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

[je76]

@ buton, Not sure that lack of information on Scubaboard constitutes hard evidence. I would also counter that I can find plenty of instances where failure to ditch weight as part of an emergency protocol caused a diver's death.

I don't think the issue here was the weight belt but rather the overall weighting of the diver compared to the life of the BC. Failure to ditch weight was only the last straw in the error chain.

DAN states, "The results of both series of tests indicate that divers, who have not attained neutral buoyancy at depth by adding air to their BCDs when there was plenty of air in their tanks, may not have sufficient air left to enable them to regain neutral buoyancy for the ascent. They may have to work hard and, therefore, use up a lot of air in order to ascend. At times, especially if divers are overweighted, they might have great difficulty ascending without ditching their weights."

This sounds like it might be describing what probably happened here if I didn't know it came from an article on buoyancy by DAN.

 

[buddhasummer]

In my short membership to scubaboard, I have never seen a post in accidents and incidents about someone who lived because of ditching weights. I am always reading the forum and danydon makes a good job posting everything.

So I guess there's something missing we are humans and no stupids, I think if you are in trouble and in a close call you will ditch them..

I didn't know her but she was OLD around 60?
Must of the post I see here they are always old people who die.

Don't you thing it was something medical hard to explain?

Nonsense...

 

[phoenix31tt]

In my short membership to scubaboard, I have never seen a post in accidents and incidents about someone who lived because of ditching weights.

that's because the guys that live usually aren't reported in accidents and incidents ... only the one's that come to tell their close calls...

 

[tracydr]

I, too, dive as if solo on every dive. I am ready to solve anything that's thrown at me. However, I am the very best buddy my buddy wants of me. I think diving prepared for solo makes me a better buddy for whomever I dive buddied.

Jax is a great buddy,I can attest to this!

---------- Post added October 15th, 2013 at 08:44 PM ----------

In my short membership to scubaboard, I have never seen a post in accidents and incidents about someone who lived because of ditching weights. I am always reading the forum and danydon makes a good job posting everything.

So I guess there's something missing we are humans and no stupids, I think if you are in trouble and in a close call you will ditch them..

I didn't know her but she was OLD around 60?
Must of the post I see here they are always old people who die.

Don't you thing it was something medical hard to explain?

I guess OLD is relative,lol!

 

[AfterDark]

I'm pushing 60, everybody I dive with is younger than me, they all ask me why I swim so fast when I'm diving? I answer “ it don't seem fast try to keep up young’un!

 

[Ayisha]

Please explain why? One would not have filled the empty dry suit as needed in this case.

Anyone can CESA from 10-15 feet as long as s/he is not overweighted and/or is prepared to abandon kit. It would have solved nothing in this case.

Perhaps it could have. If Marcia had a pony, all else being equal, she could have switched to the pony prior to being excessively low on air, and continued to have more than enough air in her back gas to inflate her drysuit.

 

[sydney-diver]

Perhaps it could have. If Marcia had a pony, all else being equal, she could have switched to the pony prior to being excessively low on air, and continued to have more than enough air in her back gas to inflate her drysuit.

And/or given the other divers time to find her if she was stuck on the bottom (i.e. for some reason couldn't ditch enough weight and/or couldn't remove her rig). When you suddenly run out of air, I'd imagine you don't have much chance to stop and think about your options, realistically you have 1 chance to make the correct decision, a fully weighted CESA is probably not the correct one as even if you make it to the surface you still have to try and keep your head above water to breath and get buoyant. Having a pony might be the panic circuit breaker that is required.

 

[DandyDon]

When you suddenly run out of air...a fully weighted CESA is probably not the correct one as even if you make it to the surface you still have to try and keep your head above water to breath and get buoyant. Having a pony might be the panic circuit breaker that is required.

Done it, one morning after arriving in Cozumel too late to get my pony filled. It was different, yes - as I was down around 50 ft, so my buoyancy increased as I went up. I was cool with orally inflating, but actually had started on the first hard drag on my reg, so I had some air left. It's best to not get into such a dumb situation as I did, but otherwise - train for such.

I also practice dumping weights, but did not feel that needed that time. And I was properly weighted.

 

[ajduplessis]

All guess work on what happened. Some of my immediate thouhhts.

The latest regulator technology delivers gas down to a very low pressure without an obvious drop in performance. I know my MK25 will deliver gas at less than 20 bar and I cant tell I am low. When the critical pressure is reached you will only have 3 to 5 breath before the 1stage stops delivering gas. Not like in the old days where breathing gradually became harder. The aware diver will notice something wrong during those last couple breaths, but the distacted diver struggling/focused on drysuit management will not notice this.

The faulty gauge and lower gas pressure in conjunction with high performance regs caught the diver suddenly off gaurd in OOA. Overweight with new drysuit caused panic and all thought processes fell flat.

 

[xyrandomyx]

I've been wondering: is it really necessary for a diver to panic in order to make the kind of decision that could cost their life? I know that stress begins to affect your thinking long before your reach full-blown panic. In a critical situation, like being out of gas without a buddy or redundant source, I'd imagine that making even just one somewhat poor decision due to stress (as opposed to being utterly incapable of any logical problem-solving due to panic) could be enough for a terrible outcome.


And another thing I've been wondering about: is it possible that in some of the cases where we think 'panic', the diver didn't panic at all, but rather lost consciousness suddenly? I imagine that the length of time it takes to reach the point of hypoxic blackout is highly variable; and that the amount of 'warning' (symptoms) is probably just as variable. In cases where we're thinking 'why didn't they just drop their weights?' is it possible that in some cases, it was because they were relatively calmly executing a CESA, still quite confident that they'd reach the surface when they suddenly blacked out?