Instructor bent after running out of air at 40m

[CT-Rich]

At 21 you do some pretty dumb sh*t. This guy ended up in a wheel chair for life doing something REALLY stupid. He may have learned something, maybe he didn’t. But he is still diving and teaching to other handicapped divers. I think that counts as a social good.. how many here are willing to own up to the dumbest thing they ever did to a reporter that came to write about the positivething he is doing now.

I’ll be honest I would respect the honest “I did something stupid” explanation more than what he said. But he gets to live with it every day. He may actually believe the version he gave, not good, but hey. He may just told the sanitized version rather than peeling off his skin in public (can you blame him?). The reporter was sloppy, but this was a fluff piece about a guy who is trying to do something positive.

He probably lied so he wouldn’t have everyone on some message board dissecting what was probably the worst day of his life. Imagine doing a bounce dive alone to 50 or 100 m and realizing you are out of gas and you might be dead in a couple minutes. Then team years later a group people online talk at length how stupid you were...

 

[rongoodman]

Wasn't there a similar incident in Cozumel a few years back, I think resulting in serious injuries and/or a fatality?

 

[mainedvr]

And if he is referring to buddy breathing that would mean they didn't have octos?

This story stinks. How, after two guys are OOG, did you only ascend 5 meters before the other two ran out? He made it sound like the first two guys blew through their gas way to fast, which would leave me to believe the other two had enough gas. I mean if I were somehow in their situation we're all going straight up to our safety stop depth pretty quick, like 60 ft. per minute quick and then reevaluating our gas supply. I can only assume they were narked and their "inexperience" left them hanging around at 40-35 meters way too long.

For sure, even if they were down to 20 cubic feet in the tank and going through 4 cubic feet a minute as they started a 60 fpm ascent or so they should be able to get to their safety stop and even stay there till they are on the last few sips of air and hit the surface from 15ft. They may not get a full stop but should have turned out different the story just does not ring. But shame about the injuries.

 

[Jack Hammer]

Wasn't there a similar incident in Cozumel a few years back, I think resulting in serious injuries and/or a fatality?

It was mentioned upthread

 

[Jay]

IThe article isn’t really about a dive accident. It’s about the disability and recovery, so I would expect it to gloss over how the DCI hit came about. I bet the full BSAC report from 2009 has a much more detailed description of the accident.

Edit: the reports available on the BSAC website only go back to 2012.

Additionally the audio recording sounds to be repeatedly edited. It could simply be deletion of the silence, or what the BBC thought wasn't too relevant.

Anyone close to the BSAC archives to view a hardcopy?

 

[Edward3c]

Additionally the audio recording sounds to be repeatedly edited. It could simply be deletion of the silence, or what the BBC thought wasn't too relevant.

Anyone close to the BSAC archives to view a hardcopy?

As they were not BSAC members and the dive was outside the U.K. it wouldn’t be included in the the report.

 

[KenGordon]

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..

But actually some people, like me, disagree about whether the story rings true.

People make mistakes of jusdgement and technique and they lead to accidents. What happened here is not as unlikely a second a lot of people make out. Go deeper than usual, plan on the basis of having done 30 every day for months and had a lot of gas left, got to 40 and get narced, breath faster due to apprehension and fail to check often enough.

Clearly there is a filter on competence, those involved in accidents due to poor planning are likely to be worse than average at planning. Replace planning with any type of mistake.

What is wrong with the explanation that 40m on a single is a mistake for a bunch of kids?

Given you don’t know the profile, their SACs or any detail of the site it is impossible to judge. Even a simple bounce to 40 is a risky thing.

 

[EireDiver606]

I personally don’t think you should go past 30m on a single tank especially Ireland / UK cold water diving with no vis

 

[J-Vo]

A Response to BBC Article "The Dive That Crushed My Spine" - Art of Scuba Diving

Quote from this article:
"Complete ********. No diver plans a dive around his projected air consumption rate."

This is literally how I plan nearly every dive to the depths being discussed.

That said, I bet I could go to my LBS and not a single "experienced instructor" could tell me how to plan gas consumption properly.

 

[doctormike]

A Response to BBC Article "The Dive That Crushed My Spine" - Art of Scuba Diving

Quote from this article:
"Complete ********. No diver plans a dive around his projected air consumption rate."

This is literally how I plan nearly every dive to the depths being discussed.

Poorly worded, I agree. Should have said “no diver executes his dive based on his projected air consumption rate”. In other words, no matter what your plan, you have to watch your SPG and ascend based on that.