Posted by MHK on February 06, 2001 at 12:47:43:
In Reply to: Re: A sidenote-Right, again. posted by Kevin on February 06, 2001 at 12:25:21:
I don't think this post is going to be particularly popular but it bears noting.
We keep discussing the fact that the mistakes should be disussed so other's can learn from them. I agree with that point. But, for example, in the case with Tony's rig. This rig was a complete mess, he was told time and time again, but instead Deep Tech featured this rig in an edition, ABC news did a segment on it, he toured the various dive shows showing this thing off and then died shortly thereafter.
I was with Ron Fuller ( a very experinced diver ) on July 15th ( sinking of the Yukon ) and this was about 2 or 3 weeks after Tony died. Ron and I discussed Tony's rig, as Ron was diving his own version of a homemade rebreather. He asked me what I thought and I told him flat out that I thought he was nuts for diving solo on his homemade rebreather particularly in light of what just happened to Tony. Ron indicated that his home made rebreather was different than Tony's homemade rebreather and so he justified it. Two weeks later Ron was found after a solo dive on his homemade rebreather dead at 60' in Scripps Canyon...
My point is that it isn't simply good enough to discuss these fatalities it's very important to take the lesson away from the discussion..
The Solo debate comes to mind because even after last years horrific events, we still have people getting on here day in and day out ignoring the lesson. They'll tell you it *buddyless* diving, or they'll call it independant diving, or they'll talk about the same ocean buddy system but the lesson isn't learned...
We have lost diver's in the last year with 3000+ dives, with 2000+ dives, with 1000+ dives and 500+ dives.. These were experienced diver's in many cases, all of whom probably made the same arguements that we hear here every day right up until the dive that killed them..
Now EINS opening up this debate in another thread and blindly ignoring the correlation between dead solo diver's and the fact that they were diving solo and calling it bull makes absolutely no sense to me... Ken Kurtis writing articles for CDN and ignoring the opportunity to speak out against it, and rather than take that opportunity he puts out a * How to Solo Dive* list.. That's the height of irresponsibilty particularly from a guy that walks around on his boats and tells his students that * you WILL die if you breathe Nitrox*.. If we don't take the opportunity to use this forum ( and other's) to help denounce some of these ridiculously stupid actions that we are wasting our time.
What is the purpose of discussing the details if the lesson isn't going to get applied???
Later