Two fatalities in Monterey

[Jax]

Jax, look at my profile pic and suggest to me what I should do there if I suddenly find that I've run completely out of gas and assume that my buddy has become separated.

The answer is really that I can't let that happen.

So I train and practice not to let that happen. I don't train and practice what to do when that happens because I'll make it about 2 minutes back to the exit, max, and die, no matter what.

You can practice the wrong things. Emergency procedures that have little chance of occurring or emergency procedures with little chance of success. If you do so at the cost of practicing emergency procedures that are more common than you are actually putting yourself at more risk by your practice.

That is why I've forgotten how many hundreds of times I've practiced donating gas to an out of gas diver.

That is why I practice knowing where to be in the water if anyone on the team has an issue.

Apples and oranges, Lamont - you ARE a trained and well-practiced diver.

[speculating] These young men were not. They got excited and 'into' their first ocean dive, when suddenly there wasn't air. From there on out, they didn't succeed.

We can all say there was things they could have done, but we weren't there. I wonder if you folks that DO dive all the time can remember what it was like when you didn't. Lynne does, for sure, because she has addressed matters that demonstrate she remembers.

Fact. They ran out of air. Guess: They both consumed about the same rate. They may have tried an ascent with one on the octo, and ran out on the way up. One may have tried to save the other and ran out. We don't know. Fact: they were not successful in executing emergency procedures after they went OOG.

And I'd like to see an answer to a very simple question in this thread from anyone, which is how you get into a situation where a CESA (option #3 in this thread) does not work, while dropping weights (option #4 in this thread) does.

About all I can think of is a combination of a massive overweighting issue and an OOG or gas access issue at the same time. Obviously, I'm going to recommend that divers forgo going out and practicing ditching their weights in favor of simply making sure that they're properly weighted. If you want to do something useful, try to simulate a reasonable worse case of swimming your gear up. I've done this before with double-130s full of EAN32, dumped my wing completely and kept only enough gas in my suit to not make it unbearably uncomfortable and been able to kick to get off the bottom just fine -- and as you get closer to the surface exposure protection expansion takes over and it all gets easier. If you can't kick to get off the problem, then by all means you have an issue you need to fix, but ditchable weight is not the solution, you've just got too much weight on to begin with, or else you need a proper drysuit.

If you solve that problem, you will not need to ditch weight.

Practicing ditching weight is silly at best, dangerous at worst, and may instill a false sense of confidence. Focusing on practicing not getting into that situation will make you much safer.

And none of us know if they even had the thought enter their mind.

 

[Peter_C]

Before everyone goes down the road, of "Because one was maskless", let me say there was 5ft of surge moving around. For those of you who have never dove in the Pacific Ocean you may not understand the power of surge. An hour earlier than their dive we were at 100ft watching a rock move in front of us in a big circle from the surge. In other words the one without the mask could have made contact with a rock underwater knocking the mask off his lifeless body.

Since we don't have all the facts, back to arguing over weights and training.

 

[Thalassamania]

Surge will definitely do it. Panicked out of air divers often pull their mask off also.

 

[dmoore19]

Surge will definitely do it. Panicked out of air divers often pull their mask off also.

To me that seems like an odd thing to do. If panicked I don't think pulling a mask off would be something I wouldn't do. It wouldn't seem like something that would make sense, it would serve no purpose. Not saying it isn't something that happens it just seems like an odd thing to do.

 

[Bubbletrubble]

To me that seems like an odd thing to do. If panicked I don't think pulling a mask off would be something I wouldn't do. It wouldn't seem like something that would make sense, it would serve no purpose. Not saying it isn't something that happens it just seems like an odd thing to do.

Panicked divers do "odd" things.

 

[dmoore19]

Panicked divers do "odd" things.

I wasn't saying it doesn't happen, just thinking it seems like an odd thing to do because logically it makes no sense. But then I guess panic doesn't usually produce logical conclusions.

 

[Blue Sparkle]

To me that seems like an odd thing to do. If panicked I don't think pulling a mask off would be something I wouldn't do. It wouldn't seem like something that would make sense, it would serve no purpose. Not saying it isn't something that happens it just seems like an odd thing to do.

I have read that when people are panicked and/or out of air that they feel claustrophobic, and apparently the mask then feels even MORE claustrophobic, so they tear it off in order to be "free."

Not saying that happened here, just relating this in response to your wondering why people might do it.

Blue Sparkle

PS: In my OW class the instructor advised us not to put our masks on our foreheads when on the surface because apparently divers in distress tend to yank their masks off or perhaps shove them up on top of their forehead - they did not want to see us that way and get a false alarm just because we felt like putting our masks up (too bad, it seems like it would be very convenient!) So I guess it must happen with some regularity (?)

 

[lowviz]

.......... They got excited and 'into' their first ocean dive, when suddenly there wasn't air. From there on out, they didn't succeed. .................

I think that you just got it into words.

Our children are programmed to succeed so they behave that way. There is always that hand that reaches down at the last minute. It just doesn't work like that in diving.

Diving is fun, easy, and potentially dangerous. The first two parts are well addressed by the agencies. I had the advantage of an instructor who came to see that my son was "invincible". His response was to stick his finger in my face (literally) and tell me that my job is to always be the better diver. The message was clear, we are heading back north and there is nothing more he can do for us. Sobering thought, never left me.

There is no easy answer and the first step to problem solving is not to assign blame but to improve what is in place.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

In theory all this "gas management" sounds fine. Facts are that in the real world things happen that have nothing to do with all the "planning" in the world.

Things go wrong even in the auto analogy-a dead battery, a broken belt, a bad radiator, nothing about gas management there, you can have a full tank of gas and still be sh-t out of luck.

I do agree that "gas management" is nice. It was not the answer for the two young men lost in Monterey.

Probably not ... I was more addressing what I thought adobo was getting at than the specifics of this accident.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

I just don't believe that anyone who suddenly sucks on an empty tank at depth will keep calm, sit there for a few seconds and remember "Breathe, think, act" and deliberate the options. "Hmm, let's see, am I going to do a controlled swimming ascent, a CESA or perhaps should I go find my buddy first to see if he can give me some air?"

Yeah right.

Actually, I know someone who reacted exactly like that ... calm as can be ... till we were safely back on the boat. Then she kicked my ass for ignoring her thumb when she realized she was getting low on air.

What can I say ... we were very new divers at the time ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)