Posted by MHK on June 06, 2001 at 10:53:48:
In Reply to: Dive report like the Matterhorn one posted by Wayne on June 06, 2001 at 10:29:12:
Wayne,
You are correct, that was more an anti-Seahunt comment than a general reluctance on my part to post trip reports.. I'll note just before the server went down I put out a lengthy trip report about out time in Akumal..
But perhaps you have a good idea so let me walk everyone through what was involved in the body recovery efforts a few weeks ago. I believe that will go a long way to showing what we do to prepare for a dive of that nature..
I received a call Sunday evening advising that there was a fatality in ~300' at Farnsworth and I was asked if there was a recovery effort would I be willing to get involved. I agreed with the understanding that I would only go down with the guys that I dive with on our team. We would not allow anyone else on our team, no Coast Guard, no sherriffs, no one else but our guys. Early Monday morning I received a call from the Coast Guard to go over coordination ( ie; boats, time and logostics) and shortly after that I received a call from the parents of the victim telling me that they were holding off funeral arrangments pending the outcome of our efforts..
Beginning Sunday evening I started putting out calls to the guys on our team to see who would be available to support the effort. Given such short notice, during a work week, we has some that couldn't make it but we also were able to put together a very qualified team who was willing to take a day off work. It was decided that John Walker, Bob Titus and myself would be the bottom team ( meaning we would be the guys doing teh search ). Our understanding from the information received was that they were anchored in 300' so we needed to plan and then blend our gases accordingly. We all agreed on a bottom mix ( we would never think of diver's using different mixes, nor would we think of doing this dive on air. Our END's will never exceed 100').. Next question became decompression gases. Our team uses standardized deco gases so that part was fairly easy ( note, all mixes are available on the wkpp website).. We then needed a support team.
Jeff Highley, Pat Farina and Adam DeHart were available for support. Many ask us what does a support diver do???
The support team meets the bottom divers at a predetermined depth at a predetermined time. Most often the support team meets the bottom diver's at either 70' or 120' depending on the dive.. In this case it was decided that Pat and Jeff would meet us at 70' and they would arrive there about 3 minutes before we were scheduled to be there. The reason is several fold:
1) If one of the bottom guys has a problem we may need to *hand off* a body. Everyone will be in deco so we would hand off the body to someone who isn't in deco and could surface without incurring a DCI hit.
2) The support diver's also carry with them an AL 40 of additional deco gas. This is done in case one of the bottom diver's bottles get's lost, depleted or what have you.. In any case, there is ample gas available should someone need it...
After completing the required deco obligation to get us to 20', Adam then joins the team at 20'. Adam has an extra bottle of 02, as well as we have a bottle hanging from the boat. Again, for the reasons highlighted above the support diver's have bottles to be handed off.. Also at 20', we are on pure 02, and the risk of oxygen toxicity is the greatest, so the support team will have two diver's beneath the bottom guys and one support diver above us. Should anyone tox out the guys beneath will be able to catch them and surface asap. As we get near the end of our deco obligation the support diver's will start taking out deco bottles off us and either clipping them off to a hang line or bringing them onto the boat..
The role of a support diver is so much more critical than most recreational divers understand. We would never do a dive of this nature absent support. If something happens you don't have the luxury of surfacing to fix the problem, so solving the problem at depth is the objective.. Support diver's are fresh eye's, hands and air sources and they are not in deco so they can go up and down to get added deco gas, argon etc. etc....
When we plan our dives the process is so refined right now in that we know that our bottom gas will be an END of 100' and by using the standard deco gases we are maximizing our 02 windows and are more efficently off gasing..
I hope that helps...
Later