Instructor bent after running out of air at 40m

[soggybadger]

How long do you get at 40m on an al80? Please excuse my ignorance as I only dive steels. Thanks.

 

[Fibonacci]

Unbelievable... all FOUR 'Instructors' OOA at 30m?
Very sad to see one guy end up as a paraplegic... but I'm struggling with this a bit:

The divers used hand signals and underwater slates and pencils to write notes and arranged to share the remaining two tanks of air "breath for breath" as they ascended to the surface.​

So unless this is just sloppy journalism, at 40m they have a 'conversation' then start ascending, a tank is shared between two divers (one OOA), one on primary and surely one on octo rather than swapping regs "breath for breath"?

Then the two divers sharing air both become OOA and do a free ascent from 30m

 

[MaxBottomtime]

It's possible the writer was referring to buddy breathing. There is no excuse for running out of air. Four "instructors" running out is inconceivable.

 

[Aviyes]

Whole bunch of remarks in that article make it sound like all 4 of them were complete morons and forgot how to dive. Hopefully, its just a terrible journalist relating the story.

 

[flyboy08]

Dumb and dumber squared!



Or......Fake News

 

[Dan G]

I for one am going to suggest that we all resist the obvious temptations to talk about how absolutely inconceivable it is that 4 scuba instructors would all go completely out of air on a routine dive. For me, it is so utterly inconceivable that I would be further tempted to call BS on it all, but with no clear evidence to the contrary, I will assume it is true.

Once we assume that it is indeed true, what more is there to say?

As I read the article, I too, struggled to believe that it is 100% accurate. Is it possible the divers edited their experience to the reporter so as to omit details that would be even more condemning of what occurred?

 

[Scared Silly]

How long do you get at 40m on an al80? Please excuse my ignorance as I only dive steels. Thanks.

80cuft with a SAC of .5cf/m so at 5 atm one is using 2.5 cf/m so at best 30 minutes. A SAC of .75cf/m would be 20 minutes.

Regarding saying to them they screwed the pooch, I would not worry about it. I have a friend who screwed up (not diving) he is not around to tell him he screwed up. That is hard.

As for going to hell. I got over that long ago. I know I am on the road to perdition (see my location) most of my friends are too. So I am in good company.

 

[Gutbucket]

Transcript of the interview here - Transcript: Do We Drown or Rocket to the Surface?

 

[Fibonacci]

Wait, there's more

Twelve months after the accident he returned to scuba diving and now teaches other disabled divers.
​

What could possibly go wrong?

 

[oceancurrent]

The scuba dive that crushed my spine

This story makes so little sense! According to BBC 4 instructors executed a "meticulously planned" dive to 40m. Halfway through the dive two of them run out of gas to their great surprise. They share air with the other two who who then also ran out of air. They executed an emergency swimming ascent which leaves one of the instructors bent and permanently in a wheelchair. According to the article, what happened was "a disparity between what was planned in terms of breathing rates and what actually happened on the dive" and was "unpredictable".

Ok, I feel sorry for the kid that became disabled because of this event. However, I just don't get it how does a group of "experienced" instructors casually run out of gas mid-dive and call it "surprising" "unpredictable" and so forth? How about gas monitoring during the dive? How do people who dive like this get to teach others how to dive?! What sort of absurd story is this?