Near miss at Blue Grotto Sunday

[Islandheart]

Lady was ooa at 80+ ft. This was her 2nd dive of the day, ON A 63 !

Duh... How stupid.

.... panic ensued and two other divers involved, one being her husband.

She and husband surfaced, EMS called and they were transported to hospital.

 

[chillyinCanada]

Do you mean she did the two dives on the same tank of air without refill or do you mean she did both dives on full 63s when an 80 would have supposedly provided her with extra air?

 

[Islandheart]

She made the 2nd dive on the same 63.... Without refill... Understand she went down with 1800

 

[TSandM]

A couple of years ago, Peter gave a talk on gas management to one of our local dive clubs. This particular club was not very receptive at all, and one of the audience members asked, "So why do we need to know all this stuff?" I think if the woman in this incident had had an idea of rock bottom reserves, or SAC rates and consumption at depth, she might have made different decisions.

 

[Islandheart]

I can say that my students were All Ears and Super Detailed the rest of the day....

 

[TONY CHANEY]

Was she under an instructor's care?

 

[Tortuga68]

She made the 2nd dive on the same 63.... Without refill... Understand she went down with 1800

So what would her original pressure have been... around 3000 psi?

*IF* that was the case, doing a second dive wasn't the problem per se

 

[supergaijin]

So what would her original pressure have been... around 3000 psi?

*IF* that was the case, doing a second dive wasn't the problem per se

It's tough to really know without understanding the dive plan. If both dives were similar in depth and time... then that's possibly justified. I somehow doubt she would have had enough gas to be of any help in an emergency though.

 

[Tortuga68]

Well as you say we're speculating but... IF she started with 3000 and started the second with 1800 (as was reported annecdotally), then she used 1200 on the first dive. So assuming the same profile on the second dive/conventional "deepest dive first" planning, she would have had 50% in reserve for the second dive

Obviously that didn't work out for whatever reason, but would seem that the dive plan may have been the problem, not "OMG she didn't refill her little tank between dives!!1!". IJS

 

[grey2112]

Wow - I was just at Blue Grotto on the 11th and would NOT want to get into an OOA there in some parts of it - almost like diving a cave. There was a woman there who had JUST gotten certified (OW) and she was so excited with herself that she and her 15 year old son had just gotten done going all the way to the bottom (95 feet) - I was there doing my Deep Diving training and AOW, after 35 dives, with a very safety-minded instructor with over 15,000 dives under his belt. He just looked at her and shook his head, telling me later that we'll read about that lady some day in the paper.