Absolutely, there were many things that should have kept them from doing that dive. However, what killed them was the inability to maintain reasonable cognitive function at depth because they were narc'd out of their gourds. The accident slope that they headed down because of that was just way too steep. Any of the other factors present are pretty immaterial comparatively.
Had they been of sound mind, they would have been more readily able to deal with the entanglement in the wreck, they would have been able to get to their deco gas without issue, and they would have been able to do their planned decompression, or at least would have been able to attempt that ascent. Now could the swell have drowned them? Sure. Could the current have blown them off? Absolutely. But neither of those were a factor in their inability to deal with the problems presented at depth because they couldn't think straight in the first place.
Could that dive have still ended in tragedy? Of course. Could the dive have still ended successfully with only some poopy exposure protection? Yeah, it very well could have Unfortunately they're all moot points. A circulatory system full of foam was the consequence of being unable to deal with the issues they had. And a significant part of their inability to deal with issues was their inability to think straight because they were suffering from severe nitrogen narcosis. Because helium costs money....
True John, but my point is that all those variables combined were contributing factors in addition to being narc'd. The narcosis might not have been as severe under different diving conditions. And that is exactly my point, one has to be able to try and see the entire picture prior to making the dive and try to make the best assessment possible ... some of the divers on that trip - even those on mix chose not to make those dives. You can't just say they got killed because they were severally narc'd... that in and of itself does not explain the entire picture. The Rouse's made some very poor judgments because they were obsessed with discovering the identity of that U boat at any cost and it was the last trip of the season... sadly, they allowed this to cloud their judgement before ever hitting the water. At that level most reasonable people would call the dive before allowing themselves to get into such a dicy situation. After all as tech divers a lot of our training is based on accident analysis and mitigation.
Each of us accepts certain risks by virtue of the fact that we are choosing to operate in an "alien" environment and take our gas down with us. Diving deeper and incurring mandatory decompression increases that risk even more, diving in a hard overhead is another risk and diving deep on air is still another. All those factors are a given but at this level you should be able to asses a given situation on any given day and hopefully through many years of experience and training make a sound judgement.
For me personally I think it's crazy to strap on a CCR. I still don't feel comfortable enough with the technology and the margin of error is extremely thin... those things can get you killed at only 6 meters (or you can get yourself killed to be more specific). Does everyone feel that way? of course not... some feel it's an acceptable risk and are perfectly cool embracing the technology, despite some of the fatal accidents that have occurred even at very shallow depths under very benign conditions.
My take on it is to think for yourself and determine what is going to be an acceptable risk
for you on any given day and to make a determination based on your experience, training and comfort level. I do generally find that there's sometimes a "group think" mentality that pervades Scubaboard with blanket statements made without any thought given to all the variables and individual circumstances. Whether it's equipment driven or the mindless repetitions of "mantras" perpetuated by certain elements in the tech community... but that's a whole other discussion.
When Trimix is available or I'm conducting a dive in the hypoxic range it's a no-brainer, but I certainly won't blow off a dive to 55m on air if the diving conditions are acceptable to me (for the record I don't feel that diving air because Trimix is too expensive is a good reason).
To sum it up, I think the ER course is an excellent course to take for anyone interested in tech diving and widening their options. It's also a valuable tool to allow you to see each dive in of itself and have a deeper insight into the acceptable (or unacceptable) risks you are willing to take diving deep air in any particular dive environment or circumstance.
and as Forrest Gump would say ... "that's all I have to say about that".
Happy diving
Cheers,
nas
