when to 100'?

[Cacia]

would you feel any pain?

I need to watch that with the camera, I like to shoot through the surface and catch myself holding my breath, absentmindedly.

 

[RonFrank]

Actually, what you just said is speculation.

There's a lot that is known about what happened ... and although "who is to blame" in this case is a matter of legal definition, the events of the evening are very well established. It's just not being discussed on the Internet.

Rightfully so ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

I understand that you are closer to this accident than I. I did read the thread and know what has been said. Many things were stated as fact, and some are in conflict with what others also stated as fact. I can form opinions based on my judgment of the posters who made the various statements, but for those of us without first hand knowledge of those involved, it remains speculation.

As I suggested while the events maybe known, I think only those involved can speak to if they felt comfortable, and as to why. People also tend to avoid blame and/or guilt when bad things happen which makes me skeptical of what those involved may say. Blame must be left to a court of law regardless of my personal opinion.

What I said is: There seems to be a LOT of speculation as to why the events occurred, and who may be to blame. Anyone reading the thread could hardly disagree even if those closer to the incident may have more of the facts.

 

[BKP]

I think you missed the point dude.. Its not lucky if you survive an uncontrolled ascent from 100 feet having been down there as short as you will have on a AL80 tank.. Its bad luck if youre able to get killed (or even hurt) from it..

No, Im not encouraging anybody to go diving to 100 feet without the proper qualifications, nor to not dive by the tables, but realisticly its not likely to get bent or killed from such an ascent.

Let me know where to send the flowers...

 

[lamont]

I understand that you are closer to this accident than I. I did read the thread and know what has been said. Many things were stated as fact, and some are in conflict with what others also stated as fact. I can form opinions based on my judgment of the posters who made the various statements, but for those of us without first hand knowledge of those involved, it remains speculation.

As I suggested while the events maybe known, I think only those involved can speak to if they felt comfortable, and as to why. People also tend to avoid blame and/or guilt when bad things happen which makes me skeptical of what those involved may say. Blame must be left to a court of law regardless of my personal opinion.

What I said is: There seems to be a LOT of speculation as to why the events occurred, and who may be to blame. Anyone reading the thread could hardly disagree even if those closer to the incident may have more of the facts.

If you can't draw any conclusions about that incident and make some reasonable judgements based on information available then you will never be able to draw any conclusions from any accident. The information available to the public doesn't get much better than that accident and the causes can't be much more clear cut.

There seems to be a standard out there which requires objective certainty before anything can be discussed which is absolutely unattainable. It amounts to nothing more than gag order towards discussing any incident or accident -- if that was applied consistently then the scuba community would never discuss any accident or incident at all, which does a huge disservice to the scuba community at large.

Open your eyes. The dive plan in question was bad, nobody should ever participate in a dive plan that bad. The dive instructor on the dive should not have been there and should have tried to stop it, not condone or possibly encourage it. The most generous reading of the incident possible still makes the dive instructor someone who should not be anyone's dive buddy or instructor and someone that the scuba community in the PNW needs to know about and avoid. If you can't at least make those kinds of determinations based on the information available in this incident then you are simply paralyzed through fear of 'speculation' -- while in this case the greater harm would be sitting by and conding this kind of action.

It doesn't get better than this. There will be no coroner's inquest because there's no body. Even if the instructor were arrested or taken to court, most likely it there would be a plea bargain or out of court settlement so that the facts of the matter wouldn't be known to the public. This objective information that the anti-speculation crowd wants to see simply never hits the light of day. Ever. I can't think of a single incident where the information available to the public has lived up to those kinds of high standards. In the absence of information that meets those high standards, divers have to come to reasonable conclusions based on the information which is available.

 

[Crazy Fingers]

hey all-
just wondering about depth(for me) i know others have been MUCH deeper, but i haven't seen 100' yet, so it's deep for me.
for instance- while in hawaii, we (2) were going to dive to about 80-90' at a spot (with DM, and 2others) we're only OW with 10 dives at that point. i felt comfortable, wife was worried. it was the whole " we can't go deeper than 70' because we're only OW" more than the depth that made her worried. anyway, we didn't do the dive because another boat was on the spot and ended up at 65' for 2 awsome dives.
i'm, however, not one who wants to "break records" , just wondering if it came up again- wouldn't it be o-k , if with a DM ( couldn't it go to AOW - deep dive?)
thoughts?

My 11th dive after certification was to 101 feet deep inside a cavern. Before that, I had done mostly beach dives to 20 feet. We didn't have no DM or instructor, and it was easy. I felt fine. Of course nothing went wrong, and it shouldn't unless you dive really junked-out gear, ignore your buddies, don't watch your air supply, and have a tendency to freak out and panic like an idiot. Just remember what they taught you and it shouldn't be any big deal.

Seriously, you don't need to be on the tit of a DM. Just get out there, go do it. Realize the consequences of screwing up increase exponentially with depth. Then choose to accept the risk and do it! Forget about what your certification says. That 60 foot limit or whatever PADI comes up with is just so they can make you take another class and then try to sell you more shiut. If you want to dive to 130, then dive to 130. If you want to try 150, then try 150. Just pay attention to air, nark level, NDL, the condition of your equipment, and your buddy. Don't F it up.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

My 11th dive after certification was to 101 feet deep inside a cavern. Before that, I had done mostly beach dives to 20 feet. We didn't have no DM or instructor, and it was easy. I felt fine. Of course nothing went wrong, and it shouldn't unless you dive really junked-out gear, ignore your buddies, don't watch your air supply, and have a tendency to freak out and panic like an idiot. Just remember what they taught you and it shouldn't be any big deal.

Seriously, you don't need to be on the tit of a DM. Just get out there, go do it. Realize the consequences of screwing up increase exponentially with depth. Then choose to accept the risk and do it! Forget about what your certification says. That 60 foot limit or whatever PADI comes up with is just so they can make you take another class and then try to sell you more shiut. If you want to dive to 130, then dive to 130. If you want to try 150, then try 150. Just pay attention to air, nark level, NDL, the condition of your equipment, and your buddy. Don't F it up.

Well ... two people died locally in the past six months following exactly that type of advice.

Hate to say it, but that's pretty much the attitude that got the guy we were just talking about dead and sent two of his buddies to the chamber.

Anybody who approaches diving that casually is just relying on luck to keep them alive ... and that's an incredibly stupid way to dive.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[ClayJar]

would you feel any pain?

I need to watch that with the camera, I like to shoot through the surface and catch myself holding my breath, absentmindedly.

From the materials I've read, you don't feel pain before experiencing lung barotrauma. It's not like an ear squeeze where you can feel it getting worse and worse until it's bad.

As far as shooting and finding yourself holding your breath, if you can hold your airway open while not actively breathing (I can, apparently some can't), that would be "safe". If you actually close your airway, it becomes a question of extents. The more air in your lungs and the shallower you are, the closer to overexpansion you are.

If you have half your lungs' volume of air at 33 fsw, you could theoretically get away with not suffer lung overexpansion even if you rocketed right to the surface while holding your breath, as that would expand to one full volume. On the other hand, if you're only about 3 feet down when you inhale all the way to your lungs' capacity and hold your breath to the surface, you can embolize and die. Death without warning is *such* a significant downside that holding your breath is all but impossible to justify.

IMPORTANT NOTE: I am *absolutely* ***NOT*** saying it is safe to hold your breath while on scuba!!! There are physiological factors at play that simple physics *does* *not* address. Hoovering is inconvenient, but death is a *total* bummer.

 

[Crazy Fingers]

Anybody who approaches diving that casually is just relying on luck to keep them alive ... and that's an incredibly stupid way to dive.

How is that stupid? I clearly said to do what matters... pay attention to NDL, condition of gear, buddy, air supply, nark level, etc. I also clearly said not to F it up because the consequences get exponentially worse with depth. The point being that if he follows the very basic rules he was taught in OW class, he will be fine. There's no point in getting all worked up over 100 feet because it really isn't that damn complicated.

What would be "stupid" would be to not look at your gauges, table, or computer, totally blow your ascent rate, dive drunk, etc.

On the other hand, if you think that this person should limit himself to 60 feet just because it's written on paper, or pay a DM some silly amount of money just to hold his hand to 70 feet, then I think that's incredibly stupid. It's not like he's deco diving to 200 feet or something.

 

[PfcAJ]

Crazy Fingers, your attitude to diving is insanely unsafe.

To think that at 11 dives you have the knowlege, ability, skill, awareness and experience to safely dive into an overhead environment at 101ft reeks of overconfidence and poor judgement.

Things DO go wrong. Things happen that are out of your hands. Regardless if you maintain your gear properly, failures occur. Dive enough, and it will happen to you.

You state that "nothing went wrong". Not exactly what a person should count on when diving, especially when diving in an overhead environment.

I advise the OP to disregard your posts.

 

[TSandM]

The fact is, we can all do a great many dives of varying characteristics, and enjoy them, and go home just fine, as LONG AS NOTHING GOES WRONG. When something goes wrong, then you find out how prepared you were for the dive you were doing. Most people simply don't THINK about the "what ifs", as I have written about before. Like the woman I dove with in Indonesia, who was horrified that Fundies required mask remove and replace while hovering. "I'm sure I couldn't do that!", she said. She had been diving on a 600 foot wall that morning. What was she going to do when someone kicked her mask off at 100 feet on that wall? "Oh, I'm always very careful when someone is close to me," she said. But what about the person who comes over the top of you, who you can't see coming?

What do you do when current keeps you from getting back to the upline?

What do you do when somebody gets entangled, and getting them out puts you into deco?

What do you do when your instabuddy goes through all his gas, and turns to you in panic at 100 ft on the wreck?

What do you do when you go to use your pull dump, and the corrugated hose just comes off?

Lots of pretty simple, pretty possible scenarios.