Diving incident at Eagles Nest Sink

[PfcAJ]

naw, I bet the 95 would last about 8 mins if tha at the rmv the diver would be pulling

I did it with a 1.0 but yea I wouldn't be surprised. Its just not much time.

 

[cerich]

I did it with a 1.0 but yea I wouldn't be surprised. Its just not much time.

given all that was going on, i would not be surprised if rmv was 2+

 

[Bison Ravi]

Maybe I missed it, but is there a theory why they didn't follow the line back trough the restriction, specially in bad visibility? Or did the line became displaced? Or lost line?

 

[PfcAJ]

Maybe I missed it, but is there a theory why they didn't follow the line back trough the restriction, specially in bad visibility? Or did the line became displaced? Or lost line?

Which restriction?

 

[Ron Lee]

It looks like commentary again is taken by some to be "judgmental' and therefore inappropriate. You are not going to be able to examine this event and adjust your dive planning/execution if you are not willing to see where mistakes were made either before the dive or during it.

My current question related to the notion that once the rebreather of diver 2 was lost that they were doomed. Do people plan this type dive with the possibility that a rebreather will fail and that carried and prepositioned tanks (like by the Pit) will safely get you to other tanks to decompress and surface with minimal DCS risk? If so, then wouldn't planning for bailout tanks and prepositioned tanks (if that is the correct term...seen as safety tanks in the DanT diagram) be based upon the worst possible failure situation?

Was the noted number, size and positioning of tanks adequate?

If it was then did that also carry with it the assumption that all prepositioned tanks would be found? If so, might others change their positioning strategy based upon this event to allow for missing a tank or two? Or do you do something that greatly reduces the chance of missing a tank?

 

[Dan]

My point is that you aren't taking all the things into consideration. Making statements like "However, it might be surviveable and a trade-off with a better buoyancy to search for the gear" neglects all the other factors on a 300ft cave dive.

You might (or might not) get your gear. Then what? Flooded suit, monumental decompression obligation, already suspect amount of OC gas leftover (4:1 bottom to deco time or worse) if you don't find your gear or can't get back into it. Its HARD to get back into a rebreather underwater.

What they had clearly wasn't enough, and now somehow the discussion has devolved into making the situation worse be flooding the suit to go into a dirt cloud on open circuit at 290ft while holding onto a (single) steel 95 that has somewhere between 12-17mins of gas in it? Jiminey christmas.

Can you see how these ideas are a little frustrating? Everything about this makes it worse.

Yes I see it now. Thank you for the explanation.

 

[Bison Ravi]

Which restriction?

The one the diver couldn't pass with the RB on the way back

 

[KevinNM]

Interesting point. Cave Country is a couple hours away, but There is an Open Water Dive shop within 45 minutes of Eagles Nest. Diver City Aqua Vertical in Brooksville. As well as Hudson Grotto maybe a little further away. In the case of an extended unplanned Deco, would it not be possible to get some O2 out there in order for it to make a difference if an alarm were raised? I know this is not pertinent to this case but Theoretically?

Based on the inferred run time of their planned dive, it certainly should have been at minimum possible to get them air before they ran out of O2 for their shallow stops. Remember that parking lot crowded with emergency vehicles? While there isn't much they can do for guys in a cave at 300 feet, the PSD team can do something about divers running out of gas at 20 feet in OW. Every PSD team has a bunch of tanks and regulators, and most FDs can deploy a truck that can fill tanks at a high rate. The issue would be getting them additional 100%. Not that the guys at the surface wouldn't have an absurd amount of O2 in the rescue trucks, but getting it to the divers at 20 feet isn't that easy. But I suspect that this is a solvable problem as there are multiple paths that can be worked on at the same time.

 

[archer1960]

And, in point of fact for this irrelevant discussion, would have been even MORE inherently buoyant even IF completely flooded.

Though not very much at 200+ft.

 

[kensuf]

My current question related to the notion that once the rebreather of diver 2 was lost that they were doomed. Do people plan this type dive with the possibility that a rebreather will fail and that carried and prepositioned tanks (like by the Pit) will safely get you to other tanks to decompress and surface with minimal DCS risk? If so, then wouldn't planning for bailout tanks and prepositioned tanks (if that is the correct term...seen as safety tanks in the DanT diagram) be based upon the worst possible failure situation?

Was the noted number, size and positioning of tanks adequate?

If it was then did that also carry with it the assumption that all prepositioned tanks would be found? If so, might others change their positioning strategy based upon this event to allow for missing a tank or two? Or do you do something that greatly reduces the chance of missing a tank?

I think several people have articulated that there may have been a problem with the diver losing buoyancy control once he removed his rebreather. If he had a CCR failure but still had the ballast associated with it, the outcome may have been different. We will never know.

There are some good questions in your last paragraph, so I left it quoted. They should give some people doing dives where stage and/or safety bottles are part of the planning something to chew on and ruminate about.