Virginian diver dead at 190 feet - Roaring River State Park, Missouri

[lostsheep]

Just watched most of this video and am even more concerned about Gus' gas choices.

Looks like he is diving LP50s, per the video, one deep one shallow. Left tank looks like it says 250' and he said the right tank was air.

Am I the only one who thinks ONE cave filled LP50 is woefully inadequate at 220' deep inside a cave?

 

[Tassi Devil Diver]

I suspect the reason Gus had air as a bailout was because the cave was rigged with staged bailouts, habitats etc, so the air would have been an intermediate travel gas to get to a staged bailout maybe 50% at 21m.

 

[Wibble]

Bailout planning. Call me a simpleton, but the point of bailout is to be able to switch to sufficient safe open circuit gas when you have, or suspect, a problem with your rebreather. The key word is sufficient.

We've all been through rebreather training at various levels which stresses planning for various perils. The massive challenge is always the CO2 hit where you need enormous volumes of bailout gas to cope with the elevated breathing rate. There's also the huge problem of switching from the loop to the bailout when you're gasping for gas. The bailout valve comes in here, which *must* be connected to a decent supply volume. A BOV also encourages sanity breath switching as it's so trivially easy.

This was a cave dive, so would definitely have a known exit route and would have been able to stage cylinders. However, there's still the issue of switching when you're gasping for gas. There's also the myth of "team bailout" -- fine if you haven't lost your team or you turn around and run for the exit.

Isn't a 7 litre/50cf bailout tank rather small for a 60m/200ft dive? One would expect ali80s to be used at that depth.

 

[Sevenrider860]

What does the team consider to be the proper amount of experience to do this dive?

According to the Dive Talk podcast Gus started diving in 2018. So 4 years total diving experience seems to be suitable.

 

[Manatee Diver]

According to the Dive Talk podcast Gus started diving in 2018. So 4 years total diving experience seems to be suitable.

I was thinking he had more experience, in that case we have similar experience levels. Yikes.

 

[stuartv]

Is number of years really a useful metric?

I have met divers with 20 or more years experience. They only had 100-ish dives, in total. All in warm, clear, tropical water. But, they had 20 years experience...

 

[acxc]

At risk of over-generalizing this, and also admittedly having watched very little of Dive Talk, I think the situation kind of highlights how social media is impacting diving. Instead of just gaining experience through actually diving, and maybe being around diving in a physical support role and growing into the big dives, we can now read, watch, listen, and talk about it for hours on end to the point where we feel like we've lived it- and are thus qualified to think we can dive to the same level. It's a dangerous game, and watching where they talk about the air-dil mishap I felt like the attitude was "listen to this exciting fun thing that happened to me and how I got out of it" and missed the chance to tell the viewer how it never should have happened in the first place. It happens with every accident; we sit here and demand to know what happened so that we can analyze and tell you why we won't make the same mistake, but the reality is nobody really knows how they would handle it until you physically go through it. Experience is a much bigger equation than just years, dives, and cert cards.

 

[Tracy]

Isn't a 7 litre/50cf bailout tank rather small for a 60m/200ft dive? One would expect ali80s to be used at that depth.

They are similar tanks volume wise. 70cf vs 77 cf.

 

[lostsheep]

They are similar tanks volume wise. 70cf vs 77 cf.

I come up with 68 ft^3 assuming the lp50 is at 3600.

That is ASSuming the ideal gas law which is not correct. We don’t know his mix so adjusting with a compressibility factor can’t be accurately done. Regardless, it’s not 70 cu ft and it’s not enough gas. If you’re going through something tiny and have to have as small of a profile as possible, fine but in this case the tanks are too damn small and the mixes are an unnecessary risk.

 

[SlugLife]

Is number of years really a useful metric?

I have met divers with 20 or more years experience. They only had 100-ish dives, in total. All in warm, clear, tropical water. But, they had 20 years experience...

Absolutely agreed. Lots of things come into play, including training, experience, experience-type, and so-on.

For example, I've done so much zero-vis diving (2-3 inches, literally) that it's nothing to me and I really don't mind it. I drill skills blind, have redundancies including cutting-devices, and take it slow. Most other people with similar years and number-of-dives would probably be unsafe in those conditions. However, I'm also relatively inexperienced in other areas (Tech-diving, gas-mixes, instructor, etc).

At risk of over-generalizing this, and also admittedly having watched very little of Dive Talk, I think the situation kind of highlights how social media is impacting diving....

It's just like parents tell kids that a lot of what you see on TV isn't real. Except now, that's social-media. Anyone who hasn't compensated or how social-media isn't real life is likely to face all kinds of problems.

The fact that they have a successful YouTube channel might cause some people to assume they're some kind of authority, etc, but Gus and Woody have pointed out a number of time that they're not really anything special in terms of training or experience.