Possible death on the oriskany Nov 14, 2009

[Orlando Eric]

I am not offering a guess but want to point out loudly and firmly how many people IN THE KNOW often point to Cardiac problems when a diver dies with a working rig and plenty of gas.

If you are carrying a bit more wieght, spend too much time typing at a keyboard than swimming laps.. and you can remember when CHiPs was prime time TV-----

Diving is a physical sport. If you suffer a mild heart attack or stroke while playing hoops you will be fine once the EMS gets there... at 100 feet-- not so much so.

Walk, Run, Swim, Bike -- do something a few times a week to get your heart rate up for 30 45 minutes...

IJS

 

[Divin'Papaw]

I am not offering a guess but want to point out loudly and firmly how many people IN THE KNOW often point to Cardiac problems when a diver dies with a working rig and plenty of gas.

If you are carrying a bit more wieght, spend too much time typing at a keyboard than swimming laps.. and you can remember when CHiPs was prime time TV-----

Diving is a physical sport. If you suffer a mild heart attack or stroke while playing hoops you will be fine once the EMS gets there... at 100 feet-- not so much so.

Walk, Run, Swim, Bike -- do something a few times a week to get your heart rate up for 30 45 minutes...

IJS

Amen! I believe the importance of diver fitness (physical fitness) is horribly unappreciated today. It really needs to receive much more attention than it does.

 

[aue-mike]

On a mooring, anything over a knot is undivable....
Drifting and hot dropping into 2.2 is the worst I've done, and when we left the wreck and blew bags, we were in for quite a ride....

FWIW - In my experience, most people do not accurately gauge current speed. While you can pull down in a two-knot current, it takes some effort - moreso in doubles or ccr due to the drag. The max current you will find off FL from the Gulf Stream or Gulf Loop Current is right around 4 knots, give or take a couple tenths; the max we have seen is 4.4 and that is pumping. While the bottom current may very well have been stronger than the surface, I highly doubt it was 4-5 knots, and the surface was likely less than 2 knots. If you do the basic math and find out how many feet per minute you would drift in a true 2-knot current, let alone a 4-5 knot current (where you could almost drift the entire length of the Oriskany's hull in 2 minutes) you will see what I mean. Especially given the divers popped up amidst the group of charter boats as stated in the available information. Trying to deal with an unresponsive diver while coming up a mooring in a 2-knot current? That's likely not going to happen.

 

[evensplit]

Mike is correct. The current out there yesterday was not much more than a knot - which is "rippin" for this area.

 

[Hetland]

FWIW - In my experience, most people do not accurately gauge current speed.

While the bottom current may very well have been stronger than the surface, I highly doubt it was 4-5 knots, and the surface was likely less than 2 knots. If you do the basic math and find out how many feet per minute you would drift in a true 2-knot current, let alone a 4-5 knot current (where you could almost drift the entire length of the Oriskany's hull in 2 minutes) you will see what I mean. Especially given the divers popped up amidst the group of charter boats as stated in the available information. Trying to deal with an unresponsive diver while coming up a mooring in a 2-knot current? That's likely not going to happen.

Mike is correct. The current out there yesterday was not much more than a knot - which is "rippin" for this area.

I'm curious if either of you were actually in the water yesterday. I would take your estimates more seriously if that was the case. If not, then I'll have to defer to what I experienced, and what other people at the scene were saying. My bottom estimate is based on what the divemasters were saying. Since I never had the O in sight, I can only judge by the distance I was moved from our boat to the area where I was picked up, which by my estimation would easily put things over one knot. Whether that means 2, 3, 4, or 5 I can't say, and I don't doubt my own frailty in current estimation. I don't think it would be much of a stretch to cover the distance of the O in two minutes, again, basing this on the distance from start to finish on my own ride at depth.

 

[walke121]

I would almost say that a true 4 knot current is undivable unless its a drift dive. It would be almost impossible to fight that much current for an entire dive. You do realize that is the kind of speed Michael Phelps avg. in a 100M race. I don't think divers in full gear can match that even with fins. The earlier posters are correct about how people over estimate currents.

 

[DA Aquamaster]

The fastest DPV around will do about 225 fpm, which is about 2.2 kts. Most do 180-200 fpm (a bit less than 2 kts on average.) For the math impaired you can figure that 1 kt equals about 100 feet per minute, so 3 kts would sweep you across a football field in 1 minute.

Where current estimation gets difficult is in situations where you are floating in the water with your eyes at best a foot above the surface looking at a boat in chop - a situation where a 100 yards can look like a much longer distance, so people over estimate the distance they have drifted from the boat and consequently overestimate the current by a huge margin of error.

Similarly, under the water, especially in low viz, divers misdjuge their rate of drift as they are closer to the bottom and moving over it at what appears to be a higher rate of speed than is the case.

It's not hard to estimate surface current accurately from an anchored boat. Drop a styrofoam cup off the bow and note the seconds it takes to drift the lenght of the boat and with some simple math you can get the drift rate fairly accurately. Or do it like they did back in the day - use a log and a line with "knots" tied in it and time how many knots go past in 1 minute.

 

[OysterBoot74]

I was there with Hetland. I support his observations although I'm not the best judge of current speed. I know that I made it down to the Oriskany and enjoyed my dive depite the current. I even thought the free ascent wasn't too bad. There was a good cross current swin back to my boat though.

I heard through the grapevine from a friend on the charter boat that the diver was found at 170 feet and was unresponsive at that time of discovery. Those are definately images that will stay with me for a long time and affect my attention to detail regardless of what turns out to be the actual reason the diver got into trouble.

 

[wjefferis]

Here is an initial artical in the Pensacola News Journal about the incident: Oriskany diver dies | pnj.com | Pensacola News Journal

 

[Cave Diver]

Here is an initial artical in the Pensacola News Journal about the incident: Oriskany diver dies | pnj.com | Pensacola News Journal

Content:

Oriskany diver dies

Thyrie Bland • tbland@pnj.com • November 15, 2009

A man died over the weekend after diving at the Oriskany but few details were released about the man’s death.

The man, whose name was not released, was taken to Baptist Hospital on Saturday afternoon after he was pulled from the Gulf of Mexico, the U.S. Coast Guard said.

The Coast Guard sent a crew aboard a 41-foot boat to help the diver after getting a call about 12:20 p.m. Saturday about a diver in distress, said John Rizzo, a Coast Guard search and rescue specialist.

The Oriskany is a decommissioned aircraft carrier that was sunk 24 miles southeast of Pensacola in the Gulf of Mexico in 2006. Its tower is a little more than 70 feet from the surface.

When the Coast Guard crew arrived to help the diver, he was aboard the Down Under, and cardiopulmonary resuscitation was being performed on the man, officials said.

The Coast Guard crew escorted the boat to the Pensacola Naval Air Station, where medical personnel were waiting, Rizzo said.

The man was taken by helicopter to Baptist Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

No one at Down Under Dive Shop in Gulf Shores, Ala., would comment.

The Oriskany has made Pensacola an international diving destination, with people as far away as Guam coming to visit the 888-foot aircraft carrier.

“It’s the best dive in the country,” said Jim Phillips, an owner of MBT Divers in Pensacola. “It’s the only aircraft carrier you can dive.”

Phillip said many of the customers who visited his dive shop today had questions about what happened Saturday.

Phillips said he didn’t have any answers for his customers.

“We don’t have any details,” he said.