TSandM: Missing Diver in Clallam County, WA

[rickgillyon]

Young guys or seniors?

Depends on your current situation... 50-ish.

 

[AfterDark]

Depends on your current situation... 50-ish.

That's boarderline for this discussion. I think Lynn was my age 60ish but I'm not sure. I still swim in the lap pool at URI. The lap pool is indoors but unheated.

 

[rhwestfall]

I too am shocked and saddened by Lynne's passing.

There has been a lot of speculation here, and at first I did not want to add to it, but something just came to mind that would fit well with the known facts.

Fact #1: She was involved in an equestrian accident a few days prior to the dive.

Fact #2: She was lost after ascending from about 120 feet to 70 feet (I may not have the exact depths right). In any case, she was last seen venting her dry suit.

So, it is possible she may have damaged her lungs from the equestrian accident. Say a small tear in the lung tissue. She may then have developed a small pneumothorax from the equestrian accident. If the pneumothorax is small, it may be asymptomatic.

If she were to go diving with a small pneumothorax, the pneumothorax would get filled with compressed air at depth. Upon ascent, the pneumothorax would then expand significantly, and cause major problems. Certainly enough problems to cause someone to loose consciousness.

Although we will likely never know for certain what caused her to be lost, I think an expanding pneumothorax would fit fairly well with the known facts.

Thinking out loud here:

or aneurysm? or blood clot? Any of these could be a complication of the fall, and by the stresses of a complicated/challenging dive come to be a major factor... uneventful diving the previous day wouldn't necessarily rule these out...

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

Interesting theory. Except Lynne dove the same site the previous day.

... based on her Facebook posts, I believe they were diving the sites in around Mushroom Rock and/or Tatoosh Island the previous day ... Duncan is further out, and a very different kind of dive site ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

---------- Post added September 3rd, 2015 at 05:57 AM ----------

I suspect you don't regularly dive with drysuits. Suit floods happen often, I've had lots of buddies get floods, and there's no impeded leg movement. No idea why you think there would be. Thermal shock and heat loss are an issue, but I've known guys with full suit floods continue the dive for half an hour with a suit full of water. And that's in the North Sea.

And using the wing for buoyancy is a given, no-one is going to struggle to try and keep air in the suit. You have a wing, you just use that. Lots of people use the wing for buoyancy anyway when wearing a drysuit. It's just such a long-shot that anyone is going to be seriously affected by a drysuit failure, I'm not buying it...

... Dale lives in British Columbia ... OF COURSE he dives a drysuit regularly.

Lynne typically dived her White's Fusion drysuit with Thermal Fusion undergarment. I dive the same undergarment sometimes, and have experienced a full flood in it ... the undergarment kept me sufficiently warm until I ended the dive normally ... probably 30 or 40 minutes after I realized it was flooding. That was in 50 degree F water ... the temps where she was diving that day were closer to 46 degrees.

I don't think a drysuit flood had anything to do with this accident.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[tracydr]

The two real possibilities here are that her disabling event was either an AGE or some kind of cardiovascular event.

Could also have been anything neurological that can change in mental status. Stroke,seizure,vertigo with loss of consciousness. Acute sequela of the head injury 3 days prior? As we get older,minor falls and bumps to the head can cause much more serious injuries, some which don't show up for days to weeks after the injury.
aneurysm,of course. This is another thing that happens more frequently as we age. Not that 60 is even close to old ( I have patients that run track and do extreme sports well into their later 80s if they've had an active life),but certainly it is old enough that things may start to be a little more delicate and I always say that I don't bounce as well as I did 30-40 years ago,either.
I've ridden horses all my life. The helmet does a great job preventing many serious head injuries but I've had a few friends and know of others who've had some disabling head injuries with falls from their horse, particularly if the hooves or an arena fence contact the head. Also, coup-contrecoups injuries are more common as we age since our brain tends to decrease in size. This is basically caused by a shearing of membranes from being jiggled around after a blow. with a little extra room in the skull the brain bounces when it gets hit.
I've also had soldiers who had what seemed to be minor head injuries and continued to do all their normal activities,only to develop seizures and cognitive difficulties long after the injury occurred.

 

[DaleC]

Yes I dive a drysuit and yes I said it probably was not a cause in this situation. I did say I would not dismiss a major suit failure out of hand as trivial.

As far as speculation goes I also think Robs tension Pneumothorax idea isn't without merit either. We have a friend who experienced such an event (on a smaller scale) while diving in Hawaii from an undiagnosed weakness in the lung lining and he had to give up diving as a result for fear of a major event. Someone taking a fall may have caused a similar weakness. The problem is that a tension pneumothorax occurring at depth makes ascending problematic (due to expanding gas trapped in the plural lining) thus no surfacing and may cause cardiac tamponade (compression of the heart). I actually can't think of how to manage such an event successfully.

Again pure speculation in a general sense as to possible causes.

 

[lamont]

Could also have been anything neurological that can change in mental status. Stroke,seizure,vertigo with loss of consciousness. Acute sequela of the head injury 3 days prior? As we get older,minor falls and bumps to the head can cause much more serious injuries, some which don't show up for days to weeks after the injury.
aneurysm,of course. This is another thing that happens more frequently as we age. Not that 60 is even close to old ( I have patients that run track and do extreme sports well into their later 80s if they've had an active life),but certainly it is old enough that things may start to be a little more delicate and I always say that I don't bounce as well as I did 30-40 years ago,either.
I've ridden horses all my life. The helmet does a great job preventing many serious head injuries but I've had a few friends and know of others who've had some disabling head injuries with falls from their horse, particularly if the hooves or an arena fence contact the head. Also, coup-contrecoups injuries are more common as we age since our brain tends to decrease in size. This is basically caused by a shearing of membranes from being jiggled around after a blow. with a little extra room in the skull the brain bounces when it gets hit.
I've also had soldiers who had what seemed to be minor head injuries and continued to do all their normal activities,only to develop seizures and cognitive difficulties long after the injury occurred.

Well, I seriously doubt any of that. Horses, not Zebras.

 

[Angry Turtle]

Well, I seriously doubt any of that. Horses, not Zebras.

Which is your horse?

 

[gcbryan]

Speaking from experience with our local dive site which sees the bulk of the fatalities, generally dead divers wind up on the bottom, not on the surface (although one of the two events I was involved in the diver was on the surface, but she was conscious on the surface for a minute or two before she fell unconscious due to an AGE).

I suspect that the air escapes from the lungs and the diver sinks -- and once they start sinking dynamic instability makes them heavily negative when they're found.

Its only if the diver is conscious enough to reach the surface and inflate / orally inflate, or their buddy takes them to the surface and does that for them, that they'll be found on the surface. Drownings, AGEs and heart attacks usually wind up with the diver on the bottom.

That was my point, that I can think of very few circumstances where a conscious Lynne wouldn't have ended up on the surface.

 

[BRT]

That was my point, that I can think of very few circumstances where a conscious Lynne wouldn't have ended up on the surface.

My thought too. When I heard she had a radio along my heart sunk because I became pretty sure she wouldn't be found alive.