBulla]

I read through the threads there.. posted one up now to.

I can't say that I would shoot holes at the law enforcement, USCG, etc., they all had jobs to perform. Some, due to lack of training because Gulf diving in this area is not very prevelant, probably were a little on the anxious or freaked out side since they were expected to do something and in reality were powerless.

As adults, as divers... we accecpt that our sport comes with certain personal risks to begin with. When you add to it a distraction, or challenge, the risk goes up. Carson died doing something he loved very much... I know this, we chatted shop about it at the shop he worked at. My wife and I will never forget this great young man who we always took a little extra time to chat with when he was around. I wont forget his exitement about the big grouper he took a few weeks back and showing off the picture of it... and pointing it out to my son and wife saying to our son "maybe we'll leave one of these for you to shoot" and our laugh over it. He'll be dearly missed...

 

[AquaDog]

Here's the details so far from media sources...

http://www.naplesnews.com/03/09/bonita/e9722a.htm

I posted this THEN realized I knew this young man from a local Scuba Quest dive shop where he worked. He was a friendly and knowledgable about diving.
Condolences to the family and friends.

 

[mwilding]

nm...

 

[FredT]

1. The USCG has many things on it's priority list besides saving your bum, and saving you may not be on the tp of the list. When diving far offshore be self-sufficient.

2. Team hunting is harder to learn than solo, but is more productive once you get the hang of it, and makes body recovery at least possible in time to resussitate.

3. ANY fish over about 30# can kill you if you shoot it wrong.

4. Given their location it's possible a hebrew mullet or tax collector had something to do with the drowning. I have no data to prove that either way, but being a HM chew toy would greatly increase your gas consumption without leaving obvious marks inside the wetsuit. Others in that area have had problems with "pushy" HM. Carson may have too.

5. Tournament prizes aren't worth your life. Competitive diving tempts one to make mistakes. BTDT

6. They were reportedly diving appropriate nitrox mixes for the dive so we can take that out of the discussion.

I've only met Carson thorugh the net. He sounded like he had a good head on his shoulders. I expect something besides just overstaying his bottom time happened down there. With a hunting partner we'll never know for sure unless the autopsy shows clues to it. OTOH I doubt if the ME is very accustomed to dealing with diving accident victims and knows what to look for.


FT

 

[falcos]

This is tragic and my heart goes out the family.

For us who have taken the Rescue course know that our own safety is paramount when in an emergency.

I know its hard to say what you would do in a real life emergency when the adrenalin starts to flow, but I think that divers should go as far as the Rescue course that is offered just to have some knowledge/know-how that hopefully their mind can automatically revert to it when in situation. I wonder if the buddy knew he was at high risk and just decided to chance it in order to attempt and save a life.

What do you folks think??

 

[Genesis]

not much way around it if you just got out of the water on a deep dive and go back in to search and, if you find, will make the quick ascent necessary to be able to make a difference (if its even possible at that point.)