Doc Deep dies during dive.

[stcroixscuba]

I'm going to answer a couple of factual questions for the sake of some of the divers here who have asked.

A choice as to whether to attempt to retrieve the body will be made, as it should, by the family subject to legalities. I understand that Dr. Garman's wishes were that there be not attempt to recover. This was told to me by some of the deep support divers who were very good friends with him and had asked the question in advance. He did not tell this specifically to me. I wouldn't have mattered as it would never have been left up to me.

There was a question about the line. Dr. Garman had contracted with a commercial dive company here to sink a 1,300' line anchored by a 250# anchor. He was wearing three 150 ft3 steel tanks and had another 4 aluminum 80ft3 tanks attached. I would guess that between that and his own weight it was probably another 350#. There were some other stage bottles tied off to that line. So roughly 700#. The anchor was set back in March so it's probably pretty well imbedded.

Doc was wearing three computers and a Go Pro with a special housing designed for that depth. He had made it clear before the dive that dive that any data from it would be freely shared with anyone that wanted it. This will now be up to his family.

 

[Akimbo]

… I have read this entire thread, and have read several people talking about how this dive was foolish/impossible…

I think foolish/pointless is more accurate. It is not impossible, just excessively risky based on the known physiology. Perhaps drugs can be found to manage HPNS one day. You will still have compression arthralgia since that's just the physics of what happens to the cartilage.

I believe opinions would be different if someone had a theory that was being tested and reasonable contingency plans. The problem comes because this kind of dive serves no useful purpose, even if it was successful. This wasn't an attempt to set a human depth record. It wasn't even a depth record in open sea. It is an attempt at a depth record with the most marginal support and with reserve gas margins that fall far short of common sense requirements for recreational divers.

The human depth record in a chamber was set in November 1992 at 701m/2,300' using Hydrogen-Oxygen mixtures. The record before that was at Duke University, where @Duke Dive Medicine works, in 1981 to 686m/2,251'. The deepest open sea dive was in 1988 at 534m/1,752'. All were carefully monitored and professionally planned. More importantly, everyone survived and a great deal was learned.

I guess I'm just a jaded old commercial diver, but there is no reason going there unless there is something to accomplish and/or learn… or you are getting paid.

 

[jboneng]

It have to be room to discus the decisions and behavior of the victim of a diving accident when analyzing an accident, the best thing, we as a community, can do after an accident is to learn from it. By having taboos like "don't criticize the deceased diver", we will just hinder this learning process. And if there is evidence to say that the decisions , training, experience, dunning Kruger effect, state of mind or other things that might paint a not so good picture of the deceased played a role in the accident, it must be allowed to say so.

 

[oldschoolto]

I don't think anyone has been out of line .... People die doing things that have a risk to benefit factor of 99% risk are not thinking right... The facts of fast decent, gas management are well known... He went against every rule of risk reduction there is... It was a stunt... A very poorly planned one at that.. As a test jumper of parachutes, I know what it takes to push the envelope... I also know how to not throw the envelope away..

Jim...

 

[Nuribromanski]

Release of that (the data from the dive plan & any data from the dive itself) information is about the only good thing that could come out of this unfortunate, if unsurprising, event.

 

[The Chairman]

Again, the take away here should be a renewed respect for limits. Many of you know that my son died a couple of years ago. Many of you don't know that he overdosed on drugs. It was a hard fact to deal with, and I was completely taken back when one of my friends referred to it as a suicide. But that's really what it was. His friends, his mother, his sister and even I tried to convince him how stupidly dangerous this was. Unfortunately, my son was also the victim of his denial and delusions. He also thought he would be the exception to the rule and inadvertently took his own life. He has no one to blame for this but himself and so I finally had to come to grips with the fact that this was indeed a suicide. My son killed himself by exceeding his limits just as Doc Deep did. I'm not trying to be vicious or unkind. I'm trying to prevent the next guy from falling for the same delusions and denials that will take his life. If not, his death has been in vain.

Do I feel bad for his friends and family? I do. But then we ask that family and friends not read this portion of SB. This is not for the benefit of the grieving or the dead: it's for the living.

 

[DeepSeaDan]

What a waste of a man's life.
The in-water Commercial Deepsea Diving limit was reached decades ago ( around 1800' ), with dry chamber experimental dives to 2200.'
The limiting factors were the complexity & limitations of the breathing gas mix, and h.p.n.s.
With all of this already done so many years past, why bother?

Simply because it's a "scuba" record, while the other was achieved with bell/saturation??

I hope this latest folly puts an end to all this nonsense.

But, where humans are involved, I'm certain it won't.

DSD

 

[defiantscuba]

A friend of mine tuned me onto this happening a while back. I was genuinely curious, although I've never really understood the desire to spend such a pleasant activity staring at a number on your wrist trying to make it go higher (that's just me, of course!). But, from his description of Dr. Garman, it sounded like this was a longtime diver experienced well beyond anyone I have ever met. I watched for an update, like many did - and was very saddened to hear what happened.

In the aftermath, I was shocked to hear this weekend he was only a diver of four years, less than 600 dives and trying to break this record. I've been diving for over 30 years and I cannot believe at that experience level someone would believe they were able to effectively begin even regular technical diving, let alone push the extreme boundaries of it. I think there needs to be some real evaluation at how this was even allowed to be attempted, let alone encouraged. It doesn't sound like they even did much planning for this potential outcome, they seemed to be just thinking about taking their victory photo on the dock. I've seen several very good questions asked here (not "hatefulness"), and I have to wonder were these questions raised by those that helped him?

This death will be pointless if we allow it to be. We need to learn from it, and the way to do that is to ask questions - not just express sympathy. Of course we are all saddened by this.

 

[boulderjohn]

This incident is different from all other fatalities discussed in the Accidents and Incidents forum, at least as far as I know. It is the only one in which the fatal dive (and a rough description of its plan) were announced months ahead of time. During those months, more than a few very experienced divers stepped forward to say that the plan was faulty. More than a few very experienced divers said the man was very, very seriously risking death. Perhaps we don't know precisely what went wrong on that dive, but before it was undertaken, many people were saying the likelihood of something going wrong was too great.

It is therefore understandable for discussion to be different. It is understandable for the people who tried to give warning to express a perplexed frustration that those warnings were ignored. It is also understandable that the people who were slapping him on the back and encouraging him to go for it to feel differently.

 

[tomfcrist]

The best thing that can come out of this whole mess is a detailed analysis of his dive computer and the video from his gopro. As morbid as that sounds to watch him die over and over again, letting people see exactly what happened to him physically start to finish will at least give those who think this kind of dive is anything less than roulette a stern warning about what will await them. Just as Dave Shaws video does.