clownfishsydney
Contributor
Many rebreather divers, at least in Australia, seem to prefer to dive solo, especially when diving deep (I do not consider 35 m to be deep).
Missing Diver in Cape Town, South Africa
- Thread starter WendyCayman
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There were seven divers in the group, three on rebreathers and four on open circuit, according to this article.
The diver may well have been qualified for what he was doing and things just went wrong in a cascade - I'm reluctant to speculate. I hope some further information is provided, but not holding my breath.
The diver may well have been qualified for what he was doing and things just went wrong in a cascade - I'm reluctant to speculate. I hope some further information is provided, but not holding my breath.
DevonDiver
N/A
One common factor in many wreck fatalities is that the decreased can often be found in unexpected areas of the wreck. This is due to lost visibility, coupled with no guideline (or lost guideline and no protocol to safely find it again) - so the diver conducts a 'blind search' expecting to find the exit. Disorientated, in low/zero visibility they often lose direction and mistakenly work themselves deeper into the wreck.
A few years ago there was a similar fatality in Thailand, albeit on a deeper wreck. The diver entered solo without guideline. It took several years before his body was discovered (despite frequent diving on that wreck). I was on the boat and on the wreck that day. The long time to discovery was because of the factors outlined above. Where he was found was horrendous - a very confined area, deep within the wreck, that nobody sane would have ever gone to. There was then a considerably delay recovering his body - the risk so great that the job was deferred to commercial, surface supplied, divers.
Anyone who has enjoyed 'proper' wreck penetration training, and run protocols with a blacked-mask looking for lost guideline, will testify to the honesty of this.
Personally, I'm less concerned about the solo element than by his overall preparedness for safe wreck penetration diving.
A single cylinder gave him very few options - either a regulator failure, an unexpected delay or loss of the exit - could easily have killed him.
Recovery divers searched the entire vessel in order to find him. That seems like a hint to me that the diver hadn't laid a continuous guideline from open-water. If he had, it should have helped direct/narrow down a rescue/search/recovery. Chances are, if he had laid a guideline, the rescue/recovery wouldn't even have been needed in the first place.
No guideline to open water is cardinal error for wreck diving - it's a principle even taught on the most basic PADI Wreck Diver course, so no excuses.
xyrandomyx
Contributor
I'm not sure if any of the articles (which are probably all inaccurate to varying degrees anyway) said he only had a single cylinder? I only saw one stating he was on open circuit, not a rebreather like several others on the boat.
tonylindeque
New
The Diver was found in the engine room. This is a very tight space deep in the wreck that receives no ambient light and is very silted. The reason for what is deemed by some as a ''what took so long'' is that safe wreck penetration requires meticulous planning, lots of time, detailed drawings and a host of other factors none of which were readily available. There are also two other possible locations where penetration is possible. Unless the Dive Operator release some info it is impossible to know what happened. I do believe the recovery was carried out exceptionally quickly given to location of the diver, the seemingly absent lines and poor visibility often found at that site.
Wreck Penetration requires a whole different set of rules, often overlooked by someone wanting to ''just have a quick look inside."' The operator involved are a bunch of tech savvy and experienced divers and it is unlikely they did not have a plan. Often its a series of small little errors that end harshly.
Sadly the Rockeater joins the PMB, the Mouri and the Goodhope wrecks in taking a life.
Wreck Penetration requires a whole different set of rules, often overlooked by someone wanting to ''just have a quick look inside."' The operator involved are a bunch of tech savvy and experienced divers and it is unlikely they did not have a plan. Often its a series of small little errors that end harshly.
Sadly the Rockeater joins the PMB, the Mouri and the Goodhope wrecks in taking a life.
drcolyn
Contributor
Hi all Cape Town divers
I only learned of the incident today from Grant at Blueflash.
Firstly - my deepest condolences – scuba diving was never meant to rob family or a friend.
Secondly - Thanks to those of you that try to piece together the facts about what happened.
It is too late now for the “what SHOULD have been” but we can still honor the sacrifice of a fellow diver’s life by saving others. Cape Town wreck sites feature almost every week in the planning of some dive operator so the value of regular communication about what went wrong can never be overstated. We are constantly reminded to have those dastardly MPA permits on the boat so why not add the does and don’ts of wreck penetration to the check list.
Although open communication of what went wrong may sound a simple task the fear of law suits has proven otherwise to me.
Being a qualified compressor operator myself I was horrified by the explosion at Global gasses in Cape Town on 2013_02_14 which took two lives and maimed two others. I tried my best to follow the investigation but it became clear where this one was going when the attorney for Global Gases said “This is a global company that hasn't had one incident in 20 years of operations so it's very unusual.”
That incident seems forgotten in the Cape Town dive community already.
The fact that it was a commercial diving operation and that they were filling oxygen and helium cylinders does not automatically exclude us recreational divers – that explosion rendered a warehouse sized building structurally unsafe so figure out what would have happened if you were standing inside your local dive shop waiting for a Nitrox fill.
Let's dive safely
David
I only learned of the incident today from Grant at Blueflash.
Firstly - my deepest condolences – scuba diving was never meant to rob family or a friend.
Secondly - Thanks to those of you that try to piece together the facts about what happened.
It is too late now for the “what SHOULD have been” but we can still honor the sacrifice of a fellow diver’s life by saving others. Cape Town wreck sites feature almost every week in the planning of some dive operator so the value of regular communication about what went wrong can never be overstated. We are constantly reminded to have those dastardly MPA permits on the boat so why not add the does and don’ts of wreck penetration to the check list.
Although open communication of what went wrong may sound a simple task the fear of law suits has proven otherwise to me.
Being a qualified compressor operator myself I was horrified by the explosion at Global gasses in Cape Town on 2013_02_14 which took two lives and maimed two others. I tried my best to follow the investigation but it became clear where this one was going when the attorney for Global Gases said “This is a global company that hasn't had one incident in 20 years of operations so it's very unusual.”
That incident seems forgotten in the Cape Town dive community already.
The fact that it was a commercial diving operation and that they were filling oxygen and helium cylinders does not automatically exclude us recreational divers – that explosion rendered a warehouse sized building structurally unsafe so figure out what would have happened if you were standing inside your local dive shop waiting for a Nitrox fill.
Let's dive safely
David
MalibuJerry
Contributor
This is not necessarily so. It definitely is if you don't know how to navigate the wreck, but there are times when a deep knowledge of the wreck and how to navigate to the exit obviate the need for a reel. For example, in penetrating a submarine, if your entry is on the port side and you head towards the bow with the port wall on your left there is no need for a reel. In a silt out you simply put the port side on your right and head back out. In the tight quarters of a submarine a reel can present an entanglement hazard and navigation is not difficult.
Otherwise i agree with the post. redundant systems are a must in overhead environments.
DevonDiver
N/A
Please reference where that is taught. Any course, any agency... that says you don't necessarily need a guideline from open water.
Shek Exley wrote a set of principles for overhead environment called 'A Blueprint for Survival'. They were based on accident analysis - the trends behind diver deaths.. They apply equally to wreck as they do to cave. In that publication, Shek famously listed 6 factors which, when broken, contributed to virtually every overhead environment accident. Read them HERE The first, and foremost factor is; "Failure to use a continuous guideline".
What you're talking about is called 'progressive penetration'. Slow, multiple excursions into an overhead, studying the layout in detail, progressively moving deeper into the wreck on each subsequent dive. It's a pretty 'old school' way of thinking... especially so as it ignores the mountain of accident analysis from people like Shek, the dive agencies, cave organizations etc etc...
It's a flawed concept. It fails people regularly. Isn't this thread evidence enough of that? Or any one of the hundreds of similar threads here in the A&I forum?
This is fantasy. You know that right?
I teach technical wreck diving for a living. I use blacked-out mask to simulate zero viz for students, so I get to see people operating underwater with no viz all the time. Nobody graduates that training with the fantasy that 'blind searching' is a sufficiently reliable means to exit an overhead environment. It takes me 5 minutes to educate that reality on a course. But I am aware that no amount of words on a forum is going to convince anyone differently, if they are determined not to see sense.
The scenario you've outlined is a fantasy. It's based on hypothetical assumptions and a lack of experience. The same sort of uncorrected assumptions that the deceased of this thread probably had in abundance. The same assumptions that the next wreck fatality will also be sticking to...
Too much hyperbole: There are exceptions to the rule, as suggested for experienced divers with hyper accurate knowledge of the wreck, but no amount of argument will overcome your agency dogma.
We don't know why this diver ended up where he did. He may have known exactly how to get out, but was interrupted by his fate before he could do it.
drcolyn
Contributor
I agree with Abdullah
Is it fair to this diver to have these discussions when he cannot answer for his decisions?
Even the vastly experienced Shek Exley did not die of old age - When you practice risky diving maneuvers the chances of a mishap increase no matter what you do.
No amount of conjecture until the official report is released OR arguing about correct protocol will return this diver to his family.
Shouldn’t we rather concentrate on getting the facts and then make sure that every diver on a boat going to a wreck location is constantly reminded (regardless of his experience) of the dangers and consequences of wreck penetration.
In that way this diver’s tragic loss will serve a purpose.
As Nuno Gomez said - there are many old divers and many brave divers but not many old brave divers.
Let this accident be a reminder to us to help the brave divers get old as well.
Is it fair to this diver to have these discussions when he cannot answer for his decisions?
Even the vastly experienced Shek Exley did not die of old age - When you practice risky diving maneuvers the chances of a mishap increase no matter what you do.
No amount of conjecture until the official report is released OR arguing about correct protocol will return this diver to his family.
Shouldn’t we rather concentrate on getting the facts and then make sure that every diver on a boat going to a wreck location is constantly reminded (regardless of his experience) of the dangers and consequences of wreck penetration.
In that way this diver’s tragic loss will serve a purpose.
As Nuno Gomez said - there are many old divers and many brave divers but not many old brave divers.
Let this accident be a reminder to us to help the brave divers get old as well.
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