Polish woman dead after 80 meter dive - Lake Attersee, Austria

[DandyDon]

Taucherin im Attersee tödlich verunglückt
Google translation...

Diver crashed in the Attersee
In Steinbach am Attersee a diver from Poland was fatally injured on Saturday evening. The woman had made an emergency climb after problems under water and had been discovered lifeless on the water surface.

Her partner accompanied the 38-year-old Polish woman on her dive at the so-called Ofen dive site in Steinbach am Attersee. At a depth of 80 meters she suddenly signaled problems and made an emergency climb.

Two other Poles, about 300 yards away, saw the lifeless woman float lifelessly on the surface. They pulled the casualties out of the water and alerted the emergency services. For the 38-year-old, any help came too late.

 

[chillyinCanada]

250+ feet . . . smh

 

[DeepSeaPirate]

Was she diving air?

 

[boulderjohn]

Warning: Speculation based on nothing other than the initial report.

With no more information than we have here, I am going to give the benefit of the doubt and assume she was a fully trained trimix diver using proper gas mixtures and equipment. I am going to give the benefit of the doubt and assume she knew she could not make a safe direct ascent from that depth. The training required to complete such a dive safely teaches what to do in the case of every reasonably conceivable emergency so that a direct ascent will not be needed.

Except one.

There is nothing you can do in training or equipment to deal with a serious medical emergency. Such a diver might conceivably try to make an immediate ascent to a safe depth (which at that point may be something like 80-90 feet or less, depending upon how far they were into the dive) and then lost consciousness during that ascent. If that were to happen, the diver would end up floating on the surface.

 

[TrimixToo]

Warning: Speculation based on nothing other than the initial report.

With no more information than we have here, I am going to give the benefit of the doubt and assume she was a fully trained trimix diver using proper gas mixtures and equipment. I am going to give the benefit of the doubt and assume she knew she could not make a safe direct ascent from that depth. The training required to complete such a dive safely teaches what to do in the case of every reasonably conceivable emergency so that a direct ascent will not be needed.

Except one.

There is nothing you can do in training or equipment to deal with a serious medical emergency. Such a diver might conceivably try to make an immediate ascent to a safe depth (which at that point may be something like 80-90 feet or less, depending upon how far they were into the dive) and then lost consciousness during that ascent. If that were to happen, the diver would end up floating on the surface.

Such a diver, early in the dive with a small deco obligation, might even choose to make a direct ascent, thinking it was her best chance of survival. And, in that case, it could be exactly the right thing to do. If I thought I was having a heart attack, and I had only 10-15 minutes of deco at a normal GF, I'd get on my deco gas and O2 as soon as it was reasonably safe (say, a PPO2 of 2.0 or so), get to the surface, establish positive buoyancy, and hope for the best. Bent and alive beats not bent and not alive.

Whatever actually did happen, my sincere condolences to her family and friends.

 

[ajduplessis]

Warning: Speculation based on nothing other than the initial report.

With no more information than we have here, I am going to give the benefit of the doubt and assume she was a fully trained trimix diver using proper gas mixtures and equipment. I am going to give the benefit of the doubt and assume she knew she could not make a safe direct ascent from that depth. The training required to complete such a dive safely teaches what to do in the case of every reasonably conceivable emergency so that a direct ascent will not be needed.

Except one.

There is nothing you can do in training or equipment to deal with a serious medical emergency. Such a diver might conceivably try to make an immediate ascent to a safe depth (which at that point may be something like 80-90 feet or less, depending upon how far they were into the dive) and then lost consciousness during that ascent. If that were to happen, the diver would end up floating on the surface.

warning, more speculation. nothing other than assumptions ^^^^