Posted by nate on June 27, 2001 at 12:56:36:
In Reply to: My comments posted by MHK on June 27, 2001 at 11:36:39:
If you read carefully, you see that on the terrain they were covering, it took 15 minutes to do the descent (and presumeably a similar amount of time to ascend). That may be where the 60 minutes of deco comes from. I get a 63 minute run time with DDPLAN, but who knows what the real dive parameters were.
As far as Leon Scamahorn, he is manufacturing the Megaladon - some new rebreather that Mount and others have been talking up on the RB list for a couple of months now. He's been around a lot longer though in the RB world (Scamahorn slide). If you look at his website, looks like he has a lot of covert ops type experience (where a rebreather is actually a necessity).
You are on target in that more support is usually better. A lot of people do dives like this without support and live, and some don't. Where do you draw the line in terms of deciding when surface support is a necessity?
Until it is resolved as to whether he really had an in-water heart attack, there is nothing to be gained by critiquing the dead's knowledge of gradients, or the bereaved's decision not to break deco to help him.
Stick with the issue of support divers if you want to educate us.