Hydro Atlantic Incident 9-30-2012

[deepstops]

---------- Post Merged at 12:18 AM ---------- Previous Post was at 12:12 AM ----------

Jeff was diving a single.

This is not accurate according those who I believe were on the trip.

 

[scubacouple]

We were diving doubles his were lp steel 72s. Charter was for 1 dive. Just to clear some things up..... That is about all I can say at this point

Already i have been misinformed. I heard he was diving a single LP and quite a few people told me it was filled with 36... I'm going to wait for verified facts. Jeff was a friend and he was a good diver. What a tragic accident.

 

[Chatterton]

My sincerest sympathies to the diver's friends and family.

It is understandable that you are upset, however at this time without all the facts in, it appears that this accident was due to diver error. It was not bad sensors, or a problem at a dive shop, or an inexperienced OW diver, but diver error on a technical dive. It appears, at least initially, that the diver did not follow the most basic diving industry safety standards.

If you personally feel the need for voting logic sensors, and multiple gas analysis, or anything else in order to provide you with confidence in the mix you are breathing, then by all means that is what you should do. However, if you want me to do that, or if you want to change existing industry safety standards, then you are proposing a solution to solve a problem that simply does not exist. More rules is not the answer, to not following the rules. Sorry.

Again, my sympathies to the diver's family.

Sincerely

JC

I see people here from all sides of diving each getting a different message out of this fatality. It’s a very tragic fatality, and gas issues can be very scary—they are impossible to test for without specialized equipment, and divers as a whole tend to be very trusting of their dive shop. It’s scary to think that they could make a mistake, and we don’t want to believe that we can make a mistake.

I don’t think communal tank use is very common, I’m used to seeing divers get assigned to a tank(s). Gas testing is not covered in OW classes, so I guess OW only divers are trusting the shop or dive master to provide them the proper mixture.

I’ve also never seen someone take a tank from someone else, especially if assigned to a set of tanks. The nitrox label probably wouldn’t help: if they don’t know what it is, it’s easy to assume it’s just the name of a shop, or a cool looking sticker.

You can limit the use of your technical tanks by using DIN valves in the primarily yoke world, and by leaving stage kits on the tanks. Additionally, putting a label with your name over the mouth of the valve might help them to realize they are grabbing the wrong tank. The example given on a 80% mix should have the MOD marked (deco tanks should always have the MOD, since that mixture is less likely to change than a stage) and it should have had a stage strap, making it difficult for someone to grab accidentally.

As far as mixups somewhere in the system that accidentally provide someone with a tank with the wrong mixture…the only solution is to analyze your tanks.

When it comes to the nitrox sticker, it is not a solution at all. Air is a nitrox mixture. Probably the better term for what we call “nitrox” is “enriched air nitrox,” which designates that you are talking about something other than air.

The nitrox sticker doesn’t give you any information at all. It’s like putting a sign that just says “hill” on a ski slope. The skier still has to analyze the hill to determine if it’s safe to ski down, just like a diver still has to analyze. Since there is the potential for personnel errors or mechanical breakdowns to put an EAN mixture into an unmarked tank, even the unmarked tanks should be analyzed—just because there isn’t a sign saying the slope is a “black diamond” doesn’t mean it’s the bunny slope. However, the people who are supposed to “stay on the bunny slope” aren’t taught how to analyze a hill. Of course, it’s not very often that a non-nitrox trained OW diver grabs a nitrox mixture and dies, and that’s not what happened here, either.

Even labeling with a percentage of oxygen is not the complete solution. That label means nothing as soon as the tank is out of your sight, and sometimes sooner! Think of it like a “for sale” sign on a house. Could it be that the realtor put the sign up in front of the wrong house? And what if the house sells and the person hasn’t taken the sign down yet, is he or she going to be happy finding strangers peeking into windows to see if they’d like to make an offer?

The best solution for tank labeling is a label that goes over the valve opening, so that any usage of the tank means the label is removed and destroyed. However, since the opportunity still exists for the “sign to be put in front of the wrong house” it is still not a complete solution.

The only solution that really works is to analyze before each dive. Even then, you could have a faulty analyzer, and setting up a group of multiple cells that use voting logic is expensive.

Many divers don’t dive that often. If they owned an analyze, the cells might die between each trip, and most divers don’t want the hassle of buying a limited-life product before every dive trip. Even if they did, they could easily forget to order the cell until it’s too late.

The better solution is analyzers on the boat. But you’ll have plenty of people who don’t know how to use it, and it could take a significant amount of time to get all the tanks analyzed between each dive. The units will also probably get ruined quickly in the boat environment.

I don’t have any statistics to show how rare this type of death is, but I think that shows how rare this type of death might be. It’s very tragic when it happens, but I can’t recall that many fatalities due to either o2 or CO in breathing gases. While I would love for everyone to analyze before every dive, I’m sure we have plenty of technical divers who don’t analyze, especially for CO.

My o2 cell has been dead for months now, and I have several tanks that aren’t analyzed. After this tragedy, I’m thinking I should probably remedy that before my next dive trip, and I’m sure I’m not the only one. I know in the grand scheme of things, o2 cells aren’t that expensive, but it’s one of those things that is easy to put off when your gas supplier knows you by name and you develop some sort of trust with them. The real lesson here is, don’t trust anyone, not even yourself and your memory—analyze yourself with your own well kept analyzer, and label yourself, in a way that minimizes the risk of someone using your tank or for your label to get outdated.

I know we see people on here posting about designing contraptions for scuba divers for different classes…I think it would be very nice to see a very cheap and reasonably accurate o2 sensor that could be used on the 1st stage or 2nd stage of an existing regulator setup. It would need to be cheap, lets say $10, and last for a while. I don’t think you need an LCD readout, something color coded maybe, or a tri color LED, I don’t know. Something that would tell people something like “this is air,” “this is EAN” and “this is deco.” That would be enough information for someone trained on air to realize the tank is not air and they should not dive it, and for someone trained on deeper diver to realize they were about to breathe a deco mix. Of course, even with something like that, I’m sure people would make mistakes, and it wouldn’t stop CO deaths at all…but I think knowing your PO2 is one advantage that rebreather divers have over OC, and it would be great if there was a simple way for OC divers to know their PO2 or some rough estimate.

 

[Zaixon]

Him and all of us on the boat at the time were under the impression it was air. ALWAYS analyze your tanks if you have ever decided to fill nitrox! It was something small over looked that had terrible results. I am surprised it didnt hit sooner underwater, by the time I had got to him I had done everything I could but it seems that the damage was already done...

Very sorry for your loss.
Was he diving alone?
Your statement seems to indicate that he was convulsing for some time before he was discovered?

We were diving as a group of 3. I was the first to get to him as everything happened

 

[Zaixon]

The funeral most likely this Saturday. I will post information as I get it. There will be a memorial dive in the near future as well.
I will try to post here when I can or you can contact me on fb:
Http://www.facebook.com/zaixon

 

[TSandM]

I am very sorry for your loss, but thank you for posting the information you have. The only positive thing that can come from an accident like this is to make the rest of us take a good, hard look at our own procedures.

 

[JahJahwarrior]

JC,

Of course, the solution is to follow the “industry standard” of check your gas before you jump in the water. Typically, there is no issue with sensors, and checking then should realize any mistakes by the dive shop or unaware diver. However, several posters were/are theorizing if there could have been a mistake made by an unaware diver, by the dive shop, or if the mistake could be prevented with a nitrox sticker.

Not only are more rules not the answer, but some “industry standards” such as the green and yellow nitrox sticker, are not the answer. Using a working analyzer to check your gas every dive is the answer. I’m sure this isn’t the first time this diver hasn’t checked, and I’m sure lots of us have also done a dive where we haven’t check, and even if we check for o2 percentage, most of us don’t check for CO, the other common killer from gas problems. Our breathing gas is the heart of our survival, and we so often don’t pay it even the minimum of attention before diving.

 

[Zaixon]

[h=5]A memorial will be held this Saturday, 10/6, at Kraeer Funeral Home. They are at 1 North State Road 7, Margate. Phone 954/972-7340. The memorial will be from 6 - 8 pm. Please join his family in celebrating Jeff's life, joy and laughter.[/h]once again that you all for the support

 

[TomZ]

A sad loss to our community.

As s 'new' diver returning to the sport after several decades of not diving, I obviously don't have the expertise to propose solutions. I can comment on what is currently happening with beginning divers, as least as far as my own experience goes. In the past year I've taken PADI OW, Nitrox, AOW and Rescue, accumulating 75 dives. Nitrox hazards were not discussed in OW. I took Nitrox within months of OW. My first non-training dives after OW certification were in Cozumel (with a private DM for the first 4 days). Thanks to SB, specifically Dandy Don, I was made aware of CO hazards prior to that trip. I have tested every tank for CO since. After taking the Nitrox class an O2 analyzer was added to my kit. I test for both CO and O2, every tank, EAN or not. If the tank (EAN) is out of my sight, it gets a label, otherwise all cylinders are tested after the reg is in place, via a restrictor on a LP (BCD) line. It takes less than 2 minutes.

The training industry did not provide me with EAN hazard information prior to taking the Nitrox class. The Nitrox class did teach me to test and label when using EAN. Information from the community convinced me to test every tank. None of my formal training involved testing for CO.

I think we can do better.

 

[HowardE]

A sad loss to our community.

As s 'new' diver returning to the sport after several decades of not diving, I obviously don't have the expertise to propose solutions. I can comment on what is currently happening with beginning divers, as least as far as my own experience goes. In the past year I've taken PADI OW, Nitrox, AOW and Rescue, accumulating 75 dives. Nitrox hazards were not discussed in OW. I took Nitrox within months of OW. My first non-training dives after OW certification were in Cozumel (with a private DM for the first 4 days). Thanks to SB, specifically Dandy Don, I was made aware of CO hazards prior to that trip. I have tested every tank for CO since. After taking the Nitrox class an O2 analyzer was added to my kit. I test for both CO and O2, every tank, EAN or not. If the tank (EAN) is out of my sight, it gets a label, otherwise all cylinders are tested after the reg is in place via, a restrictor on a LP (BCD) line. It takes less than 2 minutes.

The training industry did not provide me with EAN hazard information prior to taking the Nitrox class. The Nitrox class did teach me to test and label when using EAN. Information from the community convinced me to test every tank. None of my formal training involved testing for CO.

I think we can do better.

Hi,

I have a problem with your comments.

The industry is not at fault here, we are not at fault... With all due respect to the deceased... There is only one person who could have prevented this accident.

If in fact, the diver did dive with a high O2 content mixture and this was in fact the cause of death... then let's look at some things here.

On this wreck the shallowest point is approximately 135 feet and the deck is at approximately 150 feet.

More rules, regulations, training at the OW level wouldn't have helped here. This is NOT an Open Water diver dive. This is diving beyond recreational limits.

The problem clearly wasn't because the diver didn't have enough training, or didn't know how to recognize a nitrox tank. The problem clearly isn't because basic open water courses don't explain nitrox. The problem isn't testing for CO. The problem is apparently that the diver failed to follow one of the industries existing protocols. At this point, it's not clear which one (since the actual cause of death, and analysis of tanks is unknown), but somewhere in this accident, a diver error occurred. Most likely, the error was totally avoidable, and probably took place on land, and not in the water at all.

The solution here isn't to make more rules, teach more information at the open water level, and get all crazy... The solution here is to follow existing protocol when it comes to analyzing, labeling, verifying, and diving the proper mixture for the appropriate depth.

Again, no disrespect to the diver who died, but if people want to learn from the accident let's be realistic here.