E diving is a wonderful thing. The diver in question is gone so something very bad happened. I was not there so I only have questions. Brag all you want about your decent into the Blue Hole. Someone unfortunately is dead. The Blue Hole is a dangerous place for recreational diving yet it is done successfully all the time. That does not make it safe. One of the questions is risk tolerance. I am simply advocating planning, redundancy, continuing ed. and practice. Run V planner. It is not the answer but it is very enlightening about the degree of risk a diver takes on an Al80 with air at 130+ feet. This poor soul may have had any of a number of medical issues take his life but we can never forget that our tables and previous dives don't completely protect us from DCS. Sorry to break this to the old timers and the young bucks but deep air is dangerous.
Death at the Blue Hole in Belize
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AbyssalPlains
Contributor
Keep in mind the article did not say he was at 138 for 18 minutes. All the reporter wrote (and I doubt that he or she is a trained scuba diver) is that he ended the dive after 18 minutes to "decompress" under the boat. Note also that 15 feet is not a common deco depth, so my hunch is that the reporter actually meant safety stop. For all we know, the diver could have made a dive to 138 for a couple of minutes, then spent the remainder of the dive at a much shallower depth.
This is such a simple "deep" dive that I do not understand all the techno-speak about it's risks. Did this one about a year ago. It is a first dive, plus, it is a decent boat ride out to the site. We were staying on Turneffe, and I think we didn't dive until around 10 (this was after three air - no Nitrox - dives the day before). I just checked my Suunto Cobra 2 log, and with 16 and one-half hours of surface interval prior to the BH dive, and going to 140 fsw for about 5 minutes (there's really no reason to stay down there much longer, and this even included a glide around the back of the columns), I never had a tissue group go into the red. Our total dive time was 27 minutes, and we spent the majority of that along the rim of the Hole, watching the Midnight Parrots near the mooring line.
I will submit that looking down into the Hole may be intimidating, but finally realizing that there is near perfect viz, and convincing your mind and eyes of that fact might take a few minutes, but beyond that, it's pretty straight forward.
Let's look at this tragedy as what it appears, an unfortunate set of circumstances, apparently health-related, that resulted in an untimely death. For me, this 60-year old "oldtimer" can't wait to go back.
:mooner:
SteveC
Contributor
I guess there is no way to know for sure what his dive profile was, but the artical says 138' for 18 minutes. I would assume that with those exact kind of numbers that they were obtained from his computer, but no where in the artical does it say that he was at 138' for 9 minutes.
vondo
Contributor
"After nine minutes, he tapped his diving computer watch and gave the signal to go up."
Yes, we don't know the actual profile and we don't know if this 9 minutes was after splashdown or after they reached bottom.
For those of us that have actually done this dive.... This is a highly controlled dive by the (at least) two DMs in the water with each group. The briefing beforehand is very thorough specifying exactly what is going to happen when. It is done strictly according to PADI tables. That means at 8 minutes after beginning your descent, you are to come up. You are watched to make sure you do. There is a very short stop on the descent at about 50' to make sure everyone is together. If you are not with the group, you don't go down. On the way up you stop at about 15' for quite a while. They hang a tank at that depth with several regs in case you are low on air. We stayed there for 15 minutes or so while another boat fed the reef sharks.
So, my point is that those of us who have done this dive probably have a very good idea what the profile was.
Having said that, I don't think this dive is a good idea for beginners. It wasn't a good idea for me, really, and if I had to do it again, I'd skip it. Especially on an AL80. Nor am I a fan of feeding sharks.
Yes, we don't know the actual profile and we don't know if this 9 minutes was after splashdown or after they reached bottom.
For those of us that have actually done this dive.... This is a highly controlled dive by the (at least) two DMs in the water with each group. The briefing beforehand is very thorough specifying exactly what is going to happen when. It is done strictly according to PADI tables. That means at 8 minutes after beginning your descent, you are to come up. You are watched to make sure you do. There is a very short stop on the descent at about 50' to make sure everyone is together. If you are not with the group, you don't go down. On the way up you stop at about 15' for quite a while. They hang a tank at that depth with several regs in case you are low on air. We stayed there for 15 minutes or so while another boat fed the reef sharks.
So, my point is that those of us who have done this dive probably have a very good idea what the profile was.
Having said that, I don't think this dive is a good idea for beginners. It wasn't a good idea for me, really, and if I had to do it again, I'd skip it. Especially on an AL80. Nor am I a fan of feeding sharks.
"Recreational limits" are binary. You're either within them, or outside them. "Basically within recreational limits" sounds a lot like "a little pregnant."
I was trained to start timing my "bottom time" at the start of descent, and then start up before my NDL, so "that 8-9 minutes of bottom time also includes the descent" comment doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
It sounds to me like the problem with this dive is undertaking a dive with significant hazards, perhaps without the appropriate level of training.
beautybelow
Contributor
sorry...but that made me laugh a little.
Troutmaster
Contributor
We only know 2 things for sure. This man died shortly after surfacing and we do not have all the information.
A proper autopsy could tell you if there was heart attack, if the clot was still there and big enough to see. The only thing that the water in his lungs tells us is that he was breathing when he hit the water after falling. If he got shot and fell off the boat he would very likely have water in this lungs, so that really gives us little information. There are alot of medical problems that could stop your heart and not leave any kind of trace at autopsy. I have never observed an autopsy where DCS was a factor so I can not comment if DCS would be evidnet during a post, but I suspect it would be hard to detect.
We need the rest of the medical information and a detailed dive profile from someone who was actually there to make an accurate determination. My gut feeling is that this was a medical problem, not DCS. However, that is speculation on my part.
From the sounds of it from the divers that have actually done this dive, it is a well controlled dive within the tables. As we all know, that does not mean you can't get bent doing it, but unless there is some evidence to the contrary that he was off the tables, I do not think it was DCS.
Having said that, I am the first to admit there is not enough informtion to tell for sure.
As far as "recreational limits" go, what are they? Some say nothing deeper than 60ft without advanced OW or deep training, back in the day it was 100ft for OW, and now 130 seems to be the "official" limit for rec diving. There is just no "hard" rule so I don't think being 8 feet past 130 killed this guy.
One thing that bothers me is that they only tried CPR for 14 minutes in a witnessed arrest. That seems like throwing in the towel a little soon. There is a guy in my town that is really happy I did CPR on him longer than that, and he was down 7 minutes before I got there and got started. We worked him 35 minutes before we got a pulse back, and he was back to work 8 days latter. With a few broken ribs, but he forgave us for that.
A proper autopsy could tell you if there was heart attack, if the clot was still there and big enough to see. The only thing that the water in his lungs tells us is that he was breathing when he hit the water after falling. If he got shot and fell off the boat he would very likely have water in this lungs, so that really gives us little information. There are alot of medical problems that could stop your heart and not leave any kind of trace at autopsy. I have never observed an autopsy where DCS was a factor so I can not comment if DCS would be evidnet during a post, but I suspect it would be hard to detect.
We need the rest of the medical information and a detailed dive profile from someone who was actually there to make an accurate determination. My gut feeling is that this was a medical problem, not DCS. However, that is speculation on my part.
From the sounds of it from the divers that have actually done this dive, it is a well controlled dive within the tables. As we all know, that does not mean you can't get bent doing it, but unless there is some evidence to the contrary that he was off the tables, I do not think it was DCS.
Having said that, I am the first to admit there is not enough informtion to tell for sure.
As far as "recreational limits" go, what are they? Some say nothing deeper than 60ft without advanced OW or deep training, back in the day it was 100ft for OW, and now 130 seems to be the "official" limit for rec diving. There is just no "hard" rule so I don't think being 8 feet past 130 killed this guy.
One thing that bothers me is that they only tried CPR for 14 minutes in a witnessed arrest. That seems like throwing in the towel a little soon. There is a guy in my town that is really happy I did CPR on him longer than that, and he was down 7 minutes before I got there and got started. We worked him 35 minutes before we got a pulse back, and he was back to work 8 days latter. With a few broken ribs, but he forgave us for that.
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