Blue Hole death - a defence, sort of!.

[TX101]

Stuart,

Let me know if you fancy another trip out on Inspiration - I hope to be out most weekends for a dive. If not me, the chances of someone from our Club being there are pretty good.

Rgds
Bryan

I'm just leaving work to drive to Plymouth for the weekend.. I was going to PM you for your Brighton trip, but I think my wife wants to get some basic OW diving in before the trip to Sharm at the end of september...

But I *will* dive there again!!!

[TX101]

just an update that I read off thedecosop.com ...

I'd provide a link, but you have to register to see threads.



Hello,

My apologies to all, I was initially misinformed regarding one detail: The dead diver apparently was actually diving with doubles (I wonder if the deceased actually believed that this made it ok?). Furthermore, said doubles, along with the weights-integrated BCD, were recovered today from 168m by a well-known local technical diving instructor, Tarek Omar. The body of the diver was not found.

Why on Earth a dive to 168 meters would be made to search for a body at all is beyond me. Ask Tarek.

If I hear anything new I will post it here.

Regards,
Hassan


Wonder if it was a bounce dive?? (ducks)

[Deep Thought]

"But the guy has put someone else's life at risk, the poor sod who had to go and recover the body."

1.Anybody doing this will presumably be properly trained , experienced and equipped. Thus surely the dive would be well within their capabilities and not risky.

2.He never asked anyone to go and get him, that is their own choice.

[Finless]

Simon,

At least you'd wait until it was on e-bay, a couple of years ago on a climbing trip to Scotland I was volunteered to abasil down the top of one of the routes to check the ice conditions. No sooner than I was over the edge, hanging 700ft above the bottom of the corrie than the two gentlemen from Liverpool who were with me at the time, had dived straight into my rucksack to see if I had any nice shinny bits of kit they could "borrow"....


A bit (lot?) off topic , sorry Bren.....


John

I trust you were able, at a later time, to demonstate some alternative uses for crampons to them?

[Mick F]

DAN also state in there insurance that you are insured to your cert level or if you are training to the level to which you are being trained.

Andrew

DAN is one of the few insurances that actually don't specify limitations on their policies. From the DAN Europe website:

The policies obtained through DAN membership do not lay down limitations relative to any training standard or to what training organization you are affiliated with.

[Mark Chase]

Stuart,


I've never done a bounce dive but I suspect the ascent/descent rate would be much higher than those that V Planner quote. That's why I was hoping to hear from someone who had done one.


Rgds
Bryan

Doing a rapid decent on air is not a good plan. Narcosis and physical exertion stress being the worst thing to a deep air diver. The decent is as slow as practical. I used 10m/min ish and found that pretty stress free. Just dropping like a stone is not as easy as it sounds.

I did a 70m air dive once and did a slow decent to 50m then sped up for the last 20. I Touched 70 on a pp02 of 1.8 then turned and retreated at about the same pace. My buddy continued on to do 80m. I waited at the 50m ledge for him to come back. Longest short wait of my life.

I did the dive of Requa Point in Gozo. You could follow the bottom out from the shore so there was always a point of reference. There were no currents or other potential hazards so it was pretty straightforward. I did it on twin independent 10s and a gagged bottom reg.

There was a lot of gung ho diving that week and I got caught up in it because I am a competitive person. The winner now a PADI instructor did 85m. Second place 80m was a PADI instructor at the time; I decided not to go past 70 so I came third. It was a case of brain over hart. I have to admit to a strong urge to go for it but now I am glad I didn’t. I would never go past 70 on air no mater how good the conditions.

You might be interested to know that Bret Gilliam dived to 452ft ( 138m) on a single 100cf tank (a single 15ltr tank) in Feb 1990 to set a new world record. He spent 1min 40 seconds at 138m doing mathematical problems word problems and answering questions on current events. Then he started to ascend. Total dive time was one hour sixteen mins. He made no errors in the math tasks set. One of the questions was 3X10X22=?

His first deco stop was at 50ft or 15m?????

No deep stops in 1990

ATB

Mark Chase

[TX101]

I did a 70m air dive once and did a slow decent to 50m then sped up for the last 20. I Touched 70 on a pp02 of 1.8 then turned and retreated at about the same pace. My buddy continued on to do 80m. I waited at the 50m ledge for him to come back. Longest short wait of my life.

Does that really say "puckered up starfish about hear"?

[Pierre Farrugia]

Hello,

As I always say, don't compare UK diving conditions with warm water conditions. When diving deep air, my limit is not narcosis but PpO2, and my limit at depth is 1.4, so 60m! To do these dives we build up a lot and invested in our kit and training as well. At the moment we are diving every Sun to 60m on air with 60% for deco without any problems, is it better doing this on trimix YES! But if you have to right conditions, the right training and buildup dives, the calculated risk goes down. Also you cannot compare a 60m dive with a 70, 80 or 100m dive as every meter counts. Also doing this dives with only 2 trusted same trained divers which I can trust underwater and of which can draw a line on their own limits. An other experiment I did last year was doing 4 dives to 60m on air for 30min with my buddies on trimix with an END of 30 to watch for any signs of narcosis or stupid things done by me and everything was ok.

Everyone is free to do what they want, as are the divers who do recover the death, it's always up to them to decide (altogh who recover would not be so stupid to go on air, I would want my mind to be 100% if I will ever go to recover a body), but these people have to keep in mind that by doing so and killing themselves they don't only risk their lifes but may impose bans to us who do it to our real personal limits. Just like diving in Uk on somewrecks where you should have not entered or collected things in war graves, what happened they started to bad wrecks and this could happen to sites like blue hole , or Dorothea.

regards

Pierre

[JohnK]

.

Hi Kirky,

So if a little kid runs out into the road and gets run over, is it his fault or the fault of his 'peers' who should have taught them the green cross code and accompanied them until they could cross the road properly? Am I being too PC here?

I have no problems with guys taking risks and doing dives that get them killed, look at Mark Ellyat and the risks he takes, or JJ and GI, but there has to be some kind of structure to simply prevent 'crossing the road' until they are ready or at least have some idea of what they are doing and the dangers involved.

Andy

And

There is a bit of a difference between an adult cocking up and a kid not knowing any different. The kid is still in training and when it learns what is dangerous then it can make its choices.

[darthmoll]

Sorry, but it IS only a recommendation. Padi certifications have no status in law. They may only be certified to dive to 18m, but legally they can do whatever the heck they like.

It is not a recomendation, the licence (OW) is for 18 meters, if you chose to dive outside of your level of qualification thats your choice. If you ever try to claim insurance, if it can be proved that you were diving outside your cert level, you may find that you will be disapointed, and have your claim refused