Holy S...!!

[ianw2]

Is it possible that this was a suicide? There appears to have been no attempt to correct any errors or rescue himself. The speed with which he descended was phenomenal, too. Perhaps it was to prvent anyone from getting to him before he was too deep.

 

[LavaSurfer]

By the time he hit the bottom, I'd guess he was too narc'd to think straight and I wouldn't discount the 'entanglement' as some sort of confused attempt to GET OUT OF HERE!!!

Did anyone hear him inflate anything? I wonder if it wasn't an inflator failure which would explain the acceleration on descent.

Rachel

Close to the end I thought I heard an inflator for just a few seconds. At first I thought he was going to inflate and rocket up but it did nothing. Somehow the video was retrieved.

 

[shark.byte.usa]

Is it just coincidence that he decended to almost exactly 300' (91.3M IIRC)?

 

[SteveAD]

The "analysis" is suspect to me, even taking into account the likelyhood of bad translation the crew watching the video didn't seem to know squat about diving. The one guy said "he's out of air" a couple times when you could still hear breathing. Does anyone even know if the video itself is legit?

 

[MarkUK]

I believe the video is legitimate, and the Blue Hole, as someone said before, is a site that has killed more than 100 divers over the years. This is a deep dive site, but for someone on full tech gear, it isn't a problem – think the deepest part of the bottom is 120-130m or something in that region – but many try to bounce it on single air cylinders, hence the fatalities. I think the guy in the video was trying to bounce it on air, hence the reason he was showing his computer to the video, then just was too narked to sort himself out and head back up.

I have seen another video taken by a tech team and they film a body lying on the bottom in recreational gear.

There is an archway from the Blue Hole to the open ocean, and the top of the archway is a good 56m. It is also wider than many think it is. It is common for people, often relatively newly qualified but full of macho bravado bull****, to try and go through the arch, or bottom out the Blue Hole, and that's what causes the deaths. You don't hear of many women, if any actually, dying in the Blue Hole...

Mark

 

[H2OU]

In case you are interested, I think this is the video that MarkUK is referring to. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhcF-Coc1J0

 

[Rick Murchison]

Interesting...
It may be footage from a real mishap, but...
Couple of points - (my opinion, of course)
The commentary and what I'm hearing on the video don't jibe.
The "help" sounds to me like a forceful valsalva.
He never stops breathing. In the "entanglement/panic" footage the sound of his exhaust bubbles is pretty well masked by the knocking around sounds on the camera housing, but the inhalation sounds are clear, so the comment that his regulator was out of his mouth is bogus, as are the comments on his being out of gas.
Rick

 

[MarkUK]

Thanks H20U, that is the one, or an excerpt of the full film that I saw. Not particularly 'nice' footage, but a reminder of just what can go wrong when people push the limits using recreational kit.

Mark

 

[Dash]

I kind of thought those "cries for help" were the guy trying to forcefully equalize. They come in equal intervals and if he was descending that fast, he probably got behind the curve..

 

[dhampton82]

Was it just me or did there seem to be a lack of stress on the diver at all?
If it was a uncontrolled decent, it seems that he would have showed more moving around then I noticed. Also, his breathing sounded to me like it was pretty calm for the most part.