Adobo
Contributor
I agree, she had to be the nicest person on this board. The only person she was ever openly critical of - was herself.
She seemed to make a point of talking about her two biggest challenges: a very pronounced susceptibility to vertigo when presented with no visual reference and a seemingly unusually low tolerance for narcosis, which if I understood her various posts, made her very reluctant to dive more than just 100 feet without the benefit of helium in the mix.
It sounds like more people are FINALLY giving these two issues the consideration they deserve with respect to potential relevance to her fatality.
Many members seem to envision her as a very strong and capable diver. From my perspective, these two issues represent serious weaknesses (or at least vulnerabilities) when functioning in a high current, drift dive situation with no visual references and when drifting in water that she knew would cause her significant narcosis.
I'd like to hear people's thoughts on this but *not* tying back to TSandM as she was not unique in her approach of when to use helium.
DD's claim is that reluctance to dive to depths of greater than 30m/100ft without helium indicates unusually low tolerance for narcosis and therefore represents a weakness in a diver.
I'd like to know people's thoughts on the use of helium to mitigate the effects of narcosis and whether or not this is a "weakness" in a diver. I'd also like to know what alternative would be suggested.