Bering Sea Gold: Under the Ice

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Not even a bailout bottle. A show that could be name What not to do for ice diving and everyone is still alive. Just goes to show you what a waste all the training,SOPs and gear is! :wink:
 
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Becky
I think my friend Mark was with you guys up there ,he said it was interesting to say the least. I will try to catch it when I get back to the real world

Cheers
Michael
 
Op do any of the dredgers have any training whatsoever? When do we see the first embolism? Yikes!
 
How did John Bunce pass away? The only thing available is an accidental gun shot wound.
 
To be fair, drysuits are far too delicate for the work and you can’t wear enough insulation for 8 hours in 28° F water — even if you could keep from punching it full of holes. They all used hot water, but only one group used an actual hot water suit with a bypass manifold and tubing in the suit to distribute the water. The rest just stuffed the supply hose in their wet suit.

Hot water suits used in commercial diving supplies 2½ GPM at 110° F to the hip-mounted manifold. That is the temperature after the loss getting the water to the diver. Commercial divers working in HeO2 will also heat the breathing gas when working in these temperatures since about 50% of our thermal loss is through respiration.

Thanks for the explanation, that does make sense. I have never used that setup, so I will defer to your experience. I imagine they are having major issues keeping their hands warm without that tubing.
 
Becky,

From you profile, you are an experienced, well trained diver. From the TV show, the divers are pretty much learning on the fly and obviously safety issues for them are ranked pretty low.

The filming was nice and the only reason I watch the show (I tivo and blank out the commercials with the dramatic topside personal encounters and side stories).

Now I realize you are not there as an instructor / babysitter and don't want to go down that road. But a couple of burning questions pop up.

If they actually get them selves into a serious life threatening situation (not a recreation / manufactured episodes), do you step in to help?

How do you feel in your gut when you see them do something stupid and dangerous?

On the show, most of them look, well, stupid. Is the real or just a case of gold fever lowering a typical persons IQ?


Thanks!
 
What did the crew dive. Wet or dry! And what cameras did you use?


We dove drysuits. Most of us had drygloves. Shoot I use those in anything less than 65 degrees :) I used fourth element Halo 3D and was really comfortable in the water up to about 45-60min then because we weren't moving around a lot hands and toes would get really cold. Some divers used heater vests. I actually never used mine. We were also on OTS full face masks which were great to use in cold water. At least doing multiple dives a day for 25 days in a row you could still feel your face. Plus we could talk to the dredgers and the surface and producers as well. We were on OC so we could move around and film but we also had the OTS com line/tether going back to the surface though our own dive hole about 50ft from the dredgers hole. We shot this with Sony EX1R's/nano/Gates.

The Gators offered to let us try their hot water suit. I really wanted to but it wouldn't have been appropriate.

---------- Post Merged at 11:06 AM ---------- Previous Post was at 10:57 AM ----------

Becky,

From you profile, you are an experienced, well trained diver. From the TV show, the divers are pretty much learning on the fly and obviously safety issues for them are ranked pretty low.

The filming was nice and the only reason I watch the show (I tivo and blank out the commercials with the dramatic topside personal encounters and side stories).

Now I realize you are not there as an instructor / babysitter and don't want to go down that road. But a couple of burning questions pop up.

If they actually get them selves into a serious life threatening situation (not a recreation / manufactured episodes), do you step in to help?

How do you feel in your gut when you see them do something stupid and dangerous?

On the show, most of them look, well, stupid. Is the real or just a case of gold fever lowering a typical persons IQ?


Thanks!

I'm glad your watching!

We had a lot of safety meetings and talked a lot about that. No one was ignorant to the fact that it's dangerous. I asked that exact question about safety and when do we stop filming. The answer is obvious, you don't let someone die if you can help but you have to watch for your own safety. No one wants anyone to die for tv. We were usually really close to the ice hole. I'd say within 50ft or less except on the shamrock.

The other thing to know is reality TV isn't always reality.
 

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