Dee once bubbled...
The article doesn't mention if either divers were cave certified, do you know if they were?
CD...one of the men you met said the other one was a cave instructor, what about himself? Was he cave certified?
My condolences to his family.
Dee,
He indicated during our brief talk that both of them were cave certified and that his buddy was also a cave instructor. Apparently this Thanksgiving trip was somewhat of a ritual and I got the impression that they had just arrived and that this would be their first dive of the trip.
When I spoke to the one guy, he had walked down towards the water, I'm assuming to do a site survey, and as he crossed the parking lot by where we were parked I approached him and we talked for a few moments. Soon after that we finished gearing up and got in the water.
When we ended our dive, I was kinda floating around the head pool while my buddy was being debriefed by his instructor (he was on his final day of full cave cert) and I was noticing the equipment down at the waters edge. I was particularily drawn to the scooters, as that will probably be my next major undertaking.
Initially I thought they may have been planning a stage dive, because I recall seeing a couple of cylinders next to the scooters. However while we were gearing down, I saw the other guy walk past wearing what looked like a sidemount rig, so those bottles were probably his.
There are a lot of "what if's" in this for me. I started to move our schedule that day back by 30 minutes so we wouldnt be in a rush to check out of our hotel and get breakfast before starting our dives for the day. Instead, we decided to just grab some donuts on the run enroute to the dive site.
Thirty minutes later and me, my buddy and his instructor would have been almost 900' back when the accident occurred.
I started that dive with 3400 psi and surfaced with 2200. We also had two 50 cft bottles of deco gas at our 70' stop that had 1400 psi remaining when. All told, I came out of that dive with over 200 cft of gas remaining, which was more than 100 cft more than I needed to complete the dive safely.
If our team was in the cave 30 minutes later, with that much reserve gas each, it might have made a difference. I guess I'll never really know for sure, but it is rather weird knowing that I may have been one of the last people to see or speak with them.
I will be very interested in the final results of the accident analysis, if they are ever published. I read something from another friend of theirs promising to share more info as it becomes available on another site.
I have my own observations from the day and I'm sure there will be plenty of speculation from others. I just hope that everyone remembers that this is a tragic loss and tries to act accordingly in their responses.
For what it's worth, to those who view cave diving as a reckless or dangerous sport, lets not forget that an OW diver was lost just a few weeks ago from the keys. Diving in general can be dangerous, and cave diving is not any more dangerous than any other type
as long as you follow the rules. I have a suspicion that one of the rules may have been violated, but until the final report comes out, it's only a suspicion.
