Doc Deep dies during dive.

[Redshift]

About the heat loss when breathing helium, it appears it may not be so straightforward. Yes, helium conducts heat better and that's why it's not used to inflate the dry suit, but conduction is not the main factor when breathing.


"THE ADVANTAGES OF HELIUM-OXYGEN BREATHING GAS FOR COLD WATER DIVING IN THE AIR DEPTH RANGE" - Abstract of the Undersea and Hyperbaric Medical Society, Inc. Annual Scientific Meeting held June 1-5,1982 in Norfolk, Virginia. Rubicon Foundation
[abstract] THE ADVANTAGES OF HELIUM-OXYGEN BREATHING GAS FOR COLD WATER DIVING IN THE AIR DEPTH RANGE

and also

20. COLDER BREATHING HELIUM?
There is much discussion whether you get colder breathing helium than breathing air. Helium has greater thermal conductivity than air. Undeniably, you lose more heat when surrounded by helium than by air, because heat conductance is the major factor in skin heat loss. Therefore helium is not used in dry suits. However, respiratory heat loss depends on heat capacity, and not at all on conductance. The thermal capacity of helium per gram is higher than that of air. However, there are fewer grams of helium for the same volume breathed because it is far less dense, making thermal capacity less compared to the same volume of air. Less heat would be lost breathing helium, so it should not chill you to breathe, as commonly thought. In a helmet or full face mask, your face may feel cool, making it hard to separate out the lesser loss through breathing.

Depth affects gas density, and so, heat loss through the breathing medium, and to be more confusing, you also need to account for interactions of respiratory heat loss through convection and evaporation. With helium you may also be more aware of the cold that is so common in diving, than when dulled by narcosis while breathing non-helium mixes. Remember too, it is generally not feasible to breathe air at depths where helium is used, so hard to compare in actual use. The short answer seems to be that breathing mixtures of helium at depths encountered by technical divers does not seem to result in greater cooling than breathing air. Helium feels colder to your skin than air, but it carries away less heat when you breathe it. So there.

36 Myths of Diving Physiology
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[Akimbo]

Fully trained to do exactly what they were doing, and an - I assumed experienced support team of supervisors AND technicians.

Using procedures that are well-known and documented, I would also guess.

And tried and true equipment that is used at depths greater than that probably daily.

Yes, of course. Granted he didn't have to plan or oversee the dive, but understood all that was necessary. Honestly, training past Rescue is a lot more about systems than the skill of being underwater itself. You just have to think it through. Also, 8 months of training in a commercial diving school is more or less an 8/5 schedule. Plus, there is a lot of underwater time training in black water and doing emergency drills. It changes your mindset.

 

[Akimbo]

I know how easy it is to get caught-up in a steamroller of a project, but that doesn't explain the glaring flaws in the basic plan. The "plan" is normally developed well before an announcement, let alone the start of execution when the "steamroller" begins.

 

[SterlingCGJ]

Virgin Islands Free Press - The only nationally-syndicated newspaper in the Virgin Islands - Our Stories reach the United States and the World

CHRISTIANSTED – The dead body of Dr. Guy Garman was removed from the waterfront area in front of the V.I. Water and Power Authority in Estate Richmond this morning, the Virgin Islands Free Press has learned.
Officials from the Department of Planning and Natural Resources Marine Division pulled Garman’s body out of the water so that an autopsy can be performed to determine an official cause of death, several sources have confirmed.
DPNR will turn custody of Garman’s body over to the St. Croix Medical Examiner’s Office so that the autopsy can be performed, sources said.
Although Garman was surrounded by a team of 28 people – including his wife and son – and three boats for the Saturday morning dive, many dive experts have questioned the qualifications of “Doc Deep” to attempt a 1,200-foot dive.
And readers of the Virgin Islands Free Press online and on Facebook also said the death of Dr. Garman should be a cautionary tale for all future divers in the territory.
“I hope the the VI scuba teams learn from this and take precautions when attempting any diving goals,” Tysha Marie Edwards said from Atlanta. “They are not prepared to guide anyone on breaking world records. If they were, they would of known that the Doc was not experienced enough for this.”
Garman was tethered to a feed line and carrying seven air tanks and a 250-pound anchor weight when he failed to make his first scheduled underwater appearance to another diver this weekend. He was in the water about 38 minutes when he missed his checkpoint. Doc Deep has not been seen since.

 

[shoredivr]

Thank you for posting the link. Other than a pre-existing medical condition, the result of the autopsy will likely be drowning.I fear modern reporting is lacking, though. "Air tanks"? And if the body was recovered then he has certainly been seen.

---------- Post added August 18th, 2015 at 08:27 PM ----------

And he was not carrying a #250lb anchor either. Though his triple tanks, and stage tanks likely overwhelmed the lift capacity of the wing and he passed the 1200ft mark to crash into the bottom at 1300ft

 

[SterlingCGJ]

Thank you for posting the link. Other than a pre-existing medical condition, the result of the autopsy will likely be drowning.I fear modern reporting is lacking, though. "Air tanks"? And if the body was recovered then he has certainly been seen.

I thought the same thing reading this, Doc Deep hasn't been seen since...while they are reporting a story about his body being recovered. Sound reporting right there.

 

[Garth]

I say the next time someone comes out and says they are going to go break a depth record like this we post a "voting" thread so at least when they make it or don't make it there is a public opinion with data behind it.
Maybe we could retrospectively quantify the positive and negative posts to the announcement with some degree of level of training attached to their vote...


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[Akimbo]

... Other than a pre-existing medical condition, the result of the autopsy will likely be drowning...

Autopsies are very difficult where tissues have undergone explosive decompression, pre or postmortem. I would expect extremely extensive tissue damage. I have heard doctors describe victims from as little as 40 minutes at 200' as being pulverized from the inside out.

It is improbable that the body floated to the surface slowly enough to gracefully decompress, especially since blood wasn't circulating.

 

[Ste Wart]

For all the talk of record breaking,had this dive been ratified by Guinness? There was brief mention in the article about "that would be enough to satisfy Guinness" but were they even aware of the attempt?

Sounds like, that even had he made it back, he would be listed with the ranks of Bernabe and Ellyat; who did not have the procedures in place to ratify the dive.

 

[Germie]

Did doc deep never experienced any problems on previous dives? No gas problems? No thermulation issues (becuase he is not wearing a drysuit), no problems with regs, no hpns, etc?
I have been really cold because 3 hours in 6 degrees water was a little bit too much, I have had frozen regs, I have had a minor CO2 issue (on ccr), a failed depthsensor on a computer, I have had that my gasconsumption was more than the assumed calculated consumption (but never had a real problem because of reserves), I had a sort of lost decogas because a frozen reg gave after 5-6 times open-close no gas anymore and I have felt the beginning of hpns. This all makes you are still learning. But I don't have plans to go so deep as he wanted to go. There is enough to dive that are in my eyes more usefull dives like wrecks and caves and maybe some reefs.