Lost diver found almost a year later

[John_B]

What ever actually caused his death it is still a very sad event and now that his remains have been recovered his family has closure to the case! My sympathy goes out to the family!
I really do not think that this is the correct place for negative coments as there is a chance that some members of his family might be looking in ad what they do not need to here is a lot of if's and but's from other people who do not know the full circumstances!
Please give it a break for the families sake!

Absolutely not!

Please read the special rules that apply to this forum:

The purpose of this forum is the promotion of safe diving through the examination and discussion of accidents and incidents; to find lessons we can apply to our own diving.
Accidents, and incidents that could easily have become accidents, can often be used to illustrate actions that lead to injury or death, and their discussion is essential to building lessons learned from which improved safety can flow.

There is a separate Passings forum where memorials, condolences, etc. can be expressed.

 

[Graeme Tolton]

Alright, perhaps a better way to phrase this is... When someone is lost, whether it be under water, in the woods, in outer space, the rescue is turned into a recovery when the victim's vital supplies are expected to be diminished. These supplies can be breathing gas, food, water, body heat, based on elements and clothing worn, etc.

That's not always correct. There are quite a few searches carried out where we know with reasonable certainty we are looking for bodies and not live people. A missing small aircraft is a good and rather common example of this, especially in the western US. We still risk our butts and the Civil Air Patrol loses someone about every other year in a search for a missing plane.

Another good example is the Alzheimer's patient who wonders away from home during the winter and is missing for two to three days. We continue the search even though the probability of survival is so low that it is a recovery operation beyond the first twelve hours. I use this second example because the last of several searches I took part in, was looking for the grandmother of a friend of mine.



I did not know the circumstances of his fatal dive. My assumption was that it was a normal wreck dive gone wrong. If that was the case and I was charged with leading the recovery, I would have advocated for the use of an ROV if one were available and the family was willing to pay for it. If he was really deep, then whomever went down to recover him needs to have his head examined.

Sheck Exley was one of the pioneers of cave diving. He literally wrote the book on it. 2 of them. Yes, the logical thing to do to recover a body at 879 ft deep in a cave would be to use a ROV, however, many of the close friends and family of Sheck were divers who attempted such dives.

I can only speak of two cases where the water was >100 feet deep that I have been involved with. Both involved the same flooded quarry (which is now surrounded by a very tall fence and anyone caught on the property will go to jail) that is approximately 120' deep in the middle and in both cases the bodies were recovered several weeks after they went missing when they began to float.

Technically what you were told could be correct, but then again it is more likely that those bodies at greater depth tend to decompose at a slow enough rate (due to colder temperatures at depth) that they don't form enough gas at any given time to begin to float. Well, let me rephrase that.....at least not all the way to the surface...I've encountered one that was "hovering" a few feet off the bottom of a lake. That's the crap that haunts me to this day.

As for the rupturing of the body cavities, I can't say that is actually due to the gas pressure building up or changing as the body ascends. In the area was did dive recoveries in, we have a major problem with snapping turtles doing a considerable amount of damage to bodies that were down for any length of time so I would assume other areas would have a similar problem with anthrophagia which could explain the lack of floaters.

 

[ZenDiver.3D]

Hard to imagine what was left to find after all that time out there.

Sympathies go out to his family.

The most important thing for his family. Tangible closure. Terrible, yet a relief.

 

[gcbryan]

(off topic)

 

[marinediva]

Talking about planes, I can see a hijacking....
Start your own post guys so you can compare your personals....

 

[Code Monkey]

I've never understood why people are so obsessed with getting back a dead body.

It's hard to know until you're there. My mom died several years back. She didn't want a funeral so we didn't have one; I never understood the big deal so I didn't object.

Here's the rub, though. Even though I was with her body after she died, there was a sense of closure I never got without the focal point for catharsis. The tension lingered for years.

Now I get it and I can certainly understand the need to get the body back.

 

[Ann Marie]

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A ScubaBoard Staff Message...

I'd like to remind everyone that there are some very specific rules in regards to this forum, which can be found here. All posts that were not following these rules or the general Terms of Service from ScubaBoard have been removed.

While I was reading through the mud slinging, I noticed that there was some good discussion going on. I would be more than happy to move those post into a more appropriate forum if it would like to be continued and if that discussion can be kept civil.

I'd rather not have to ban members from this forum for continuing to make posts that violate this forums tighter rules. Thanks for understanding and please dive safe.

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[CosmoKramerOfTheDeep]

Murphy and Graeme

I have to say as a recently certified diver I find it rather disconcerting that any "resue" or "recovery" attempt would be done with an assumption of the victims status. Especially in the cave scenario, not so much a wreck one, but even if more time had passed than one would reasonably expect the victim to have been able to stay alive, would it not still make sense to proceed with the recovery with means for it to turn into a rescue? I know it's a wild proposal and I seriously doubt there being a reported instance along these lines, but I'd be pretty upset if I had gotten lost in a cave but somehow managed to find an air pocket or other means of keeping alive (what if someone dropped a couple pony bottles or something, I know it's an outlandish stretch) and a recovery diver made it to me, only to be prepared for a dead body and be like "wow man, we never expected you to be alive . . . hold on while we go get some air for you."

I'm not saying that it is wrong to make the assumption, I'm aware that common sense and precident are legitmate ways of drawing educated conclusions . . . however wouldn't it be best to be prepared to be bringing up a live body every time, even if the chances are slim to none?