Tourist dies while diving on Ambergris Caye

[Ministryofgiraffes]

I’m Not convinced on that valve theory...I believe that it doesn’t slowly become an issue, but more a hard stop of air at about 35/40 ft? Not sure a 25 min dive would happen and on this site you hit 65ft about 5 mins after entry.

I may be mistaken. But the 2/3 times I’ve see it it has been 40-ish feet and a hard cut off on air..

 

[DandyDon]

I’m Not convinced on that valve theory...I believe that it doesn’t slowly become an issue, but more a hard stop of air at about 35/40 ft? Not sure a 25 min dive would happen and on this site you hit 65ft about 5 mins after entry.

I may be mistaken. But the 2/3 times I’ve see it it has been 40-ish feet and a hard cut off on air..

Nope, as in I agree. The time it happened to me, I felt the OOA more like 24 feet down. He would not have done the dive with a ¼ turn open valve.

Otherwise, as I suggested earlier - with a ¼ turn open valve, he would have been fine at the SS and surface.

 

[caruso]

The guy blows through an unusual amount of gas in a very short period of time, and yet is apparently ok at the safety stop. Sometime after that he's a fatality on the bottom.

As long as we're throwing out wild guesses:

Points to a medical event. Possibly he was very anxious during the dive, and/or out of shape and not prepared. He started breathing heavily to the point of hyperventilating and the stress of the exertion/anxiety event caused him to have a heart attack at the safety stop at which point he simply lost consciousness and sank to the bottom.

 

[yle]

I was just describing how the DM on my dive handled me needing to surface early.

Oh okay, no worries.

If there's one thing that new divers can learn from threads like this, where we have the chance to share and compare our experiences to that in the incident, it's that there's quite a range of how guided dives are handled by different operators in different locations. All the more reason that paying attention to a dive briefing (and asking a lot of relevant questions if the dive briefing is lacking) is so important. Assuming that your next guide will follow the same procedure as your previous one could lead to trouble.

 

[yle]

I hate speculating on fatalities, but this scenario sounds like it's possible the valve was only partially cracked open and this could have been the precipitating event that led to the whole thing. My thoughts on this are based on reading that the deceased thought he was out of gas at depth, then signaled that he was fine once they got back to the safety stop.

The article simply said the dive was at 80 ft depth, and after 25 minutes the diver signaled he was low on air. I interpreted this as the diver was looking at his spg and it was down to a "low on air" reading, which wouldn't fit with a "just barely cracked valve" scenario. Sounds like the whole situation was pretty standard diving... until the diver disappeared with no one watching.

 

[aviator8]

I don't really by the partially open valve for that depth. He would have done something alot sooner. Also I am not sure who did the recovery but if it was a rescue team or public safety divers they would have preserved the gear to check foe the obvious clues, equipment failures, tank pressure, valve position, dive computer for info....

 

[aviator8]

The article simply said the dive was at 80 ft depth, and after 25 minutes the diver signaled he was low on air. I interpreted this as the diver was looking at his spg and it was down to a "low on air" reading, which wouldn't fit with a "just barely cracked valve" scenario. Sounds like the whole situation was pretty standard diving... until the diver disappeared with no one watching.

wouldn't a barely opened tank valve show up as a rising and falling needle on the spg as the diver breathes. I always do that as a surface check to ensure valve is all the way open. Unless he was on a transmitter which happened to be catching the reading on the breath intakes...

 

[yle]

The guy blows through an unusual amount of gas in a very short period of time, and yet is apparently ok at the safety stop. Sometime after that he's a fatality on the bottom.

Low on air after 25 minutes at 80 feet is not an "unusual amount." It's possible he started with 2800 psi, and maybe he was at 1000 psi after 25 minutes. If he spent those 25 minutes at 80 feet, his RMV would be 0.56 cu ft per minute. That's not unusual for a typical vacation diver.

Of course that's a rough estimate, considering we don't know the start and ending pressures or how much of that time was spent at 80 feet. But still... 0.56 cu ft/min is (as far as I know) pretty reasonable. If that value indicates a medical problem, the entire dive tourism industry is in trouble.

 

[yle]

wouldn't a barely opened tank valve show up as a rising and falling needle on the spg as the diver breathes.

Yes, usually...

I always do that as a surface check to ensure valve is all the way open. .

Sounds like you were taught well... and, more important, you learned well. Kudos!

 

[aviator8]

Sounds like you were taught well... and, more important, you learned well. Kudos!

Unfortunately that was not something passed on to me from my instructor, I picked that up on here and reading DAN accident reports. I made sure to stress that to my daughter in predive checks. Its a pretty crappy situation to get into especially if your buddy is not close on descent which happens quite a lot.