Hydro Atlantic Incident 9-30-2012

[bilsant]

Deepest condolences on the loss of your friend.

 

[raftingtigger]

He was definitely the most experienced diver that I have ever met, this was a small mixup at the worst possible time. It was so fast his buddies couldn't even help. He was my instructor, and he made it so clear how quickly o2 toxicity can happen and always made it clear to us to analyze analyze analyze because you go from being absolutely fine to full on seizure in seconds. To me it's so ironic because how much he harped on us to be certain of our mixes.

HUGE lesson here for all of us of any experience level. A seemingly small oversight can have tragic consequences - and no one is immune. Here was an experienced and well respected diver who seems to have made a simple oversight with fatal results. It could just have easily been you or me. May his death reinforce his message to all his students - analyze your tanks yourself, and double check everything.

 

[DandyDon]

HUGE lesson here for all of us of any experience level. A seemingly small oversight can have tragic consequences - and no one is immune. Here was an experienced and well respected diver who seems to have made a simple oversight with fatal results. It could just have easily been you or me. May his death reinforce his message to all his students - analyze your tanks yourself, and double check everything.

I test all of my tanks for CO, but haven't been testing my Air tanks for O2. I said I would last trip, but didn't. Took my own analyzer and yellow tap, and should have.

 

[peterbj7]

Perhaps that should also apply to basic air divers, when there's any possibility of non-air tanks being around. I read some time back of a recently qualified holiday diver who picked up and used an unmarked tank of 80% in the uninformed belief that it was air. Luckily there were no unforeseen consequences, as her dive was pretty shallow (though she still greatly exceeded a pO2 of 1.6). Her error only came to light when the pseudo-tech diver whose tank it was tried to find it for the next dive. He hadn't marked it because "he knew where it was on the boat, and no-one else had any right to use it".

 

[scubacouple]

Zaixon I too was a friend of Jeffs and had just talked to him about spearing the Dantor (his recommendation) after I had not speared it in many months. Jeff was a Very solid deep air/nitrox diver with credentials and EXPERIENCE to back it up. I am a spearo with well over 3,000 dives, the majority of them solo spearing and over 30 years doing this. I can tell you before the final reports out this is just a case of a solid divers luck running out like it did with another friend of mine Larry who passed on deep Tennaco (190+fsw) not long ago. Jeff was having some tough times recently as we all go through in life, but he passionately loved diving and gave so much back to the sport. Never dive nitrox without checking your tanks personally and never exceed your MOD! What doesn't bite you one day may kill you the next. If I could say one thing about Jeff for you all to remember, it is, He's a diver any of us would have been lucky to dive with. RIP brother! Prayers to family and other friends! One last thing. If all these years and thousands of dives have taught me anything it's this: It could happen to any one of us at any time. I've lost quite a few friends from tech instructors to spearo legends on down the line. Never think for a second you're immune.

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

Jeff was diving a single.

 

[Capt Jim Wyatt]

My attitude is to check every tank with an analyzer and label it with MOD and place the date and my initials on it. If a dive shop has the ability to fill anything but air then they also have the ability to make a mistake and fill a bottle presumed to be air with something other than air.

At my dive shop in the keys I once had a check valve to fail and my oxygen storage bottles got back filled with air. We did not know it until we analyzed the tanks we thought we had filled with EAN32 and discovered they were EAN27 instead.

Mistakes happen, we all are human, we need to defend against those mistakes by verifying and validating everything.

 

[taucherguy]

My condolences to his friends and family. Sad to see someone like that go this way.
I have a stupid question, since it was apparently a charter (let me know if I am wrong) don't the tanks have to be marked with a s yellow/green sticker for nitrox?

 

[HowardE]

My condolences to his friends and family. Sad to see someone like that go this way.
I have a stupid question, since it was apparently a charter (let me know if I am wrong) don't the tanks have to be marked with a s yellow/green sticker for nitrox?

Labeling tanks is a courtesy and not really a requirement.

It is a divers responsibility to know what is in their tanks. You should always verify analysis and label your own tanks.

 

[taucherguy]

Agreed. How about this, non Nitrox divers don't even know what Nitrox is. So when you are on a boat and have 2 different sets of tanks and don't know which is which, how does a non Nitrox diver know it? A non Nitrox diver never learned to test his gas. It could have been anybody that was on the boat and thinking that he took a regular scuba tank. When I took my Nitrox cert, PADI was still of the opinion Nitrox was the devil.

 

[HowardE]

Agreed. How about this, non Nitrox divers don't even know what Nitrox is. So when you are on a boat and have 2 different sets of tanks and don't know which is which, how does a non Nitrox diver know it? A non Nitrox diver never learned to test his gas. It could have been anybody that was on the boat and thinking that he took a regular scuba tank. When I took my Nitrox cert, PADI was still of the opinion Nitrox was the devil.

Your tank should be labeled with the mixture (Oxygen% and or Oxygen/Helium %), MOD, date, and your initials. If someone else grabbed my tank, I'd say, "hey... that's my tank"