Polish diver dies in world record attempt to 333m

[Dominik_E]

doctormike, no one even knows what happened(!)

Do you really think any criticism at this stage is useful?

 

[helodriver87]

Do you really need to know what happened in this specific case to criticize the idea of chasing depth records in general?

 

[doctormike]

doctormike, no one even knows what happened(!)

Do you really think any criticism at this stage is useful?

I don't think that you get my point. What happened is that someone made a depth record attempt. That's what I'm criticizing.

It doesn't matter who did it, what the dive plan was, what went "wrong" etc...

If you think that those attempts are a worthwhile endeavor, that's fine. I don't, and the reason that I don't is that it encourages more people to do it.

 

[Hiszpan]

I don't know this diver, and I'll believe it if his friends say that he was qualified and just ran up against the knife edge between possible and impossible. .

His Previous deepest dive was in the same lake 2 years ago. He has reached 240m.
For the last few weeks he has been diving in Garda with his team in preparations for this record breaking attempt. Here are the pictures of his dive computers of the preparatory dives he has been conducting most recently:

He was an ex-soldier, having done a round in Afghanistan with Polish Army stationed there, where he was badly wounded in the line of duty but fully recovered and took up scuba diving, which became his passion.

 

[Dominik_E]

doctormike, I just think that if you want to criticise record attempts in general, it would be better to use a thread dedicated to that, and not one reporting a specific accident _where the cause is completely unknown at present_. The worst thing to do in accident analysis is always presuming anything.

 

[doctormike]

doctormike, I just think that if you want to criticise record attempts in general, it would be better to use a thread dedicated to this. The worst thing to do in accident analysis is always presuming anything.

I totally disagree. This is accident analysis. My take on this accident was that the cause was a depth record attempt. If you disagree with me, you are free to make your case, but I don’t see why my opinion about this specific accident is inappropriate in this thread.

The only thing that we all know with 100% certainty is that he died in a depth record attempt. So why am I “presuming” anything?

 

[Akimbo]

There are lots of records that might well probe the boundary between the physiologically survivable and fatal, but we don't encourage them. How much gasoline can you drink? How many gunshot wounds can you survive? I think that these extreme depth bounce dives on scuba are close to that category at this point...

I concur. This attempt is so pointless that it's success or failure is irrelevant. It proves nothing and does not add to human knowledge. Divers have performed meaningful work, stayed much longer, and been much deeper. Two members on my US Navy saturation dive team locked out at 308M/1,010' in 1972. Comex divers worked at 534M/1,752' in 1988.

​

The first dive to this depth was in 1962. See: Hannes Keller's 1,000' Dive

 

[Dominik_E]

doctormike, I think it is trivial to see that there can be accidents happening during a record attempt that are not causally connected to the dive being a record attempt, or even very deep at all.

 

[Hiszpan]

The only thing that we all know with 100% certainty is that he died in a depth record attempt. So why am I “presuming” anything?

We do know "something".He was found entangled in the guide line.

 

[doctormike]

I see your point. While I object to depth record attempts in principle, I have no evidence that the record attempt was the cause of this diver’s death, after apparently reaching the planned depth.

So should we apply this rule to all of the other accident analysis threads? There’s a hot one going on right now about the couple on CCR at 300 feet in the Great Lakes. Maybe everyone should just hold off on discussing it until the “official report” is out?