Packetsniffer / Jackson Blue

[Johnoly]

It's almost to the point, where a "black box" recording respiration and other data might be helpful. What a sad, sad loss.

When we pulled my buddy off the sand in Jupiter, his D9 computer with full data tracking was critical to looking further at contributing causes of death. The digital tank psi showing how hard he worked was key. In the end, toxicology reports revealed a diabetic seizure underwater. The ME still classified it as drowning, which they do with all scuba accidents.

With family and friends reading this post, I want to extend my condolences, but push the M.E. for timely contributing causes testing.

 

[PerroneFord]

Dan, Richard's buddy at the time, has stated he is going to give a full report on what he knows (he stated this on another forum). He asked that people give him a couple of days to collect himself. Fair enough, IMHO. I think, and I may be wrong, that Perrone is just waiting for Dan to put out that report so that he can ask his questions.

Bingo. Thanks. I was kinda just thinking out loud on the thread. Guess I should have just kept it to myself. But since we're here, I'll share my questions:

1. I really would like to know what the planned dive was. What was the penetration distance. Carrying 3 bailout bottles has some implications I am curious about.

2. I'd like to know if this was the first dive on the sorb.

3. I'd really like to know if he bailed out or not. For those who understand, I believe Richard had fitted a BOV to his rig so he could have bailed but still had the loop in his mouth.

4. I am curious to the setpoint entered on the dive. If the planned dive was going to be quite long, Richard might have been running leaner than usual.

5. Finally, I'd like to know whether his buddy was conversant with CCRs in general and Megs in particular. Like would he know what it meant if the HUD was flashing 5 red lights. This is in NO WAY intended to lay blame. But I've had conversation with my and Richard's CCR instructor over the past couple of years about perhaps codifying some protocols for mixed team diving, meaning OC and Rebreather. The reason I actually took a CCR course was to better equate myself with the fundamentals of the units because I was doing dives regularly with Meg, Optima, and KISS divers. I wanted to have a better understanding of what could get them in trouble, and how to assist if need be.

I hope posting these question will not offend anyone, and I am sure anyone in the RB community will understand why I'd like them answered. I've done a number of cave dives with Richard and other Meg pilots, and I learned to watch that HUD like a hawk. Especially with rapid depth changes. When I dove the unit manually I was quite surprised at the PO2 change shown just dropping from the surface to 10ft rapidly, and back up. Parachute in place of course...

 

[ianr33]

Dont want to start speculating but how is the flow in JB at the moment?

Not a good day.

 

[MSDT Mark]

Dont want to start speculating but how is the flow in JB at the moment?

Not a good day.

On 12 September 2008 the Blue Springs Cave at JB had a substantial flow. It took 25 minutes to swim 1000’ and 6 minutes to exit. The exit was effortless…

 

[Dive-aholic]

That is a good point about the black box. You may be seeing them very soon. The biggest problem with RBs is the fact that our brains aren't sensitive to low oxygen the way they are to high CO2. Breath into a paper bag for a couple of minutes and then analyze the O2. You will find the it gets very uncomfortable to breath yet the O2 level is probably still sufficient to sustain life. When you remove the CO2 and let the oxygen fall the body is unaware of it and just starts to shut down. I have no idea if this is what happened here and I am anxiously awaiting some facts.
As far as I know hypoxia was the culprit in only one fatality this year and occured when the diver forgot to open his O2 valve prior to the second dive of the day.

So why has the capability to monitor CO2 not been incorporated into RBs yet? We have the capability to constantly monitor CO2 levels in the medical field. It doesn't seem like it would be that difficult to do.

At the very least one on a RB would have a buddy who would notice the diver in trouble as either acting in an odd way, or not moving at all which would then trigger the buddy to take some kind of intervening action.

From what I understand, Dan acted immediately. It just happened too fast.

Speaking generally about RB accidents, if there was some issue with the sorb (packing, reuse, channeling, etc) its typically impossible to analyze it post-fatality due to the loop being flooded in the accident?

I know you're speaking generally. But just so no one makes any assumptions, Richard's Meg was not flooded.

Dont want to start speculating but how is the flow in JB at the moment?

It's a scooter only dive for me now...

 

[wedivebc]

So why has the capability to monitor CO2 not been incorporated into RBs yet? We have the capability to constantly monitor CO2 levels in the medical field. It doesn't seem like it would be that difficult to do.
.

CO2 monitoring is the RB manufacturers holy grail. It just doesn't work reliably in the variable content of a RB loop. It is exposed to variable temperatures and variable moisture. I don't think it is too far off but not yet.

 

[Meng_Tze]

CO2 monitoring is the RB manufacturers holy grail. It just doesn't work reliably in the variable content of a RB loop. It is exposed to variable temperatures and variable moisture. I don't think it is too far off but not yet.

Other challenges are miniaturization/formfactor, redundancy/voting type logic and power supply challenges.

 

[Padipro]

So why has the capability to monitor CO2 not been incorporated into RBs yet? We have the capability to constantly monitor CO2 levels in the medical field. It doesn't seem like it would be that difficult to do.

From what I've been reading lately aside from the issues that Wedivebc mentioned there's also the problem of a power source. The current CO2 monitors require several watts of power which just can't be provided by a small, compact battery.

 

[ianr33]

More details on TDS

The Deco Stop

 

[almitywife]

More details on TDS

The Deco Stop

have to log in to view and im not a member... anyone can give some info as i dont want to join another forum (never remember passwords)

thanks