Posted by MHK on September 18, 2001 at 10:45:43:
Further to Kendall's post I wanted to express my thoughts and gratitudes to the many in the local dive community that joined together to help assist in our efforts. I received several e-mails from the family members and they wanted everyone to know that they very much appreciate the efforts and that this recovery will go a long way in easing the very understandable pain that the family is going through.
I want to personally thank Capt. Ray ( a.k.a. Capt. weird and grumpy). Ray spent a fair amount of time speaking to Greg ( skipper of the Bottom Schratcher) and accumulated very valuable information. Ray then did a very extensive grid pattern and provided the bottom team with invaluable information that allowed us to complete the search 9 minutes into the dive. Thank you Capt. Ray..
We worked in cooperation with the L.A. County Sherriff search and rescue team. Due to the reported depths, and the limitations of the Sherriff's team, the plan was that our team would do a very extensive search pattern and to the extent that we found the body in 160' or shallower we were to simply send up a lift bag and mark the location. The sherriff's team would then go down, take photo's and then retrieve the body. BTW, I'd rather refer to the person as Wayne in lieu of using other desriptive terms.. If Wayne were deeper then 160' we were instructed to retrieve him. We found him at 146' and followed the instructions.. The Sherriff's team was then able to secure the scene and complete the necessary work.
A couple of facts that we noted:
1) his SPG read 0 psi;
2) he did not have a regulator in his mouth;
3) he was diving with a steel tank and a wetsuit;
4) his weightbelt had 29 lbs and appeared to have been attempted to drop as it was partially off and was resting between the knees and the ankles. It should be noted that the buckle APPEARED to be malfunctioning and MAY have been precluded from ditching. The sherriffs team has taken all the equipment and will preform independent analysis;
5) his depth gauge, which was the old style needle version, indicated a max. depth of 156'. Although speculation arose as to whether that was accurate inasmuch as it's possible that the needle was not reset from a previous dive and the surviving buddies computer did not indicate such a depth;
6) the gear appeared to be rental gear, the style of which is typical of a rental configuration. ie; jacket style BC, sherwood regulator complete with *octo* and he was NOT wearing a computer, either wrist mounted nor on the console;
I also wanted to thank the guys on our team for their efforts. The bottom team was Kendall Raine, Pat Farina, Fred Colburn and myself and Terry May worked as surface manager and support diver. We used a 21/25 bottom mix, a 50/50 mix at 70' and 02 at 20'. Our plan was to do a 45 minute dive planned to 150', but we had many different schedules with us to the extent that we needed to go deeper and given that we were able to begin our ascent at 10 minutes we adjusted our deco schedules on the fly and were out of the water in less than 1 hour and Kendall doppler tested all of us after the dive and there was little, to no, bubble formation.. We attribute that partially to the use of scooters ( ie; no work) and the fact that we used trimix and approriate deco gases. Thank you guys, it's a pleasure diving with you..
And lastly I wanted to thank the Sgt. Connely, Mark Lonsdale and the rest of the L.A. county dive team. They were a very professional group and made a very difficult situation as comfortable as possible..
Out of respect for the family I will make no further public comments about the recovery efforts..
Later