Please - The Stupid Need Not Apply ...

[Lost Yooper]

Perhaps another 300-400 deaths (if we're lucky) will be needed to open the eyes of the technical diving community --especially the training agencies. Who has the best track record and why? What we are seeing with all this crap is money talking and safety walking. Period.

It's disgraceful if you ask me.

Mike

 

[Frog]

ill paste this from a british DIR forum:



On sunday 1st july a diver was lost doing a solo
penetration into a wreck @120m, 20 miles north of Holyhead(Wales). He was
diving with an experienced team,BUT was not qualified to dive mix on
a breather and also ignored diving as an integral part of the team.
He did not surface after dive, the team returned on Monday but
nothing found, so are going back this coming weekend.
Mick leaves a wife and two children, our thoughts are with them.
This is a reason why we should all DIR and stay within our own
limits,As it is not us that weeps at the grave!

 

[turnerjd]

Three points

1 - LY - couldn't agree more! Have you seen the instructor manual for the PADI Draeger course?????? It's IMNVHO Pathetic.

2 - Frog - 120m and ignoring good practice... Evolution in action??? (120m is about 390ft) (another deep trimix to add to the stats :-( )

3 - Dane - No-one that I know off is collecting worldwide stats, which is a bit of a mistake. If you look at some of the dives that things like the inspiration have been used on (Britannic, Luisitania, HMS Affray, HMS M1) you will soon realise that this is the rebreather that a lot of people are using (as first choice) for the more demanding dives. Information such as this is also needed to build up a complete picture of what is happening in the rebreather world.

If you have read the 'last dive' the problem of paying your money and getting the cert is not really highlighted, but certainly there, I too can think of people that I know that simply due to the ammount of cash they have put behing the counter at certain dive stores will get taken on any dive they want, regardless of whether they are suitable.

Jon T

 

[Lost Yooper]

The arguement doesn't end with rebreather training. The success rate of the WKPP/GUE is indisputable, period. Irvine may not be a great communicator, but there is no disputing the FACT that there hasn't beeen a fatality within the WKPP since he took over 7 years ago. Why is that? Luck? One cannot easily overlook 7+ years of record breaking extreme cave dives without a single fatality.
All of the training agencies know this as FACT, but refuse to swallow their pride and learn themselves. They refuse to spend the money on rewriting their texts books and retraining their instructors, and I find this sickening. They would all rather continue down the dismal path they set out on rather than admitt that someone else could teach them something about diving philosophy, physiology, and equipment. People can rant and rave and call each other names, but in the end the facts remain and divers are dying either from ignorance or their own selfish pride.

My take part II.

Mike

 

[Rick Murchison]

The DIR bubbas conveniently leave out deaths. A death in Jackson Blue last year (or the year before - it's a shame to get old-timers and not be able to remember dates) was a supposedly DIR diver - but of course he wasn't DIR since he whacked his head scootering and lost control of his scooter, silted out - and we're not really sure what happened after that - was he? And of course they leave out Henry Kendall, who died at Wakulla in February of 1999 while diving with - but not really "with" since he was taking pictures in the shallows while the bubbas were in the cave - the WKPP bunch. He wasn't DIR either, 'cause he didn't properly preflight his gear.
I can easily define my own parameters for DIRW (Doing it Rick's Way) - which is not DIR according to the DIR crowd - and make the same claims - no deaths, no bends, no embolisms, no serious injuries, nobody left behind, and the statistic carries just as much meaning. To badmouth the other agencies for not swallowing the GUE dicta hook line and sinker based on the no fatalities "fact" is flawed logic, bad science and unwarranted. And the "fact" itself doesn't hold up to real scrutiny.

Excluding others ideas because they aren't blessed by GUE is not my idea of discovering the best way to do things all the time and everywhere.

Rick

 

[turnerjd]

Oh how very complicated the situation is!

Everyone seems to have their own opinions as to what is right, and there are a lot of people shouting very loudly who have vested interests in the outcome.

It would be really quite interesting, not to mention usefull if someone could do a survey of what diving people were doing, what training they had (actual real provable certificates), wether they stuck to that training, how they did things like increasing depth over time...

Then, this could be compared with deaths that happen over the following year or 2, to actually work out what is really happening in the world of technical diving.

It's no use trying to then apply what the situation is now to passed deaths, but would be *very* usefull for future deaths.

Is there anyone out there willing to help with this type of thing? Only real criteria to help is:-

1) More cynical than me (or equally cynical)
2) Not affiliated to any training / philisophical scheme/organisation
3) Honest - ie not going to try and throw the results in any particular way.

So, Any volunteers?

Jon T

PS, It's not the people here shouting loudly with vested interests - it's others 'out there'.

 

[Lost Yooper]

Kendall wasn't apart of the WKPP. There hasn't been a WKPP death while under Irvine's direction. Heck, even if there was one or two (which there hasn't been according to Irvine himself), that would still be a decent track record considering the type of diving they're doing. I'll be the first to admit that DIR gear and configuration will not save your life by itself. If you don't have it between your ears...it doesn't really matter.
I still ask, what is the WKPP doing that is allowing this track record to occur (easy answer), and why do the agencies continue to ignore it? People throw up smoke clouds but they never answer the question.

Mike

 

[Lost Yooper]

Turnerjd, I absolutely agree with you on the vested interest thing. I believe wholeheartedly that greed is the underlying factor in the industry (surprise, surprise). If safety were the top priority, then things like deep air classes wouldn't exist and helium mixes wouldn't be taboo in "recreational" tech diving. The list could go on, but it all boils down to moola and effort.

Mike

 

[Iguana Don]

Jon,

I think the GUE people misuse the term "stroke". Contrary to their written definition, if you hang around them long enough you will realize that by GUE's REAL and UNSPOKEN definition - "A stroke is anyone that does not worship at the Temple of George."

Just because you are not DIR compliant does not make you a stroke. A man with your experience and knowledge is not a stroke by any means. You have just adopted what works for you and they refuse to accept this.

I do not have near the experience that you have, and probably not many others here do either. So with that in mind we have to find a system that has been proven without having to make a thousand dives to sort out all the bugs.

Inspiration Rebreathers

Whatever the reason, people are dying at an alarming rate on this piece of equipment. If for example: 19 people died in the past 5 years using brand X regulator and that was the only common ground relating to the deaths. Wouldn't this send a red flag up in my book.

Could it possibly be that if "Buddy" recalls its rebreathers it would be admitting fault? And then enter the lawyers! Again it all boils down to $$$!!

just some of my observations.

ID

 

[Rick Murchison]

Well, y'all are certainly correct about one thing - money is a factor in nearly everything that anyone with a vested interest has to say. And it needn't be "money in" either, but rather attempting to prevent "money out." As I have mentioned before, truth takes a back seat when the lawyers sue the innocent, because the system allows no recourse for the winner to recoup the expense of defense. And so the insurance company settles as the cheaper thing to do, the door is open for the next suit of the innocent for settlement, and the truth never sees the light of day.
In all fairness I must add (why in the world I feel I must be fair with lawyers is beyond me) that sometimes a settlement is proposed and accepted by the party that really is at fault to avoid a multi-gozillion dollar jury verdict - and the truth never sees the light of day here, either.
If we truly are interested in safety, we need a way to investigate that is insulated from the entire legal system, from the possibility of the findings ever being used in a court - to keep lawyers, liability and settlement out of it. That is why in the military we run two separate investigations - one, the Mishap Investigation, that can only be used for safety purposes, and the other, the JAG investigation, where the parties are read their rights and are subject to and have the protection of the legal system.
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I don't think my experience is vast by any means - my diving is all pretty tame when compared to some. But I have been at it a fairly long time, and have seen paradigms rise and fall enough to know that "Doing it Right" should always be followed by "today, under the circumstances" and not, "Always, according to G-man".

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Mike made my point precisely when you drop back to the "members of the WKPP diving under George's supervision" for application of the "no deaths" statistic, so any other deaths where someone is diving DIR otherwise don't count.

One can always narrow the criteria to suit the argument - as I said, there are many, diving many different configurations, practices and protocols who can make the same claim to zero deaths when allowed the same kind of narrow perspective.

What I am saying is that theirs is not the sole way to do things... "Right" should be changed to "Right for them". The "no deaths" stat is simply meaningless as an argument that "everybody else is wrong" because the same statistic can be garnered from a positively huge range of diving styles and equipment configurations.

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As for the Inspiration itself, I don't personally know enough about the kit to have a weighted opinion, except to say that the mishap that started this discussion would surely seem to have something to do with the CCR, but would have to see more but we may never actually get that chance.

Rick