The JB incident has been a battleground over on Techdiver with a Texas contingent (Jonathan was from Texas) calling Trey a liar for saying that he had seen the ME's preliminary report and suggesting that J had died as the result of diving too soon after an illness. They also claimed that J had been cleared for diving by his doc and that even Trey had cleared him for WKPP diving, something Trey denies.
The fact is that, up until Trey spoke out, the illness theory was exactly what one of J's and my good friends in Texas was saying to me privately, that J probably died as the result of an overpressure injury contributed to by the earlier serious fever that had caused his head to be swollen up dangerously and had nearly killed him.
As usual it turned into a sophomoric name-calling exercise on both sides, something I am glad to see is not likely to take over on this list because of the moderation.
Trey is a guy who has a lot to offer and is undeniably one of the best cave diving team leaders in the world today and an excellent diver himself. He's also a lightening rod, sparing no one in his judgement of tech diving today, a judgement I largely share. However, he can be a real a--hole about the whole thing which, although I understand the WHY, I'm not sure I agree with the methods.
On the other hand there is a collection of old "good old boy" divers from Florida who hate his guts (BTW, there are some very good divers down there) and much of the power structure down there has often failed, IMHO, to properly promote safety, some say to keep a revenue stream going for its instructors and in part as a turf war which I've witnessed close up and which is NOT pretty.
The old cave organizations collected a database some years back which has been collated and studied by a very good organization called the IUCRR but which inexplicably has refused to make the database of cave diving deaths available to the cave diving public, even when divers have volunteered to do all of the work rewriting all of them to remove all traces of the identities and then publish the result under the IUCRR's strict guidelines. They made a promise to do so, but never allowed access to the actual database materials so the job could be done and so the promise was never fulfilled.
There is some progress however, as the webmaster has recently started to post some of these AA-style reports online, but the vast treasure-trove of accidents going back over a decade remains their proprietary info and they dribble out stats and info as they see fit. What a tool for safe cave diving that could be!
Sheck Exley thought it so important that many years ago he wrote a book entitled A BLUEPRINT FOR SURVIVAL. Each chapter starting with an accident report that he then dissected to demonstrate some bad diving practice that lead to a death or incident and from which we all learned. I don't know any good cave diver that doesn't cite that book as being formative. You can see the stats and some reports at www.IUCRR.com. I hope that with time they will see the light and release this critical safety information to the real owners of the data: all active, living cave divers. The dead no longer need it.
With friends in both camps, I respect divers from both "sides" of the issue. I tend to believe that George (Trey) has it about right on the safety and configuration score, while he's not someone I'd see to fine-tune my manners, although in person he's nothing like the online persona. Well, mostly.
The truth may or may not come out about Jonathan. There have been some cave deaths that I have heard have had the ME reports suppressed to protect the reputation of the dead. I think that they're dead and we need to protect the living and tell the truth, so it's ironic to me that Trey is being criticized for lying in this matter. Only time will tell what the truth really is . . . and maybe not then.
But petty infighting isn't the answer, a rational and honest dialogue is the way out of this mess.
Dive Safe,
JoeL
The fact is that, up until Trey spoke out, the illness theory was exactly what one of J's and my good friends in Texas was saying to me privately, that J probably died as the result of an overpressure injury contributed to by the earlier serious fever that had caused his head to be swollen up dangerously and had nearly killed him.
As usual it turned into a sophomoric name-calling exercise on both sides, something I am glad to see is not likely to take over on this list because of the moderation.
Trey is a guy who has a lot to offer and is undeniably one of the best cave diving team leaders in the world today and an excellent diver himself. He's also a lightening rod, sparing no one in his judgement of tech diving today, a judgement I largely share. However, he can be a real a--hole about the whole thing which, although I understand the WHY, I'm not sure I agree with the methods.
On the other hand there is a collection of old "good old boy" divers from Florida who hate his guts (BTW, there are some very good divers down there) and much of the power structure down there has often failed, IMHO, to properly promote safety, some say to keep a revenue stream going for its instructors and in part as a turf war which I've witnessed close up and which is NOT pretty.
The old cave organizations collected a database some years back which has been collated and studied by a very good organization called the IUCRR but which inexplicably has refused to make the database of cave diving deaths available to the cave diving public, even when divers have volunteered to do all of the work rewriting all of them to remove all traces of the identities and then publish the result under the IUCRR's strict guidelines. They made a promise to do so, but never allowed access to the actual database materials so the job could be done and so the promise was never fulfilled.
There is some progress however, as the webmaster has recently started to post some of these AA-style reports online, but the vast treasure-trove of accidents going back over a decade remains their proprietary info and they dribble out stats and info as they see fit. What a tool for safe cave diving that could be!
Sheck Exley thought it so important that many years ago he wrote a book entitled A BLUEPRINT FOR SURVIVAL. Each chapter starting with an accident report that he then dissected to demonstrate some bad diving practice that lead to a death or incident and from which we all learned. I don't know any good cave diver that doesn't cite that book as being formative. You can see the stats and some reports at www.IUCRR.com. I hope that with time they will see the light and release this critical safety information to the real owners of the data: all active, living cave divers. The dead no longer need it.
With friends in both camps, I respect divers from both "sides" of the issue. I tend to believe that George (Trey) has it about right on the safety and configuration score, while he's not someone I'd see to fine-tune my manners, although in person he's nothing like the online persona. Well, mostly.
The truth may or may not come out about Jonathan. There have been some cave deaths that I have heard have had the ME reports suppressed to protect the reputation of the dead. I think that they're dead and we need to protect the living and tell the truth, so it's ironic to me that Trey is being criticized for lying in this matter. Only time will tell what the truth really is . . . and maybe not then.
But petty infighting isn't the answer, a rational and honest dialogue is the way out of this mess.
Dive Safe,
JoeL
