Posted by calabdiver on October 08, 2001 at 10:00:48:
In Reply to: Jezuz, now who's the alpa dive goul. posted by Creeping us out on September 24, 2001 at 21:21:04:
if you take a problem no matter how slight and multiply it by millions of times then eventually somebody is going to have a real accident. i have always felt that rented gear was only good enough for certification classes, and in classes like that you dont go deeper than 25 fsw and you have at least two diving pros watching you all the time.
the worst thing about rented gear is that the regulators dont "breathe" very well at great depth. in addition, tank pressure gauges are not always calibrated well on the low end. and rented buoyancy compensators [B/Cs] are not normally large enough with enough lift capacity to lift a diver off the bottom at great depths where the wetsuit foam is crushed by the water pressure and becomes suddenly negatively buoyant.
an aluminum tank is nice in that if you weight yourself neutrally with a full tank, it will lift you up as it gets empty, whereas steel does not. steel tanks are for experienced divers not for amateurs. but if you overweight yourself even with an aluminum tank you can still be too heavy for your B/C at depth.
renting gear for really deep scuba divings has always been dangerous. i feel sorry for the diver and the family that were the ones to experience this in reality this time.
I completely agree with all of MikeK's observations on this fatality recovery. it looks to me from reading Mike's posts that (1) the rented gear was not designed for a deep dive; (2) the B/C was not large enough in terms of lift capacity for a deep dive; (3) the weight belt was either not functioning properly so as to be able to be ditched in an emergency or (4) the diver got the belt snagged somehow on his other gear while trying to ditch it; (5) the diver was aware of basic emergency procedures such as weight belt ditching so as to have some level of self confidence in himself to make the dive; (6) the diver was not real familiar with the critical need to monitor his own tank air pressure or (7) the diver was affected by nitrogen narcosis at depth so as to have been limited in the things he could concentrate on, and tank are pressure was not one of them; (8) the buddy who tried to rescue him and who lost consciousness in the process was in over his head and is lucky to be alive too; (9) when you dive with a buddy there are twice as many things that can go wrong on a dive; (10) when you trust your buddy to help you out there are 3 possibilities: (a) he/she will succeed, or (b) both of you will die, or (c) one of you will live and the other will not.
in the case of this fatality, it seems to me the surviving buddy was fairly lucky, and this dive could have been a whole lot worse having had the potential of TWO fatalities rather than just one.
MikeK is one of the people who volunteers their time to go hunt for missing divers. sometimes the lost divers are recovered and ofttimes they are not. in this case it seems to me that a lot of people's prayers have been answered in that the body was finally recovered.
there are lessons to be learned for everyone living on the West Coast whenever there is a fatality, and there are lessons for the visitors to the West Coast too. for those of us who live here, we need to understand that we ourselves could make a mistake at any time that could cost us our lives, even though we dont think it can ever happen to us. for the divers who visit our coast, the lesson is that we have to watch over them better, and that we ourselves are guilty of not doing that.
thank you again, MikeK, for going on the hunt and finding the missing diver. great job!
/s/ Karl S.
PADI D/M