I suspect Zeagle is suggesting that the officer could have used his drysuit for buoyancy prior to going out of air. If his bladder was not holding air and he kept trying to fill it and it was escaping, he could certainly run out of air quickly, like the 17 minutes that it took. It doesn't explain why the rapid gas consumption was not noticed and the dive was not aborted much earlier. Or why the dive began at all.
Here's something that I don't quite get with regard to the gas supply issue...
The two divers surfaced to orient themselves, i.e., locate the navigation target/buoy. In that situation, upon surfacing, isn't it common sense to check one's SPG, communicate remaining gas to a buddy, and then make the determination whether there is enough gas for both parties to re-descend?
I find it
very strange that the diver suddenly went OOA during the re-descent. Something like that should have been caught on the surface, right?
I also found it rather unusual that the buddy reached the bottom
first. This implies that the two divers were
not descending
together.
On a side note, when I first saw/heard the police chief's run-down of what had happened, I got the impression that the victim may not have been
truly OOA at the surface. The thought occurred to me that perhaps the victim was hyperventilating (due to the panic response) or he was suffering from a medical condition with respiratory symptoms...and it just
felt like he was OOA. In any event, a quick check of the victim's gear would have revealed tank pressure.
It doesn't explain why he refused the alternate he was given.
Possible explanations include panic, utter exhaustion, or a combination of the two. Bear in mind that he was probably getting tired from kicking upward to counteract a strongly negative buoyant force...at least until his buddy inflated his own BCD to bring the two of them to the surface. And even after he was on the surface, he probably continued to kick like mad. FWIW, with regard to the buddy's method of underwater intervention, I'm really not fond of this maneuver. If the buddy loses hold of the victim during the ascent (which can easily happen given a severely overweighted diver or a diver in "active" panic), the positively buoyant buddy will rocket to the surface, whereas the negatively buoyant victim becomes a dirt dart. Buddy separation becomes even more serious if the diver in trouble is OOA or LOA.
This brings me to another issue -- something that I keep coming back to time and time again:
It's incredible that, during the ordeal, neither the buddy nor the victim considered manually removing weight from the weight pockets and/or ditching the victim's BCD (which contained 40 lbs. of apparently non-ditchable weight).
Isn't the removal of the BCD at the surface taught in basic OW class (as part of the Remove & Replace drill)?
It doesn't sound like things were happening super-quickly once the two had surfaced. The buddy had enough time to call for help, attempt to orally inflate the victim's BCD, and organize the pair to kick toward the nearest shoreline. Given the victim's status of no backgas and the equivalent of an anchor pulling him down, I would think that the
first priority would have been
to establish positive buoyancy. Logical thought progression should have occurred in the following manner: BCD doesn't inflate --> weights can't be released --> manually remove the weight and/or ditch the BCD which contains the ballast. After separating himself from the anchor/BCD, the victim would have been comfortably positively buoyant at the surface due to the inherent buoyancy of his exposure protection (drysuit or wetsuit).
When I heard that the buddy had to ask the victim whether they were heading in the right direction, it made me wonder exactly how the two divers were positioned during the surface swim. The police chief described the faces of both divers being out of the water with the victim hanging onto his buddy's neck and tank. It almost sounds like the victim was
behind the buddy, with both divers kicking on their backs. That's not the best way to tow someone in a rescue scenario because the rescuer can't visually monitor the troubled diver. This is something that is definitely discussed during a rescue class.
It doesn't explain why the gear was in such disrepair and not maintained regularly and why the officers were so complacent to it as to dive with failing gear.
For the most part, the police chief's comments regarding the recommended changes seemed to fixate on
gear issues (notwithstanding the implementation of formal pre-dive buddy checks).
I wish he had spent at least some time discussing how members of the dive team would be getting
better training...particularly in rescue skills. Even with all of the gear issues, this tragedy would have easily been averted if the buddy team had just reacted appropriately.
