Instructor bent after running out of air at 40m

[doctormike]

Or your entire group actually went well past 40m, as planned, and you didn't want to admit that. (That simple explanation accounts for just about everything in this story.)

 

[Vicko]

Just conjecture but they did a bounce dive to x0 meters, where x is a number higher then 4 for sure. 11L tank lasts a short time at x0 meters, an 11L tank being breathed down by 2 divers in distress lasts a much shorter time.

If they had no idea what they were doing (kind of obvious i guess) they tried to surface slowly, doing deep stops and that led to rocketing from 30 meters...

 

[sunshower]

They were either too incompetent to execute a pretty basic deep dive or they did something insanely stupid. I'm having a hard time coming up with sympathy either way.

Separately, it's an interesting example of how DCS can impact people very differently; four folks dive very similar profiles and two came out with no problems while another will never walk again; tricky stuff.

One other thing, could the agency that certified them consider looking into this and possibly yanking their instructor cert upon learning about it?

 

[runsongas]

This story stinks more than the one guy i roomed with on a liveaboard who didn't shower for a week

 

[Wookie]

They were either too incompetent to execute a pretty basic deep dive or they did something insanely stupid. I'm having a hard time coming up with sympathy either way.

Separately, it's an interesting example of how DCS can impact people very differently; four folks dive very similar profiles and two came out with no problems while another will never walk again; tricky stuff.

One other thing, could the agency that certified them consider looking into this and possibly yanking their instructor cert upon learning about it?

Were they teaching?

 

[Wookie]

This story stinks more than the one guy i roomed with on a liveaboard who didn't shower for a week

I think I know him....

 

[Jack Hammer]

Wow, I think most are way overanalyzing this story. Most of the article really doesn't add up or make sense. It reads more like someone writing an article on a subject they know little about, based upon a story they heard from some person in a bar talking about what happened to a person they met once. I put little credibility on anything in the article other than a guy who is disabled is teaching disabled folks to dive.

 

[runsongas]

Were they teaching?

Do any agencies have a code of conduct that covers diving outside teaching?

 

[scubadada]

Whenever I read a story like this, I do my own gas calculations, to put the story into some kind of perspective. If I did an air dive to 130 feet, right up to my NDL, and then made a normal ascent and safety stop, the total run time would be only 21 minutes. At my average RMV and an AL80, I would surface with about 1900 psi. At twice my usual RMV, I would surface with about 800 psi. Using 28% would only give me 4 minutes more bottom time and reduce my surfacing pressures to 1625 and 250 psi at my usual RMV and twice that, respectfully.

So, if the divers in question dived to 130 feet, they must have had very high RMVs and/or overstayed and went into deco while not monitoring their gas supply. If they dived deeper, who knows what they did? This is a BBC news article and not a scuba accident investigation. I would imagine one, or probably all, of the divers had dive computers. Personally, I'd really like to see what the dive profile actually looked like.

 

[Manneca]

So, I read the story on the BBC. My first reaction was how could that possibly have happened with four experienced (but young) divers. My second was that they must have been a bit narced. They were at 132 feet. Now, I think of myself as a careful diver, but twice I've lost track of my air photographing nudibranchs (the BBC article says that what they were going to see). Once I went back after I got my camera working and didn't realize how much deeper the nudi was than I had been when I checked my air before going back to the nudi. The other time, I just lost track of time and air photographing. So, I can understand how it could happen.