Scuba diver dies after being found floating at Kurnell, NSW, Australia

[Dive Bug Bit Me]

Changing weights is usually done one or maybe two weights at a time. Moving from being able to float your rig comfortably to being completely unable to float it in one step would indicate a drastic increase in weight for this dive. Again a bizarre action for highly experienced diver.

 

[DaleC]

I've done nearly ~1,000 dry suit dives... but can't for the life of me understand or picture the scenario you're describing.

Which part? Be specific, I spaced my post that way for a reason.

That a diver, light at the end of the dive, might crank open the shoulder dump to drop back down.
That on descent, they might forget to close it.
That a too tight fitting suit might cause a squeeze that restricts access to the shoulder dump.
That an inexperienced diver might add air without effect because of orientation and unchecked venting.
That the same diver might try to resolve the issue by traveling along the bottom to exit rather than dump weight.

With 1,000 dives in a properly fitted suit you probably can't relate to such a scenario personally. I dive every week and also find such a situation easy to resolve. All of those dives are cold water, most with drysuits, and many of those without a BC (using the DS only for buoyancy). But I have seen other divers confused by such things.

I once saw a diver experience an uncontrolled ascent because they were in a heads down orientation and could not find the butt dump on the wing. All the air was trapped in the bottom of the wing and they did not have the presence of mind to go heads up so they could vent with the inflator

 

[Cave Diver]

What I saw posted was 26 lbs plus a steel tank. Not sure on the plate.

26 lbs was posted somewhere along the lines when the original info came out. From what I've been told that number was erroneous and a bit on the high side. If I can get a more accurate estimate, I'll post later.

 

[PfcAJ]

Dale, I don't get what you're saying either.

If the suit is squeezed (I nominate the word "squoze" to be the past tense of squeeze) from descending, adding gas will fix that problem, even if the valve is all the way open. Because physics. Even if the suit is shrink wrapped and you're singing soprano, adding gas will loft the undergarment to some degree regardless of the orientation or open-ness of your exhaust valve. There's also a point to where the exhaust-valve valve will collapse under pressure and let water in.

 

[Diver0001]

That a diver, light at the end of the dive, might crank open the shoulder dump to drop back down.
That on descent, they might forget to close it.
That a too tight fitting suit might cause a squeeze that restricts access to the shoulder dump.
That an inexperienced diver might add air without effect because of orientation and unchecked venting.
That the same diver might try to resolve the issue by traveling along the bottom to exit rather than dump weight.

I think I get what you're trying to say so I'll respond to these suggestions one by one.

- The shoulder valve was mostly likely at least part way open during the dive. Not closing it was, I believe based on what I heard, a choice and not oversight.

- Someone in this thread theorized that the suit may have been too tight but based on the pictures I have a hard time believing that the suit was too small. When she was in Sydney the suit was professionally fitted and the person who helped her fit the suit and cut the seals also reported that he believe that the suit was fit properly.

- adding air without effect due to unchecked venting might have happened but I don't see how it could have been a trigger for the accident. The choice to swim along the bottom to the exit was made, as I understand it, due to the layout of the site and not due to equipment considerations.

R..

 

[D_B]

Has anyone considered that PADI teaches to use your drysuit for buoyancy control?

is that relevant considering the information that we have here ?

 

[scubadada]

I don't have any trouble imagining how she could go OOA in this situation. Have done it once myself. Searching for an ornate ghost pipefish, found one at 15 feet at the very end of the dive. Thought nothing of breathing my tank down to dregs getting a picture. Diving wet, in tropoical water easy to ascend when the reg started to breath hard. No problem, a risk, but a very minor one. She was hunting weedy sea dragons. Could have found one - thinking she had something more than 10 bar - decided to get some last pictures on the dregs of the tank in very shallow water. In this scenario someone without drysuit practical experience could easily go OOA not even considering the impact of OOA on the drysuit.

Still should have been able to swim up, but if she went from horizontal to vertical to ascend while OOA with a wide open shoulder dump valve she would have been in immediate trouble with the only way to resolve the issue to dump weights at depth.

Not saying this is what happened, but an easy situation to get yourself into if your diving context is tropical.

Diving a dry suit is not hard, however, there are lots of little gotchas that you don't learn until you dive one for a while. My gotcha was having most of my weight attached to the backplate harness. Seemed to make sense until I had to remove the rig at depth to disentangle myself as part of a solo course. Looked like a balloon attached to the rig. Could not get back into my gear and had to surface holding the rig in front of me. If this had happened at depth for real and I had to abandon the rig i would go up like a rocket. Now I have a balance of weight on a belt and the BC so if I have to separate from the rig I and it are roughly balanced.

It is one thing to swim around in a dry suit, something else to dive one safely.

Needless to say, probably should not go OOA. Most of my diving is easy drift diving in South Florida with free access to the surface whenever you want. I do a 3 min SS though this is not requisite when within NDL. I commonly surface with 200s psi in my AL80 but not zero. You never know what might happen. In early August went down under sunny skies and came up in a blinding squall. A fishing boat travelling at high speed came out of the mist headed straight for me. I had only a few seconds to make an emergency descent. Fortunately, was only clipped by the boat, broken, lacerated foot but here to tell the story. Not much air left in the tank after that event, but enough.

 

[Darnold9999]

Needless to say, probably should not go OOA. Most of my diving is easy drift diving in South Florida with free access to the surface whenever you want. I do a 3 min SS though this is not requisite when within NDL. I commonly surface with 200s psi in my AL80 but not zero. You never know what might happen. In early August went down under sunny skies and came up in a blinding squall. A fishing boat travelling at high speed came out of the mist headed straight for me. I had only a few seconds to make an emergency descent. Fortunately, was only clipped by the boat, broken, lacerated foot but here to tell the story. Not much air left in the tank after that event, but enough.

Completly agree, shouldn't, and I too have had to use the reserve to avoid a boat, with a much better outcome. (The only other time I have surfaced with a completley dry tank) However, I can see how it can happen - having made that decision when I found the one thing I spent the entire dive looking for and travelled half a world to shoot. A decison that with a drysuit and an open dump valve could easily lead to having to dump lead as the only option. Something a new drysuit diver would not even consider as a potential problem no matter how much experience they had diving wet. In fact the more experience you had wet the more likely you would consider doing this in a very benign environment having found something cool to take a picture of thinking your experience would mitigate the risk.

 

[Jax]

is that relevant considering the information that we have here ?

In regards to all the discussion about the amount of air Marci had in her suit, yes.

I don't know what the current materials say, but when I saw the PADI materials / video, it said to use the suit as your primary buoyancy control.

Ergo, Marci had a lot of air in her suit because she was using it for buoyancy control.

 

[D_B]

sorta .. she may have been using suit for buoyancy control, and she may have had a lot of air in suit .. but I do not see a connection to PADI training in this case here

(I was trained by a PADI instructor)