Cozumel Incident 9/4/11

[Mossman]

To compare technical training of *only* 150 feet and doing a dive to 167 feet can hardly be compared or extrapolated to diving to 350 - 400 feet.

bold added

Again, 2 dives is not much experience beyond recreational depths and there is no experience beyond 167 feet - a far cry from 350 - 400 feet.

167 feet is NOT "much deeper" than recreational standards, sorry. My bet, as someone else said, would be on those who have significant training, experience and appropriate equipment for dives to around 400 feet, and they wouldn't have done a bounce dive on air and without redundancy.

I used my own facts just for one example. When I did my 167', sand limited us from going deeper. These divers had gone past 167' plenty of times, from reports.

Also, 400' was definitely not the plan, I believe it was 300' or thereabouts. So now you need to come up with an arbitrary number between 167 and 300 where "recreational" ends and "technical" becomes the only way to do it. Is that 168? 219? Pick a number, any number. They're all equally useless. I certainly don't agree that diving to 300' on a single tank is the best way to do the dive, but I also can't agree that diving to 131' on a single tank invites certain death. We all have our own personal limits no matter what the agencies preach. I know divers who have done 200'+ on a single tank lots of times. Me, I'm not sure I'd even do 167' now and I've shied away from going deeper when I've had the opportunity in the past. Their personal limits were clearly deeper.

 

[stevep4444]

People are free to make choices,some will be good and some will not turn out as we had hoped. Although from reading many posts it appears there are a disportionate number of people here who are very close to perfect. What better place to learn than from a board with so many experts. I see experts here with 500 dives to max depths of 170 ft. The two most seriously injured each had many thousands of dives and many,many dives in excess of 200 ft. Imo, big difference in experience to many vacation divers or weekend warriors playing the role of god in this thread. Would I try a dive beyond 220 ft? Not unless someone had a gun to my head. But dives beyond 220 ft on singles are not uncommon in Mexico and probably many other dive locations. Tell Bret Gilliam that you can't go to 350ft on a single.
For the purposes of discussions on this board,for recreational weekend or vacation divers this discussion should have ended long ago. Simply,don't try this at home kids! Now let's move on to a topic more relevent to the divers who post on this forum.

 

[Doubler]

Steve,
I agree there is formal training and on the dive training. Some think that if you do not have formal training you should not be allowed to partake in certain activities. I disagree. You stated that these divers had many, many dives below 200 feet. Again probably true, but when you keep pushing and pushing that envelope something bad is bound to happen. In this case put all three in doubles and the outcome is probably different. And yes you can go to 325 on a single 80 but that doesn't mean it is a real intelligent thing to do. And I am not a dive god, just someone who thinks this all should of been avoided with a little for thought. The silver lining is this has probably made others think before they do.

 

[Ron Lee]

Mossman, what agency provided deep air training?

Let's discuss one possible value of deeper than 130' air dives. Imagine you are in Cozumel and the most of rest of the group has entered a tunnel at around 110' that goes towards shore and shallower water.

The diver two in front of you starts dropping slowly while you were facing upcurrent to see a tiny coral formation. When you turn around you see that he is 30' or more below you and still slowly dropping.

To assist him you have to go deeper than 130'...perhaps 160' or so by the time you can arrest the descent and help him up.

Is it better to have made a few dives below 130' (I am not talking 300') to know that you do not blow up at 131' and that you are suitably alert in that realm?

Or do you do nothing? Or go down after him with anxiety increased because you have not been that deep before and have no idea how it will impact you?

 

[suprane]

 

[redacted]

Mossman, what agency provided deep air training?

Let's discuss one possible value of deeper than 130' air dives. Imagine you are in Cozumel and the most of rest of the group has entered a tunnel at around 110' that goes towards shore and shallower water.

The diver two in front of you starts dropping slowly while you were facing upcurrent to see a tiny coral formation. When you turn around you see that he is 30' or more below you and still slowly dropping.

To assist him you have to go deeper than 130'...perhaps 160' or so by the time you can arrest the descent and help him up.

Is it better to have made a few dives below 130' (I am not talking 300') to know that you do not blow up at 131' and that you are suitably alert in that realm?

Or do you do nothing? Or go down after him with anxiety increased because you have not been that deep before and have no idea how it will impact you?

What is the diver's name? Yeah, I know - bad taste. But one issue here is your willingness to put yourself in danger to help another diver.

I think I go after him. I have never been to 160 but I do know it can be done as a bounce with no decompression obligation. My only issue is how much narcosis will effect me. I know, in the past, my face goes numb at 140+ (just like almost 60 years ago in the dentist's chair) but believe I can handle that. I hope I am right. Get much closer to 200 ft or more and it is back to my first question.

 

[Ron Lee]

What is the diver's name?

It is your wife/girlfriend/best buddy.

I can't fault someone for not making a one fatality incident a two fatality one. So who they are may influence your decision. Obviously you can't take five to ten minutes to weigh the pros and cons.

But there is probably a region between 130' and 300' that the risk is suitably low (given prior experience at that undefined depth) that an attempted rescue/assist can be done.

 

[Mossman]

Mossman, what agency provided deep air training?

Let's discuss one possible value of deeper than 130' air dives. Imagine you are in Cozumel and the most of rest of the group has entered a tunnel at around 110' that goes towards shore and shallower water.

The diver two in front of you starts dropping slowly while you were facing upcurrent to see a tiny coral formation. When you turn around you see that he is 30' or more below you and still slowly dropping.

To assist him you have to go deeper than 130'...perhaps 160' or so by the time you can arrest the descent and help him up.

Is it better to have made a few dives below 130' (I am not talking 300') to know that you do not blow up at 131' and that you are suitably alert in that realm?

Or do you do nothing? Or go down after him with anxiety increased because you have not been that deep before and have no idea how it will impact you?

TDI Advanced Nitrox/Deco Procedures from DiveTech in Grand Cayman. I'd like to do "Extended Range" to 180 ft. some day, but time and financial considerations have so far prevented me. Therefore, my deepest recreational dive is so far deeper than my deepest technical dive.

I'll go after your diver at 160' without a further thought, even if I'm diving nitrox and my MOD is 132'. Doesn't have to be wife/girlfriend/best buddy. Now if we're talking deeper, say 180' or 200', realms I haven't yet visited, then I might have to qualify the rescuee. For wife/girlfriend/best buddy, depth doesn't matter, but if it's a stranger, well bye-bye!

 

[Hetland]

I used my own facts just for one example. When I did my 167', sand limited us from going deeper. These divers had gone past 167' plenty of times, from reports.

We all have our own personal limits no matter what the agencies preach. I know divers who have done 200'+ on a single tank lots of times. Me, I'm not sure I'd even do 167' now and I've shied away from going deeper when I've had the opportunity in the past. Their personal limits were clearly deeper.

Personal limits in scuba diving are not static, especially when you're talking about something as nebulous as decompression theory and narcosis. Do your 167' air dive while sight seeing, and then do the same dive spearfishing, or dealing with an equipment failure, entanglement, etc. Do the dive while not properly hydrated, or after a late night out with the guys. Do the dive in low viz, or cold water, or heavy current. Each of these dives will be different.

There's no one depth that works for every person, on every day, and in every condition. "Average" works fine for the vast majority of the diving population. For those that wish to push further, it's not unreasonable to demand that they at least have a general understanding of how and why they will hurt or kill themselves by making 300ft air dives on 77cuft of gas.

 

[halocline]

I was the one who compared them to free climbers.

Forget about training. That's completely arbitrary. Who says that 130' is the most they were trained to dive? Why use a number pulled out of an agency's rear end?

They were very skilled single tank divers just as free climbers who summit without O2 are very skilled climbers. It is safer for the skilled single tank diver to use technical gear and oxygen (deco gas) to execute the dive, but it doesn't give one that same sense of freedom being bogged down with equipment. It is safer for the skilled free climber to use technical gear and oxygen to execute the climb, but it doesn't give one that same sense of freedom being bogged down with equipment.

There is no real cut and dried difference between what is a technical dive and what is a recreational dive except for arbitrary numbers. These divers were just doing an extra deep recreational dive. Simple as that.

I have not read this entire thread, so please excuse me if this has been addressed.

I have to take issue with two points in particular; 1) I think you are confusing 'free climbing' and climbing high altitude without oxygen. Free climbing is rock climbing without protection; it has nothing to do with high altitude or bottled O2. 2) There certainly is a logical, cut-and-dried, useful line between recreational diving and technical diving. Recreational diving is diving within environments that allow immediate access to the surface. Technical diving is diving in environments where you do not have that access. Very simple, easy to understand, and useful to divers for evaluating dive behavior.

I think that a good, analogous description in mountain climbing would be that 'recreational" or 'non-technical' climbing would be in an environment where if you fall, slip, or make some mistake there are not dire consequences, or where the terrain is such that an "average" person would be very unlikely to be injured in a fall. Likewise, technical climbing would be in what's commonly called 'high consequence' environments, where a fall could be fatal or very dangerous.

Of course in both diving and climbing there are situations that straddle the lines...maybe a swimthrough, maybe a bit of scrambling on an exposed ridge, whatever. But CLEARLY the dive that is the subject of this thread is not an example of that. And there are real differences between technical climbing and technical diving, especially in the unpredictability of the environment. That's where lots of climbers get in trouble; weather changes and avalanches.

Regardless of what you want to "label" this dive, it still is stunning to me that dive professionals would willingly attempt to dive this deep on a single tank of air. 300ft, 400ft, what's the difference? It's still FAR beyond any reasonable depth appropriate for single tank, air diving. I know that the divers involved are well respected and liked by lots of people on this forum, and I truly hope that they recover and that this incident helps to keep other from attempting something similar.

I apologize in advance if my comments hurt anyone's feelings who might be personally involved.