Wilmington Incident - 16 Oct

[Tom Winters]

I just read this thread after I heard about a shop owner dying up there. She had less than 50 dives and was probably diving to 100'+ on air and in an area with strong currents? Alone? There was a lot of nonsense in the three pages of posts to get any salient information about this, but it sure seems like a totally avoidable situation.

 

[dumpsterDiver]

Do you know for fact that it gets difficult to breathe when running out of air at 100'? At ambient pressure with a firefighter SCBA you get at least 4 or 5 higher resistance breaths. In the pool at 12ft it seems more like only 1 or 2 more breaths after you sense something is wrong. I am guessing that due to the increased consumption at 100' that you would run out part way through a breath with no warning and no time to develop a plan. For clarification, when I said it sounded unlikely in my previous post I was referring to the fact that I think it is unlikely that it would not be a big deal. I have always felt like I could survive the ascent with a trip to the chamber being the best case scenario. My backup plan(besides my pony bottle) had always been to breathe the air from the BC with the understanding that I would likely have a nasty lung infection. I wonder how may more breaths you could get from an empty tank during a 100' ascent?

Well I have run a tank down to where I could sense I was low on air many, many times.. hundreds of times, sometimes in shallow, sometimes in deeper water.

Some generalities: the lower performing your regulator is, the more likely it is to respond to a low tank pressure by showing some resistance in breathing effort. A very high performance balanced reg will allow you to breath down a tank to a LOW pressure without you sensing it (in general).

If you are working hard, breathing hard, SUCKING on the reg, you will get a little hint of resistance at the very end of an inhalation cycle. This is NOT good practice, but sometimes i don't watch my air that carefully on a rec dive and I know I am low on air, instead of looking at the gage, I can sometimes take a super hard, fast, full inhalation and if I feel a little slow down in air delivery at the END of the inhalation, I am outta there.. might not even look at the gage. Generally will put a puff of air in the BC, and just start my ascent.

Now if you compare this type of diving to a diver who is warm and is doing macro photography, resting, doing no activity and trying to breath very slowly and gently in order to avoid scaring his subject... well this diver really can suck his tank to almost zero without knowing it, because he is just sipping it.

I do not dive hardly ever without a pony bottle, so running low on air is a non event for me, for a solo, no deco stop.....I hardly ever use the pony to ascend.

Another comment: If you are ascending on a very low tank and you have no redundancy, the most important thing to do is relax. Don't use your thigh muscles, it is better to be SLIGHTLY bouyant and just gently float up in a very controlled manner, venting air from the BC as needed to maintain complete control. of course you want to breath very slowly and conserve your air. When it gets hard to draw air on ascent, it can be scary and FEEL bad and when you get in this mind set, your metabolism and adrenaline will make you burn more oxygen, so it is REALLY important to try to keep calm.

One thing which can help you, is to press the purge button rather than simply suck on the reg. Pressing the purge,, will deliver a slow and steady stream of air which is pschologically much easier to "accept" than to be sucking super hard and getting just a slow stream of air from your reg.

If you don't beleive me try this... try to breath through two straws while sitting in a chair.. for the first experiment, try to inhale really hard and fast... it makes you feel bad.... then rest a little and do the same thing but concentrate on inhaling super slowly and gently... you will be able to breath through one or two straws for a lot longer in this manner.

 

[MX727]

breathe - verb

breath - noun

 

[seanmcfarland]

I don't know what format that link was but no good for me. Here is link of the most recent video I could find on youtube.
Meg tooth trip October 2011 - Southern Maryland Divers - YouTube I see what you mean about the vis and low skill of the divers using reels in the video in one scene in the video as they come back looks a christmas tree of lines comes off the anchor line, that is the very worst way to tie in with a reel. Super chance of entanglement for others coming back.

I was on the dive with S. MD Divers in the video and that is the same entanglement hazard I referred to in a previous post. Those are normal conditions since everyone ties their own line and heads off into the sand searching for teeth. It's not something that particularly dangerous, but is a hazard nonetheless.

 

[CaptJT]

I was on the dive with S. MD Divers in the video and that is the same entanglement hazard I referred to in a previous post. Those are normal conditions since everyone ties their own line and heads off into the sand searching for teeth. It's not something that particularly dangerous, but is a hazard nonetheless.

Yes I understand that is very common when diving the ledges. One would think after all these years the boats would add info during the briefing that divers should NOT tie their lines to the anchor line but next to it or at the very least at the bottom not up off the bottom. Thus removing that hazard from the dive, but when you have the blind leading the blind and the blind teaching the inexperienced these things will happen.

 

[highlandfarmwv]

What I saw of the lines tied off on that dive, all were safe on the bottom. The DM who sets the anchor and ties the boat in runs a line perpendicular to the ledges. Divers travel down this line and generally tie off it in different spots. They are not all coming off the anchor line of Johnnie's boat. The divers on board that day all seemed to be very experienced in this type of diving. Many do not use doubles, including myself. I use a BC with a 33 cf pony attached to main 100cf steel tank. The pony is of a richer Nitrox mix for using at the deco stop. There is always an extra bottle hanging on the line for anyone who might have run low on air while deco-ing.

 

[CaptJT]

What I saw of the lines tied off on that dive, all were safe on the bottom. The DM who sets the anchor and ties the boat in runs a line perpendicular to the ledges. Divers travel down this line and generally tie off it in different spots. They are not all coming off the anchor line of Johnnie's boat. The divers on board that day all seemed to be very experienced in this type of diving. Many do not use doubles, including myself. I use a BC with a 33 cf pony attached to main 100cf steel tank. The pony is of a richer Nitrox mix for using at the deco stop. There is always an extra bottle hanging on the line for anyone who might have run low on air while deco-ing.

The discussion is about the video at this point not what happen to Amy. I should explain about the down falls of the deco gas on the back, many have put the wrong reg in the mouth with a gear configuration that way including Gary Gentile. But that would be for another thread.

 

[Shot a man in Reno...]

It looks like the COast Guard report on this accident finally came out (with many unanswered questions) November 1, 2012:

Investigation Activity Report: FLYING FISH; Personnel Casualties On: 10/16/2011 MISLE Activity Number: 4169560 Originating Unit: Sector North Carolina MISLE Activity Owner: Commandant (CG-5453) MISLE Activity Controller: Commandant (CG-5453) MISLE Case Number:

I. INCIDENT BRIEF

On October 16, the victim was a crewmember onboard the M/V FLYING FISH conducting recreational scuba diving hunting for megaladon shark teeth at the site commonly known as Meg's Ledge, approx. 30 miles off the coast of Wilmington, NC. She entered the water as a pair with her diving partner at approx 1230, who noticed after 20 minutes that she was running low on air. He motioned for her to return to the anchor line and begin her ascent. She passed another diver while swimming to the anchor line, but was not seen alive again. The next time she was seen was floating approx. 100' off the bow of the vessel, where she was recovered by crew onboard the boat. CPR was performed, however she never regained consciousness. IO's are currently awaiting report from Medical Examiner. 16OCT11: SCC received a call from the Vessel Winter Queen reporting Dive Boat Flying Fish has a female onboard who is unresponsive after a dive. Victim was first noticed approximately 100 feet off bow of vessel face down in water with no diving gear on. Victim initially had went with her husband (dive partner) down to look for sharks teeth and after approximately 20minutes below the water had decided to surface. (under investigation) 18OCT11: IO's conducted interviews with all crewmembers onboard at the time of the incident. One member stated that he discovered the victim's diving equipment near the anchor line with no air present in the tanks. This was discovered at a depth of approx. 100'. At this time the gear is unrecovered. The victim was the owner of the boat, conducting her only dive of the day with three other crew in the water. 22OCT11: CG Divers recovered gear used by victim at a depth of approx. 100'. Gear is currently awaiting testing. Activity pending Medical Examiner report

 

[bankyf]

Was this report really issued by the Coast Guard??? Still awaiting ME report? Still awaiting gear testing? After a year? Wow!

 

[Shot a man in Reno...]

Yep,
You can access it by going to USCG CGMIX IIR Search Page
and search for: Vessel Involved = Flying Fish

Every time there is an incident, people post that "We'll know more once the CG report comes out".
We get a report after one year that answers very few questions and only lists activity out to ~1 week after the incident.

At least that's more than was provided for the death of Oct 13, 2011, diving from the Hawksbill.
As of Jan. 16, 2013 is listed as "Incident Brief Under Review".