Instructor bent after running out of air at 40m

[Lorenzoid]

Okay, I'll stop asking. My question is not what "makes sense" to us but what is the standard that applies to journalists. This is the BBC, so I assume the journalist follows some standard. If this piece were considered technical/science, then maybe it would get an independent review. Maybe the editor didn't see a need for independent review because it was considered a human interest piece, and the underlying technical aspects didn't need to be questioned?

John beat me to it.

 

[Diver0001]

Well that's easy to say, but is that the standard? Are journalists who base a story on what they are told in an interview by supposed professionals who experienced the event first-hand expected to call someone else in the profession and have them give their opinion of the interview? I ask because, never having studied journalism, I do not know.

It would only be true if there were no reason whatsoever to question the single source you had. In this case, the divers' story sounds like something out of a James Bond movie and that should have rung a 20 tonne alarm bell with even the least inexperienced journalist.

R..

 

[EireDiver606]

I was thinking maybe this could happen in 1959, but then the article says 2009.

Inconceivable.

Important point though which my tech instructor explained really well. 40-30m has next to no effect on you compared to 10-surface. In any low air situation (which you shouldn't have if you plan properly!), you want to be getting up to 9m as fast as allowable and then as slow as possible to the surface.

That’s very Haldanian.

 

[Diver0001]

I think it is a combination of the reporter being lazy along with the desire to write an inspiring story about this guy who can't be discouraged by this terrible curve ball that life has pitched him.

The curve ball really even wasn't getting bent. The curve ball was having to swallow THAT much ego to let other people carry you up a mountain. I would be far too humiliated after being bent for no good reason to even consider asking them to do that. A big part of me, in that position, would rather crawl up the mountain like Anakin Skywalker crawling out of a river of lava with my legs chopped off than to let someone carry me.

To me, that's the real story here. It's the story of how a person can get beyond the point of all embarrassment and ask someone to do this. If we're going to write a human experience story then let's peal that onion instead.

R..

 

[Diver0001]

As a former journalism instructor, I can see a problem for the reporter in this story. The details of the dive were not what the story was about. They were just some background information leading up to the real story. The reporter perceived the speaker as an expert with no reason to lie about the details. The details didn't even need to be in the story for its true purpose to be served--the story could just have said the was injured in a diving accident. If the dive itself was the focus of the story, and there was a possibly conflict about what actually happened, then failing to check would be terrible journalism. In this case, I think it is understandable.

I hear what you're saying but I disagree. You have to read through that article all the way to the point where the author says, "About 40,000 people are affected by spinal cord injury in the UK, which is a permanent condition." before the focus changes from scuba diving to the human experience part of the article. To me it looks like the author is fence sitting and isn't sure what she's writing about. It almost reads like a child's story that kind of ends with, "and then he woke up...."

It could have been a decent human experience article but to my way of reading she tried to tack that aspect onto it in order to give it some way to end.... otherwise it would have just been a long article about a diving accident that ended, "and nobody lived happily ever after...."

I surely hope if she was one of your journalism students that you would have been less understanding than you sound here

R..

 

[Bob DBF]

But to answer your question, if they DIDN'T have double gas consumption, their ascent requirement would only be 9 cu ft/350 psi (NOT counting deco). That gives them almost 2000 psi usable gas, which at 5 atmospheres and an RMV of 0.7 (as Bob WAG'ed) is 15 min!! But unfortunately, that leaves you with a 9 minute deco obligation at GF 80/90, and the entire tank is down to zero right around the end of the run.

Old school Navy tables, 15min at 130' with 60fpm ascent is 1 min of deco at 10'. Not saying you could get away with it, but I would work like hell to stay under 60fpm and a better than average chance I could dodge a chamber ride. 20 min at depth was 4min of deco. It's not how things are done now, but I lived by those tables for forty years or so till I bought a computer, this included deco diving.

Do you still believe they only went to 40m?

Just by his quote from the article:
"They were young and wanted to "push the limits", Rich Osborn, then 21, admits. But they were experienced and well-practised at this level."

If they were experienced at 40m and wanted to push their limits, they were either going to do some serious deco at 40m or go for a personal best depth, the latter would be my guess. BTDT.

I believe two, Rich as one, went for their personal best and came back with a planned LOA. The two waiting divers used more air than planned, and by the time the meeting was over (if writing can be believed, so can narcosis) the record setting divers were OOA followed closely by the waiting divers on the ascent.

Had the "safety" divers waited shallower and immediately grabbed their assigned diver and headed up at 60fpm to 60' and 30fpm to 10' and ran the tanks dry they may have pulled it off. Not good planning, but...


Not saying that I haven't done some stupid s**t diving, but so far my dive plans have had enough thought to avoid major injury. When in doubt, I go solo.


Bob

 

[boulderjohn]

"They were young and wanted to "push the limits", Rich Osborn, then 21, admits. But they were experienced and well-practised at this level."

That is actually perhaps the most telling quote in the story. For instructors, diving to 40 meters is not pushing the limits. That depth should constitute a routine dive. If I had read in the introduction that this was a story of young instructors wanting to push the limits, I would be expecting to read about a dive to at least 70 meters.

 

[KeithG]

Old school Navy tables, 15min at 130' with 60fpm ascent is 1 min of deco at 10'. Not saying you could get away with it, but I would work like hell to stay under 60fpm and a better than average chance I could dodge a chamber ride. 20 min at depth was 4min of deco. It's not how things are done now, but I lived by those tables for forty years or so till I bought a computer, this included deco diving.



Just by his quote from the article:
"They were young and wanted to "push the limits", Rich Osborn, then 21, admits. But they were experienced and well-practised at this level."

If they were experienced at 40m and wanted to push their limits, they were either going to do some serious deco at 40m or go for a personal best depth, the latter would be my guess. BTDT.

I believe two, Rich as one, went for their personal best and came back with a planned LOA. The two waiting divers used more air than planned, and by the time the meeting was over (if writing can be believed, so can narcosis) the record setting divers were OOA followed closely by the waiting divers on the ascent.

Had the "safety" divers waited shallower and immediately grabbed their assigned diver and headed up at 60fpm to 60' and 30fpm to 10' and ran the tanks dry they may have pulled it off. Not good planning, but...


Not saying that I haven't done some stupid s**t diving, but so far my dive plans have had enough thought to avoid major injury. When in doubt, I go solo.


Bob

A side note is that the article implies that diving is uncontrollably dangerous.

The 40m depth reminds of the Blue Hole in Belize. Every week dozens of divers of unknown experience do this dive. If diving was as unpredictable as the story implies, then there would be a continous stream of Blue Hole accidents.

 

[scubadada]

So, lets go to 300 ft on air. Takes 5 min to get down to depth. Spend less than a minute at depth, head back up. I have abut 12 minutes of deco, your results may be different. At my usual average RMV of 0.36 cf/min, I only need 40 cf of gas. At twice that, I could not complete the dive with an AL80. It's extremely easy to calculate your own gas requirements. Of course there are other factors. What will be the contribution of narcosis? The max PO2 will be 2.12. I've been to 163 feet, deep enough for me, for now.

 

[Jack Hammer]

I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if they had been doing deep air bounce dives on single al80s to 100m+.