200' on air for 5 min bottom time?

[TSandM]

The local diver we had who was so badly hurt has a similar story -- he was diving, and the next thing he knew, he was out of gas. That was roughly at 200 feet, and he had done those depths many times before.

 

[DCBC]

Brett Gilliam mentions divers falling asleep at depths past 300 in the "Deep Diving" book. These divers are not reported as having traditional Ox Tox symptoms of seizures, rather they just drifted off to sleep, then recovered either on the way up by themselves or with another diver helping them up. Not sure where these fit into...oxtox or CO2?

One other diver was found with the regulator in his mouth just like he had nodded off to sleep on the Promenade Deck, IIRC on one of the many Andrea Dorea dives covered by either Gary Gentile or Bernie Chowdhury.

Falling asleep is a symptom of HPNS, but in the cases discussed, Helium wasn't being used. High CO2 may have an anesthetic effect on a diver's CNS which may cause unconsciousness, but I've not heard of a diver unwillingly falling asleep (only to wake-up later and continue his dive). I've been on the Andrea Doria on air, but the last thing I was thinking about was falling asleep...

 

[danvolker]

Here is another anecdotal contribution to this
Back around 1995, on one of our dives on the Rb Johnson/Coryn Chris ---max depth 285.....George, Bill and I descended into the hold of the bottom ship, and left the buddy team of Ashley and a guy named Lichtenstein up at around the top of the rigging of the RB...depth about 220. This was right at the bottom of a huge Amberjack wall, with tens of thousands of 3 foot amberjacks cruising by you non-stop....Ashely and Lichtenstein seemed to like that area, so that is where they stayed....George Bill and I did our dive for 25 minutes on air, then ascended to Ashley and buddy, she gave the OK sign, and we did blow and go to 100 feet.... We then did our slow ascent to 50 for 13 minutes or so, then to 40, and still no ashley and Licktenstein...George and I kept pointing down to where they should be, and to the time on the computer.....just as he and I were about to head back down to see where they had gone to, we saw Ashley and Lichtenstein coming to the 50 foot stop...

So now the deco penalty was huge for the two of them, from all the extra time at 220.....we were supposed to do an afternoon dive in another 1.5 hours after this dive was over.....Ashley did an accelerated deco and finished with O2 for an extra 25 minutes ...and was fine...Lichtenstein refused to accelerate, and did an extra hour and a half beyond the roughly and hour of deco we had done....and we were all totally pissed about him breaking the dive plan, and killing our dive day.....So after he is finally out of the water, and the boat is heading toward a 60 foot reef....just a couple of minutes go by and Lichtenstien is asking the Captain ( Mims) to stop because he had to get back into the water....and we were pissed again, obviously.....and then we found out the WHY...Apparently, Lichtenstein had for all intents and purposes, passed out with his eyes open while with Ashley, and lost control of his bodily functions, and filled his wetsuit with "bowel movements" Ashley had not realized what his problem was, or why he had been uninclined to ascend when we did.....Ashley was normally not welcome with our group, as she was a poor diver, and none of us would buddy with her....normally we tried to hide what boat we would be going out on, so that we would not have Ashley on the boat with us, cause she heard about a tech trip.....in this case, she clearly failed to see the problem this guy had, and did little to assist him..

In any event, they were almost stationary, you might say the Amberjack school had a near hypnotic effect--he passes out with eyes open, and loses control of bodily functions.....no CO2 retention should have been involved---maybe TS& M could comment on the symptoms and suggest what pharmacological effects could cause this....could a brain effect like a mild seizure result from the hypnotic effect plus the narcotic?

 

[boulderjohn]

Brett Gilliam mentions divers falling asleep at depths past 300 in the "Deep Diving" book. These divers are not reported as having traditional Ox Tox symptoms of seizures, rather they just drifted off to sleep, then recovered either on the way up by themselves or with another diver helping them up.

In the well known Cozumel case a little while ago in which three divers attempted a bounce dive to 300 feet with disastrous results, the eventual conclusion was that Opal (the dive shop owner) was the victim of narcosis and continued to 400 feet before being caught by her DM. When I was in Cozumel last fall, I heard a different story from a dive professional there. He said she fell asleep at that depth, and that was why she continued to descend. It is possible that both are true.

 

[dumpsterDiver]

I've got a similar story, but it is second had from very good sources. A trip was planed to a depth of around 190 on air. A new guy filled in for someone who dropped out. The guy did not seem to be in good shape, smoked and also had a hacking cough so severe, they made him sleep outside on the overnight run offshore.

Everyone was preparing to descend as a group and this guy blows a hose at the moment he is supposed to splash. So everyone else dives and he rushes and installs a replacement hose and enters the water solo like 5-7 minutes after everyone else.

An undetermined time later, a well known tech diver is down there filming and pans across and notices this guy standing on the bottom, more or less straight up. He pans back across a few moments later and the guy is still stationary and breathing. He is diving solo. The diver swims over to him and looks into his mask and there is nobody home. Just standing and breathing, but unresponsive...

So the guy shakes him and no real response so he physically hauls him to the anchor line and drags him upward. A some time during the ascent the diver seems to completely wake up. They ascend up to the hanging deco bottle of oxygen and the guy is put on oxygen at 20 feet. Within a few minutes (not sure how long) the guys toxes out and becomes unconscious.

The diver then drags him rapidly to the surface and screams for help. Deck crew grab the unconscious diver and the rescue diver says don't give him oxygen", and says "I have deco" and he then immediately descends, because he has violated his mandatory deco.

The deck crew, drag the guy up, strip his doubles off and check for pulse and breathing. They detect neither. They figure that the admonition to give him no oxygen was an indication that he was dead and they assume he was drug up from 190 feet. So they lay the guy down on the deck and discuss the options of putting his body on ice in the commercial fish box. They are pretty bummed and there is nothing more to do but wait for all the divers to finish their dive. They don't call the Coast Guard, because they are 90 miles out and there is no real "emergency" anyway.

After about 7-8 minutes, the guy starts coughing... He wakes up and has a terrible headache.. he wanted to try diving again in few hours, but the capt. benched him for the remainder of the trip.

 

[j yaeger]

wicked!!!!!
can i have his equipment?
tough die !!!

 

[DaleC]

Ahh... mostly dead.

 

[Garth]

The healer asks, "what's so good worth living for?" The man in black musters, "truuue wahv."

 

[GrimSleeper]

Since N2 Narcosis appears to be a consequence of N2 acting as a CNS depressant, surely it's inevitable that, given a high enough ppN2, the diver will 'go on the nod'? Or am I completely misunderstanding the (probable) mechanism?

 

[DCBC]

Since N2 Narcosis appears to be a consequence of N2 acting as a CNS depressant, surely it's inevitable that, given a high enough ppN2, the diver will 'go on the nod'? Or am I completely misunderstanding the (probable) mechanism?

Perhaps someone could describe the difference/relationship between being asleep and unconsciousness. I don't think that they're the same thing...