Cave Ccr Student Dies At Blue Grotto Today

I did and it was incredible. Thanks for asking! [/sarcasm]

I would have. There's a reason I have a bail out cylinder and I'm not afraid to use it. I heard a very famous CCR explorer tell me how they tried this and found themselves way hypoxic. It really put a scare into them.

 

I was surprised I came out after 10 minutes at exactly 1.0. I recognize as soon as you change depth or hav dil added for any reason you are basically at a completely unknown PPO2. I would bail out in the real world too.

It was a good exercise in buoyancy and manual PPO2 though.

 

During my first CCR class, we turned off our O2 and watched how long it took for our PPO2 to decrease down to 0.3 (?) at 20 feet. That took far longer than I thought it would. Far, far longer. I don't remember doing any SCR exercises though. On my crossover class, I did a lot of SCR exercises, where I turned off my O2 and controlled my PPO2 with my Dil. I was always aware of my PPO2.

 

I have learned a few more facts, from a source that was there in the water when it happened. He has given me permission to share them.

• The rebreather was a JJ
• The mask was blocked by a neoprene cover
• The O2 was off. There were marks on the tank that could indicate a roll off, but it's not really known.
• The instructor and surviving student were trying to help the deceased when they were spotted on the ceiling behind the air bell
• A number of divers assisted in pulling the diver out, cutting him out of his gear and doing CPR

FWIW, I treat every conversation as 'confidential' unless I'm told otherwise. I was told about the O2 last night, but the person who told me about it wasn't completely sure and asked that I withhold it until we were. Many of these people don't want to speak publicly about this, but they still want the facts known. I don't mind being the conduit in that regard since it's in the public's interest to know the facts.

 

Your mask should never ever be blacked out when doing CCR cave class.

 

Why not? That's a good opportunity to bail out. Just like in a full silt out.

 

That's fine to bail out but staying on the loop is extremely dangerous.

 

In a full silt out, you can probably still read your HUD or Shearwater. You can't do that with neoprene over your mask. Bail out would have been appropriate in this case because of that. No way I would have stayed on loop in that scenario.

 

I'd be interested to know if all divers were CCR, or just this particular diver. I may be completely wrong, but don't most agencies require the instructor to be CCR cave certified in order to teach a cave class with someone on a RB? I can't imagine that there's any agency that allows an OC instructor to train a CCR cave diver, but I could be way wrong. I never paid much attention to standards related to CCR in my courses since I'm OC only.

I knew all of the facts that Netdoc shared already. One comment almost all of my buddies made after seeing the instructor is how young she looks. I'm interested to see what her dive experience is. I'm not saying in any way that she's too young, inexperienced, or that any of that played a factor here. It was just a general sentiment noted by the people I dive with.

 

IART - International Association of Rebreather Trainers