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

[steinbil]

Considering that we all make mistakes, and in terms of creating an environment where mistakes are less likely to happen, it seems to me that the resistance towards looking at systemic solutions (like standard gases, strict team procedures in terms of equipment checking and separation etc) is a real issue.

I think it is very obvious that having standard gases in a team (or for a project) will decrease the risk of someone making a mistake of using an inappropriate gas. The risk will never be 0, and we all make mistakes, but it stands to reason that if each diver does not have to make a judgement call for every dive on what mix to use, that eliminates a lot of opportunities for bad calls.

If we could be less passionate about our own habits or preferred ways of doing things, I think it would be easier to have civil discussions about the best compromise between safety and practicality in employing standards to everyone‘s benefit. I’m sure we can all agree that we want to decrease the number of fatalities in Scuba, so the question is: How can we do that, if we just blame accidents like these on diver error?

 

[Vicko]

I promise you, you will gain far more respect by calling attention to a problem than you would by hiding it.

You will 100% absolutely be blackballed forever from just about any respectable project if you are dishonest and/or willingly violate standards and procedures.

Oh, I agree.
I walked off of job sites that were way more important than looking at new wet rocks.
But peer pressure and sunk costs are in everyones heads, easy to slip from time to time if incidents like these don't remind us.

 

[flymolo]

it seems to me that the resistance towards looking at systemic solutions (like standard gases, strict team procedures in terms of equipment checking and separation etc) is a real issue.

When looking for dive buddies, teammates, etc. it is a definite red flag for sure...

 

[Nitrogenius]

Have not been on any scuba boards for a while and had not been aware of this incident.
31 pages also is a lot ..
Read a bit in the beginning and in the end..

So did I get this right?

The deceased diver was on a 24% Dil/Bailout with no Helium content?
He was the surface support of the project according to the article?
No other team members knew what he was going to dive?
There were already past inapproriate Dil/BO issues earlier in the project?

if that is the gist of it, then not much to discuss what went wrong because one would not even even know where to start.
Or tons to discuss, but there is plenty of protocols already being taught, so better to use them.

Very sad tragedy that seem easily avoidable using best practises.

peer pressure, normalisation bias come to mind..

P.S.: not rying to be judgemental just trying to understand if I understood correctly without working through all the 31 pages..

 

[steinbil]

So did I get this right?

The deceased diver was on a 24% Dil/Bailout with no Helium content?
He was the surface support of the project according to the article?
No other team members knew what he was going to dive?
There were already past inapproriate Dil/BO issues earlier in the project?

Mostly, yes. Both tanks were 26/00, but mis-analyzed to 24/00. Computer was set to 24/00, so no reason to believe it was a simple switchup of tanks. AFAIK, members of the team have confirmed they did not know about the mix, and that they were diving with Helium (and lower PO2) at those depths. Check out the Human Diver Blog and the NSS-CDS report.

 

[Manatee Diver]

Of course you are making trade-offs if you elect to only use Standard Gases. If there is one gas for 150-200 foot dives and you are going to 155 feet, then you are making a BIG tradeoff by using a gas that is suitable for 200 feet.

I would totally expect a project like that to have "standard gases" - but I that does not at mean that they are necessarily Standard Gases.

If you use standard gasses, be it agency, team, or project; you aren't making any real decisions about a trade off. Just can you afford the dive or not.

Now I'm not a completely hard line on standard gasses, I'll use 36% in Jupiter because the schedules are designed around 36%. On a 30ft reef bumble where nitrox is $15 a tank, I'll take the air tank.

But I expect projects and more major dives for independent teams standard gases should be the norm.

 

[beldridg]

The report indicates that they were doing dives to stage bottles. I'm a bit confused by the plan detailed in the accident report, but it appears as if they staged 130 ft bottles at 70 feet and then returned to the surface to get the deep 190 ft bottles and then were going to do some funky sawtooth (stage 190, get 130 bottles from 70, shuttle them to 130, then do the deco).

We will never know for sure, but I wonder if he was carrying Nitrox 24 Dil thinking about the first dive (130 feet) and didn't really think about the second dive. Or maybe he thought he would change bottles in-between the dives and forgot to do it?

As per the comments from somebody else, it just seems so odd that an experienced Trimix diver would take Nitrox 24 on a deep dive (and even configure the gasses in the computer) when there was likely a ton of Trimix available.

Unfortunately, it is, of course, all just conjecture.

Regards,

- brett

 

[stuartv]

If you use standard gasses, be it agency, team, or project; you aren't making any real decisions about a trade off. Just can you afford the dive or not.

I don't think that's entirely fair. No matter what the policy is, you always have the possibility that you will be looking at a dive and looking a some cylinders that aren't "right" and have to make a decision (other than just affording it).

Could be a mistake in blending.

Could be a pair of cylinders that just happened to be in the truck that were originally for something completely different.

Could be you used all the "right" cylinders and only have "not-right" cylinders left to choose from (if you want to do the dive more-or-less "now").

Standardized gases are not a replacement for critical thinking and proper decision-making.

After all this discussion, and from what I know about Eric (secondhand, via mutual friends), I'm inclined to think that he did not purposefully do a 200' dive on EAN26.

My GUESS would be that it went something like:

"I'm going to do a 130 foot dive to stage some bottles. I'll use EAN24 for that. It's not deep enough to need helium." He prepared his cylinders and his computers based on that.

Then, time passed. In his mind, his cylinders/gear were all ready to go. Then, somebody said "hey, can you also do a quick bounce and stage these additional cylinders at 190 while you're in?"

In his mind, he was ready to dive and said yes. On CCR, it is easy to forget about MODs. At least, it is EASIER than when you're diving OC. I know I generally fill my dil cylinders with something suitable for deep-ish diving (just not hypoxic), and then use it for anything that comes along - even the pool, if that's what comes along. With that, I often have to remind myself to think through what I'm about to do and what dil I have to make sure it IS suitable for the depth I'm planning. It's just not that often that I have to actually change my dil for a particular dive.

My point being, I could understand how a CCR diver could get their gear all ready to do a dive, mentally check that box, and then maybe get a wrinkle thrown at them and not pause to think through what dil they have versus the dive that the wrinkle proposes. "I'm ready to dive. I dive to 190 all the time. Sure, I can do that bounce."

I WANT to believe that if Eric had paused for a few seconds and thought through what dil he had and his plan to dive to 190, that he would have scrubbed the dive. My friends that had dived with him say he was an extremely intelligent person, so without further info, that is what I will choose to believe happened. A brain fart versus an overtly bad decision. Something that could happen to ANYONE. But, I guess we'll never know for sure....

 

[beldridg]

After all this discussion, and from what I know about Eric (secondhand, via mutual friends), I'm inclined to think that he did not purposefully do a 200' dive on EAN26.

My GUESS would be that it went something like:

"I'm going to do a 130 foot dive to stage some bottles. I'll use EAN24 for that. It's not deep enough to need helium." He prepared his cylinders and his computers based on that.

Then, time passed. In his mind, his cylinders/gear were all ready to go. Then, somebody said "hey, can you also do a quick bounce and stage these additional cylinders at 190 while you're in?"

Yes, this is similar to the conjecture I made in my post above.

But, my understanding of the plan was to not exit the water in between those staging dives. In fact, they surfaced, got the 190 foot deep stage bottles and went right back down. The gap in between those two dives was basically zero.

My thought (as expressed above) is that he grabbed the Nx24 thinking only about the 130 foot dive and didn't think about the deeper dive. It is hard to fathom why an experienced diver would do what he did when a ton of other more suitable gas was (presumably) readily available. It is really a shame.

We'll never know.

Regards,

- brett

 

[Manatee Diver]

Standardized gases are not a replacement for critical thinking and proper decision-making.

Certainly not, but it makes clearer Go/No Go decisions.