Spiegel Incident

[Ayisha]

You know what you could just as easily mis judge your air with doubles, to many what if's lets face it have you ever made a mistake thought about it after and said to yourself what if, the only difference between us and him or her is the what if happened, and the out come for the injured diver is in a hospital bed for 27 days and still counting. By the way he surfaced with 300 psi left.

Absolutely, you can mis-judge any of your vitals quite easily with doubles or larger tanks and it's more to get into trouble with for those who do not keep an eye on their gauges. For most people using an AL 80, their gas supply is their limiting factor. If they are not watching their gauges, they can easily run out of gas more likely than going over their NDL's. When people who don't monitor their gauges use larger tanks, they run a much greater risk of overstaying their NDL's long before they run out of gas, which seems to be what happened to this young man.

For average tanks, the limiting factor is usually the gas supply. For larger tanks, the limiting factor is usually the NDL's. Getting larger tanks or doubles does not substitute for appropriate gas management. Simply getting bigger tanks or doubles can get people who don't monitor their gauges and/or follow an appropriate plan into some serious trouble. In this case, it appears that the NDL's were violated drastically without the resulting necessary deco stops and the air was depleted in a steel 119 cf tank, allowing the young man to do more damage than he probably would have with an AL 80.

 

[DandyDon]

OK, let's try to get back on track.

Much earlier, before we got the very helpful specific information that helped clear up a lot of the confusion, I said that the news item that said that what should have been a 20 minute ascent was only 5 minutes was problematic. It made no sense whatsoever given what we knew.

Then we learned that they were really not diving the Spiegel Grove but were only in its vicinity, and that they were diving 119s instead of 80s. We learned that they really were at 135 feet, which made so sense when we thought they were diving the Spiegel Grove. We learned that the 20 minutes concept came from the newspapers, not the divers.

Lamont made some helpful posts about possible decompression obligations, and suddenly the 20 minutes quote becomes interesting. Maybe this was a rare example of accurate reporting, rather than inaccurate reporting. (Although in very poor journalistic form.)

What if the reporter knew their bottom time and depth and consulted with an expert to find out what the ascent time should have been?

If so, then the 20 minutes might have been accurate, although good journalistic practice would have required the reporter to identify the source of that information. (Good journalistic practice requires it in any event--if a reporter had sent the article to me as it was written, I would have circled it and written "according to whom?"" in the margin.)

And so,there really is no point in going forward with this until we know the answers to a couple of questions that have been asked several times.

• What plans, of any, did they have for decompression?
• What was their total bottom time?

I would actually be surprised if they had a decompression plan or even knew what their bottom time was. I get the impression that the family of 5 got certified years ago for some occasional fun family diving as they saw it, the twins getting into some hunting, and while diving was something they did frequently on some half dozen trips to the Keys yearly as well as from their Michigan home boat - their usual dive plan was more as recently suggested: "Let's do this." Perhaps they were in the habit of diving their owned 80 cf tanks, never having a problem, simply decided they could stay down longer if they got 119s - which the twins did but dad didn't, and the extent of the dive plan was no more than "first one low on air comes up first"...?

When Sadie/mom described them as experienced divers, she mentioned how often their trips included diving - with more than 6 times a year plus some summer dives from their Michigan boat I guess and more different occasions a year than many of us cyber divers here including me, she did not mention any secondary C-cards. I think she mentioned that they did not drink (alcoholic beverages) or it would sound too much like an old southern joke: "Hold my beer and watch this," except that no one was left on the boat to hold anything.

No one left on the boat in case it came adrift, the divers got swept away in current, or a diver got surfaced in trouble too far away; no mention of additional training cards; no Oxygen on the boat; no knowledge of DAN - it just all sounds like they got started years ago and kept diving with little thot. Sadie/mom mentioned on her profile I think that she had 10 years and 25-50 dives so it's quite likely that she only dived with them some of the times that the guys went and maybe the guys did put more thot into all this than "It's the way we've always done it and hadn't killed us yet, but now we twins have our new, larger thanks" so there are several areas in which my general understanding of the get-wet plans could be in error, but that's how it all kinda sounds to me.

At the 30 feet stop, Matthew said he felt how he had to "pull" a little harder to get the air out of his regulator.

I got the idea early in this thread that Matthew had surfaced from an uncontrolled ascent with some air left but that was not a clear fact at that point, then when this was mentioned - I adjusted to my understanding that he was close to out. I don't know if their regs had been serviced in the last year or not, but a reg that will breath at 135 ft, then pull hard at 30 is functioning well enough that an spg reading would be a waste of time at that point to an air challenged, ascending diver. I know the feeling.

Hope Matthew is improving however slowly that could go. From the various news articles I found on this accident and him, and the two youtube clips of him at the hospital, he seems like an determined ballplayer who will give recovery his best effort regardless. There is no reason for the rest of the family to stop diving actually; if it'd been a shotgun accident, they might all want to quit hunting but if it'd been a car accident, they'd keep driving. If they continue, I hope they all get DAN, refresher courses, oxygen bottles for their boats, and plans to keep someone aboard always, among other ideas.

 

[Belce]

According to US Navy dive tables, a ndl ascent from 130 feet can be done safely in 130 seconds.

 

[DandyDon]

According to US Navy dive tables, a ndl ascent from 130 feet can be done safely in 130 seconds.

I'd want at least 10 minutes for stops and slower ascent rate. The first 70 feet of ascent could be done faster than the final 60 feet according to many theories so if I could accurately...

Ascend from 130 to 60 at 60 ft/min

A one minute stop at 60

Ascend from 60 to 20 at 30 ft/min

At least 3 minutes at 20 easing up to 15 maybe

Then the final 15 feet at 15/min
​

1.17+ 2 + 1.33 + 3 + 1 = 8.5 minutes minimum.

I'm an old air hog tho, and if my dive plan was air at 130 until I ran low, I am sure I'd be deep in deco. I bet the young ballplayers are better on their air even chasing fish with a speargun.

As much as I value Lamont's superior education and experiences, I don't see a PFO as a requirement to take a theoretical hit, at least not with NDLs as the accepted limits.

And this Physician is also a well trained and experienced diver...

I'm not sure you have to implicate a PFO. If, as has been described, the ascent got out of control, it wouldn't have taken much breath-holding to create an arterial gas embolism situation (see the "Five things I learned about DCS" thread).

But speculating and arguing about the final mechanism of injury here is spending our time on precisely the wrong thing. The place for scrutiny is at the beginning of the cascade, the place where the accident could have been avoided. I know I'm harping on this, but this happened either because there was an inadequate or erroneous dive plan to begin with (or no plan), or because an adequate and safe plan was disregarded in the water. There was no equipment malfunction or unexpected environmental condition that played any significant role here. For novice divers reading this thread, the lesson is to create a plan that includes consideration of gas supply and decompression issues, and then dive it.

Matthew's doctors may still want to test for a PFO, but for purposes of this discussion, I don't see such indicated. Given that 25-30% of the population has one unknowingly, and that many of us are not in as good of physical condition as a typical Navy diver, I think the lessons to be learned are also listed there.

 

[iztok]

Thank you. I wasn't aware you could do the math without actually knowing how long they were down and at exactly what depths, and without knowing what the starting and ending tank pressures were.

It is HP119 so you know the size and working pressure. Assume it was full. It was posted he had 200psi left at depth. It was around SG so assuming 130ft. Enough to make decent guess. I supposed 0.8 SAC rate to get timing and I only used enough time to get below 500 psi.

 

[iztok]

According to US Navy dive tables, a ndl ascent from 130 feet can be done safely in 130 seconds.

Sure. But they had HP119 tanks and at depth (around 130ft or so) one of them got down to 200-300psi.

Now assuming they had full tanks coming in (more then likely considering the whole story) this would put them way past NDL.

 

[Rick Murchison]

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A ScubaBoard Staff Message...

Thread temporarily closed for maintenance.

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A ScubaBoard Staff Message...

Reopening the thread now... if y'all want to discuss the finer points of buoyancy control, fin pivots, pony bottle rigging, spare air bottles and all the other off-topic posts I just pulled out of this thread, please take it to the basic scuba diving area and put it in its own thread. This thread is about the DCS mishap on the Speigel Grove. If you have anything to add to that discussion please do. If your thoughts carry you elsewhere, please post it elsewhere.
Thanks in advance.
Rick

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[IXΘYΣ]

Sure. But they had HP119 tanks and at depth (around 130ft or so) one of them got down to 200-300psi.

Now assuming they had full tanks coming in (more then likely considering the whole story) this would put them way past NDL.

As I read the narrative, the two young men who ran low on air did so after spearfishing around the SG. This brings up a whole new world of possibilities w/r/t gas supply and deco status. How much did they burn because they were swimming hard? How much up-and-down, and at what depths? How different were their "while spearing" depth/time profiles?
While it is certainly easy to get into a serious deco hole on 119's in 130 ft of water, it's also quite reasonable to burn through 100+ CF well within the NDL while actively spearfishing.
My biggest disappointment re: computers is that we don't have an accurate record of depth and time before the ascent.
Bottom line remains unchanged, however:
Plan the dive
Dive the plan
Monitor gas supply
Control buoyancy
etc., etc...
><))'>

 

[idocsteve]

While it is certainly easy to get into a serious deco hole on 119's in 130 ft of water, it's also quite reasonable to burn through 100+ CF well within the NDL while actively spearfishing.

Thank you for confirming what I thought, and posted previously on this thread.

Lots of posters assuming there was a huge DECO obligation that was skipped, when in fact there might not have been any DECO obligation whatsoever.

Too many unknown variables.

 

[Ayisha]

...While it is certainly easy to get into a serious deco hole on 119's in 130 ft of water, it's also quite reasonable to burn through 100+ CF well within the NDL while actively spearfishing.

It is very possible to burn through a lot of gas while working hard, especially deeper, and this probably accounts for some of the LOA situation.

However, it seems unlikely that working hard is the only factor in the LOA situation, because Matthew's mother said that they were still deep when Matthew's gauge read 200-300 psi. His maximum depth was 135 feet, but we do not know how "deep" he was when he read 200 - 300 psi. I think there was some info earlier about the boys spending most of their time close to 130 feet, then making the ascent.

Unless they had a seriously sawtooth profile (very problematic also), they spent almost all of their time "deep" before they went very LOA. Unless Matthew blew through his 119 cf tank in around 8 minutes or so, the max NDL for 130 feet, it is most definitely the case that he had accumulated a deco obligation.

This is what Matthew's Mother told us:

When they were deep, Matthew saw his tank air was at 200-300psi, and knew he had to GO !!

Regarding recording depth and time before the ascent, with or without a computer, it is up to the individual diver to keep an eye on all pertinent info and recall it when logging or whenever necessary.