collateral damage

[Tribes]

I went to a mortally service a few weeks ago. A friend had died in a diving accident.

She died doing a 300 foot dive on a submarine . She had training, equipment, and gas to make this type of dive and had made similar dives before. Yet, 6 minutes into the dive she was dead.

This leaves me to wonder can TECH DIVING ever be made reasonably safe.

It doesn’t seem to be any safer now then it was when Sheck Exley and Rob Palmer both died on Tech dives. What is the Dora’s count..over 50? What’s the rebreather count up to? Look at the accident forum on The Scubaboard, it’s very sad.

No amount of training or equipment can prepare a diver for the physiological and psychological stress caused while tech diving. Tech divers survive the dives they don’t make the dives.

I know “we know the risk, and are willing to take them” but do you really or is it just hubris talking?


As I walked in the line of will wisher to give the family and close friends to give my condolences. You could see the collateral damage in the tears and grief in their eyes. Was this dive worth it?

 

[rhwestfall]

you can do everything right, and get rubbed out driving your car to get an ice cream....

the more you elevate your involvement the more the risks increase, and the odds for an event drop.

You need to decide where/when is too much. making the choice is the challenge. Accepting the consequences.... do we really grasp that?????

sorry for your loss

 

[Basking Ridge Diver]

Was this dive worth it?

How do you think your "friend" wants to be remembered? Do you think they would have been as happy without diving in their lives?

Me? I want to be remembered as living life, enjoying the time spent on this earth and sharing time with friends and family...
And if I go while diving - so be it... I have had conversations with my wife and my kids. Will this lesson the pain? I doubt it but they will have a clean conscious that I went doing what I enjoy...

 

[KevinNM]

There is a long article on the cave diver forum by a widow who pointed out, among many other things, that your dive buddies might be who gets to notify and explain what happened to your family. Choose well.

 

[Marie13]

People decide what risk level they are willing to accept, perhaps in conversation with a spouse/partner. I know someone who used to cave dive but agreed to stop doing it when his wife was pregnant with their first child. Still dives, though. Just not caves.

There are some people who want their family members, even extended relatives, to be wrapped in cotton wool and do nothing risky.

Yet, walking across the street or driving to work are likely riskier than diving, given the way people drive these days.

 

[wheeledgoat]

I was just reading some Seneca this very morning, the gist was how short our lives are, and how we waste so much of it idling... that actually our lives aren't "short" at all, that we have plenty of time to do all kinds of stuff, fulfill our destiny, make an impact, enjoy ourselves, etc... but that many of us squander most of our time on this earth instead of actively pursuing our desires.

Agree with Marie, it's your choice how much risk you are going to put yourself at - will you really enjoy that 300' wreck more than the 40' reef? Enough to warrant the astronomically higher risks? Consider your motivations. Hopefully bragging rights aren't amoung them.

But I say do what makes you happy. We're all alive, but how many of us really live?

 

[Skeptic14]

The average american spends 17,600 minutes (293 hours) driving every year, this doesn't include time as a passenger where they are equally exposed to automobile accident.

Does the average diver spend 293 hrs diving (275 - 400 dives) every year? I doubt it, the average diver probably spends closer to 20-30 hrs underwater diving every year.

Very different exposure.

Also, I don't think it is absurd to assume that the average tech diver is more intelligent, mechanically inclined, and detail oriented than the average licensed automobile driver.

I don't think it makes much sense analogizing the accident statistics of the two and I think that is maybe the type of rationale we use to convince ourselves our hobby isn't selfish (if we have people ie kids/wife/husband) we have responsibilities to. I mean if something as mundane and nearly required as driving a car is just a dangerous than why shouldn't I ....

I guess you have to find the middle ground between a sterile life with all risks mitigated and one with all risks taken, which is different for us all.

 

[MaxBottomtime]

I went to a mortally service a few weeks ago. A friend had died in a diving accident.

She died doing a 300 foot dive on a submarine . She had training, equipment, and gas to make this type of dive and had made similar dives before. Yet, 6 minutes into the dive she was dead.

This leaves me to wonder can TECH DIVING ever be made reasonably safe.

Jim, the UB88 is in 190 feet, not 300. Have they determined how Gina died yet? I don't know if tech diving had anything to do with it.

 

[100days-a-year]

Condolences for your loss,and prayers for the family.

My family wouldn't think of limiting my diving,nor I their skiing,surfing,eating fast food or any other activity they truly enjoyed.
Some people are just wired explorer,some adrenaline junkie,some Walter Mitty.I would never seek to change the fundamental personality of someone else.

Sometimes our personalities place us in a risky situation,sometimes random acts or the acts of others.But life is best lived unfiltered by excessive or irrational fear.

 

[PfcAJ]

No amount of training or equipment can prepare a diver for the physiological and psychological stress caused while tech diving. Tech divers survive the dives they don’t make the dives.

I'm extremely sorry for your loss. I was in your same position not too long ago.

However, technical diving isn't walking on some razors edge. Training and equipment can and does prepare the technical diver.