One dead, one injured on Rift dive - Iceland

[peterbj7]

Drysuit diving has a number of serious potential pitfalls and needs to be learned and practiced thoroughly in a safe environment. And diving in very cold water is much harder and more stressful than diving in warm.

 

[fjpatrum]

Drysuit diving has a number of serious potential pitfalls and needs to be learned and practiced thoroughly in a safe environment. And diving in very cold water is much harder and more stressful than diving in warm.

My experiences so far say differently. Of course I started in cold water, but with the right exposure protection it isn't that much more difficult. If the viz was low and it was cold, I might agree with you. I will say when diving wet in cold water my energy is sapped a lot faster and I need a lot more "recovery time" after the fact. Diving dry, though, it hasn't been that much different than diving warm water.

I haven't found diving in a drysuit particularly more difficult either. Reading the book and having a couple of experienced mentors on hand my first few dives have been very unstressful, even when my suit leaked.

 

[CT-Rich]

My experiences so far say differently. Of course I started in cold water, but with the right exposure protection it isn't that much more difficult. If the viz was low and it was cold, I might agree with you. I will say when diving wet in cold water my energy is sapped a lot faster and I need a lot more "recovery time" after the fact. Diving dry, though, it hasn't been that much different than diving warm water.

I haven't found diving in a drysuit particularly more difficult either. Reading the book and having a couple of experienced mentors on hand my first few dives have been very unstressful, even when my suit leaked.

You read a lot about New divers going from a pool to there checkout dives and being freaked out when they have an exposure suit to deal with. They are much more restrictive and a drysuit will make a huge difference in bouancy contol. This is a good example of what you don't know killing you, assuming it is the same gets plenty of people in trouble. just losing the ability to turn your head or easily reaching to your ankles can put people into freakout mode. Heavy stressed breathing in cold water can lead to icing in the regulator, freezing aspirant can trigger a gag reflex. small things that were easy in Roatan are not so easy in a drysuit or 7mm wetsuit, not to mention how much extra lead you need to go down, and how much air you will need to put into boyancy control to be neutral and then dump to go back up in a controlled manner. There was a thread just the other day about a gal who almost died while she was just trying out her new dry suit.

If you have always been diving cold water, you may not appreciate the difference. I have seen plenty of divers pop up on their checkouts freaked out by the extra gear.

 

[vincent54]

Good article in Dive The World, Volume 3 on the Rift in Iceland. Absolutely beautiful.

 

[Tigerman]

Drysuit diving has a number of serious potential pitfalls and needs to be learned and practiced thoroughly in a safe environment. And diving in very cold water is much harder and more stressful than diving in warm.

Actually I think that would be incorrect.
Sinai (and tiran with its strait) is on the arabian plate and part of asia so the divide would go on the NW of the red sea rather than NE?
Atleast thats their reasoning for saying Sinai is in asia/middle east rather than africa..

There is some pretty impressive canyons in the straight of tiran though, but the most so are not a rec dive as it start well deeper than 30 meter and end waaay deper..

 

[CAPTAIN SINBAD]

Its a bucket list dive for me. I like interesting geological features as much as marine life and historical shipwrecks. I would prefer a trip to Iceland over a trip to Bonaire tbh.

 

[peterbj7]

Actually I think that would be incorrect.
Sinai (and tiran with its strait) is on the arabian plate and part of asia so the divide would go on the NW of the red sea rather than NE?
Atleast thats their reasoning for saying Sinai is in asia/middle east rather than africa..

There is some pretty impressive canyons in the straight of tiran though, but the most so are not a rec dive as it start well deeper than 30 meter and end waaay deper..

I presume you quoted the wrong post! Never mind, I knw which one you meant. But be assured that what i said IS true. I can't remember which reef it is, but one of those at Tiran does straddle the continental divide. You're right it's pretty deep. I forget how deep it was that the divide started, probably 30-40mtr, and I followed it down to around 80 or so mtr before I began to get nervous about my pO2. I was told by a local dive professional I was with that it continued down indefinitely. I thought of going back with trimix, but really it wasn't interesting to look at - two flat parallel walls disappearing into the abyss. But conceptually fascinating.

 

[DandyDon]

Not relevant to this thread or to the tragedy described, but there is at least one other place to dive between two continental plates. I forget exactly which reef, but at Tiran in the NE Red Sea the two continental plates are presented as sheer rock faces that look as if they were cut with a saw. Eventually they will be on opposite sides of an ocean. The water's a tad warmer than on the Icelandic dive.

I presume you quoted the wrong post! Never mind, I knw which one you meant. But be assured that what i said IS true. I can't remember which reef it is, but one of those at Tiran does straddle the continental divide. You're right it's pretty deep. I forget how deep it was that the divide started, probably 30-40mtr, and I followed it down to around 80 or so mtr before I began to get nervous about my pO2. I was told by a local dive professional I was with that it continued down indefinitely. I thought of going back with trimix, but really it wasn't interesting to look at - two flat parallel walls disappearing into the abyss. But conceptually fascinating.

For clarification of terms only, a continental divide is a drainage divide on a continent such that the drainage basin on one side of the divide feeds into one ocean or sea, and the basin on the other side either feeds into a different ocean or sea, if you want to accept Wikipedia's definitions. The North American continental (great) divide runs up thru Mexico, New Mexico, Colorado, then angles off to & thru Alaska, for example - with other divides discussable comparing drainages to the Gulf, Atlantic, Great Lakes & river, Hudson, or Arctic.

The natural geographical boundaries of Africa are the Mediterranean Sea, the Red Sea, and the Gulf of Aden. The usual line taken to divide Africa from Asia today is at the Isthmus of Suez, the narrowest gap between the Mediterranean Sea and Gulf of Suez, a route today followed by the Suez Canal. This makes the Sinai Peninsula geographically Asian, and Egypt a transcontinental country. The Sinai Peninsula or Sinai (Arabic: سيناء‎ Sīnāʼ ; Egyptian Arabic: سينا Sīna IPA: [ˈsiːnæ]) is a triangular peninsula in Egypt about 60,000 km² (23,000 sq mi) in area. It is situated between the Mediterranean Sea to the north, and the Red Sea to the south, and is the only part of Egyptian territory located in Asia as opposed to Africa, effectively serving as a land bridge between two continents.

The Straits of Tiran (Arabic: مضيق تيران‎ Maḍyaq Tīrān, Hebrew: מצרי טיראן Metzarei Tiran), are the narrow sea passages, about 13 km (7 nautical miles) wide, between the Sinai and Arabian peninsulas which separate the Gulf of Aqaba from the Red Sea.

Like the Rift between continents being dived in Iceland, there may well be a rift in the Tiran Straits. I know of a few rift valleys in eastern Africa. Indeed, the map below does seem to suggest that the African and Arabian plate boundary does run thru the Tiran Straits - leading to some confusion as to whether the Sinai is part of Africa or Asia.

 

[j yaeger]

silfra rift,iceland - - ScubaBoard Gallery
this girl in the photo was on her first drysuit dive with me
she had a ball,was safe and had no issues doing the rift...
other than having "batman"(me) as an escort...