Deaths at Eagles Nest - Homosassa FL

[HIGHwing]

What was the gear configuration of the two divers? Two tanks each? What size tanks?

There was a comment made that they would have needed an hour of deco. That seems unlikely with a short exposure at 233'.

How long were they down at significant depths?

Will we see the dive profile (depth versus time and ideally gas remaining)?

Fire up MultiDeco and put 10 -15 minutes at 235ft on air. They were reported to place bottles at 130ft which makes me wonder if the "deco gas" was 32%. Anyway, try a few simulations and you'll see it's not difficult to rack up a large amount of deco fast.

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The more you poke around on cave atlas, the more you might think the son is an accomplice versus an unwitting actor. IMHO. Little Dillon is posting dive reports on the very pages with the warnings. Can a 15yr old have absolutely no sense of self-preservation?

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

gianaameri - you raise some interesting points to my mind, but also open up a Catch 22.

First, I don't cave dive, I never had, and realistically probably never will. Although I have to admit I would love to come to Florida, do a cavern and cave course and have a look at some, but in reality that is unlikely to happen. Work, geographic location, finances, family, age and so on isn't really on my side anymore

The only overheads I enter are occasional wrecks, and I have been formally trained to know my limits and do that safely.

Now for the Catch 22 - I mentioned earlier, and you have repeated above "you don't know, what you don't know".

I read very widely about diving, I have read books and have a wide range from on gas blending, decompression science, diving physiological/medical adaptations in mammals, surface supplied diving to other obscure text books and I have looked for information on cave diving from time to time, and I have imported books from the NSS on the subject.

However other than basic 'course outlines' I have not been able to find very much detail information on the required knowledge and skill sets and competence levels needed to dive caves safely. If these were more widely available then there would be the opportunity for some of these people who do not take courses to at least have an idea of what they don't know. It may encourage some to go down the route of taking a formal course to get the skills, and encourage others who do not take a course to at least make sure they have understood the skill sets and techniques they need. OK I know and accept others will just look at it and it will re-enforce their self opinion that they don't need a course, but they wouldn't have taken a course anyway!

If this leads to some people taking courses that wouldn't have done so otherwise, and some others gaining the skills by other means then it will contribute to safety in caves.

It will never change the mind of the Spivey's of this world, but it might help some, and prevent some accidents.

I don't want to take away from the livelihoods of people who teach cave diving, or discourage people from getting proper training, but if the information was more widely available it might help fill a gap in letting people know what they need to know.

Phil.

It wouldn't help, and in some respects would do more harm than good.

Despite what some people claim, you CAN'T learn cave diving from reading a book. There's a reason why the training involves rigorous activities involving things like lost line drills and blackout masks ... because part of the learning process requires you to experience those things, and either experiencing them on your own or not at all are both very dangerous activities ... the experience itself is intended to expose gaps in your knowledge or responses in a controlled environment so you can live to learn from it and talk about it afterward with someone knowledgeable enough to help you fill those gaps.

Open water diving ... even a LOT of open water diving in different types of environments ... does not adequately prepare you or provide you with the context to deal with cave diving emergencies. And the whole point of training isn't so much to learn how to use the equipment or how to run line or when to place navigational aids ... it's to learn the proper way to deal with emergencies, because in a lot of cave incidents it only takes a few seconds worth of the wrong responses to get you so far down the incident pit that you won't be able to get yourself out of it.. So knowing how to respond correctly at an appropriate time ... even learning how to recognize a situation that can lead to an incident ... is the real value of the training, and it what more often than not will make the difference between living and dying in the cave.

Making information available online might be helpful to the diver who is preparing for a class ... but it will only help provide a false sense of security for those who think that they don't need the class, that they can learn this stuff on their own. And it might ... would probably ... encourage some who are on the fence toward believing that the expense of the class is unnecessary.

There are lots of Darrin Spivey's out there ... it's human nature to find or manufacture rationalizations for doing things you really want to do ... even when in your heart of hearts you KNOW you shouldn't be doing them ... let's not make it easier for those people to find those rationalizations ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[Phil_C]

It wouldn't help, and in some respects would do more harm than good.

Despite what some people claim, you CAN'T learn cave diving from reading a book. There's a reason why the training involves rigorous activities involving things like lost line drills and blackout masks ... because part of the learning process requires you to experience those things, and either experiencing them on your own or not at all are both very dangerous activities ... the experience itself is intended to expose gaps in your knowledge or responses in a controlled environment so you can live to learn from it and talk about it afterward with someone knowledgeable enough to help you fill those gaps.

Open water diving ... even a LOT of open water diving in different types of environments ... does not adequately prepare you or provide you with the context to deal with cave diving emergencies. And the whole point of training isn't so much to learn how to use the equipment or how to run line or when to place navigational aids ... it's to learn the proper way to deal with emergencies, because in a lot of cave incidents it only takes a few seconds worth of the wrong responses to get you so far down the incident pit that you won't be able to get yourself out of it.. So knowing how to respond correctly at an appropriate time ... even learning how to recognize a situation that can lead to an incident ... is the real value of the training, and it what more often than not will make the difference between living and dying in the cave.

Making information available online might be helpful to the diver who is preparing for a class ... but it will only help provide a false sense of security for those who think that they don't need the class, that they can learn this stuff on their own. And it might ... would probably ... encourage some who are on the fence toward believing that the expense of the class is unnecessary.

There are lots of Darrin Spivey's out there ... it's human nature to find or manufacture rationalizations for doing things you really want to do ... even when in your heart of hearts you KNOW you shouldn't be doing them ... let's not make it easier for those people to find those rationalizations ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

Bob, - I couldn't agree more that you can't learn most physical skills from reading a book, diving full stop, and not just cave diving is like that in my view, you need to develop the muscle memory to start with. I can also see that the psychological aspects of cave diving, coping with the enclosed environment etc, certainly can't be taught.

I used to cave in dry sumps and caves many years ago and I still shudder every time I remember one of my last trips. There were six of us, all experienced qualified outdoor instructors who taught climbing, orienteering and general outdoor activities, and we were all dry cave trained. It was raining when we went down, but not hard, however on the way back six or seven hours later we found one section of access tunnel/sump completely flooded, floor to ceiling, the tunnel was only about 3 foot round and tight at the best of times. There was no alternate route, so we had to hold our breath, duck under and scrabble through about 15 foot of submerged tunnel to get out. We knew this tunnel well and knew it opened into a 'room' beyond which there was a ceiling height about 7 or 8 foot so was going to be well above the water but that didn't help the fear we all felt. The weather had changed whilst we were underground to torrential rain and the pot was slowly flooding, a known risk in the area, so we had to get out.

That experience remains one of my lifetime nightmares, so much so I gave up caving a short time later and I still don't like to think about it. I knew about the risks but until I experienced the situation I didn't know the absolute terror - there was no other word for it, that the situation provoked.

So yes - I agree fully you cannot learn to cope with that side of things from books. - Phil

 

[gianaameri]

NACD position: https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=612249028830049&id=410779455643675

 

[tracydr]

I wonder how this would have played out if they had somehow survived. The kid would have been bragging to his school buddies about how accomplished he was as a diver. The father would have even more misguided hubris about his skills as a cave diver. And the next dive would have been even deeper and longer. I'm sure they felt they had already conquered the Nest. It seems their deaths were inevitable. If not now, then next week or month.


Please pardon any typos. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

There's reason to believe they've done this dive before. Maybe not to this depth. If I recall, somebody posted bits from their facebook pages, saying they'd been down to 130 in WN. Another cave diver thinks he may have seen them around the beginning of November. This was on another forum, not here.

 

[gianaameri]

News reached the U.K. Press: Father and son die in tragic Christmas day diving accident in Florida | Mail Online

Some good and telling pictures!

 

[tracydr]

233 feet (71 meters) deep on Air (if I understand correctly from the post that this is what they did) in a cave is in itself crazy/stupid/non-sense.

It goes against any training, common sense, and any of the worst advise/non-sense ever posted on an internet forum/online discussion.

You would be narked and unable to perform the cave dive safely at 71 meters on Air.

The Dad as a certified diver should/would have known that (i.e. Air at 71 meters is a bad idea even on an OW dive).

Maybe they went to 71 meters in error (narked/disoriented...), not the original plan?

While I agree that 233 feet in a cave on air is crazy, I believe Scheck and others of his era did this routinely. EN was mapped by Scheck and I wonder if he used trimix or air when he mapped it. His map goes to nearly 300 feet.
In the book Submerged, by Daniel Lenihan, there are several instances where the author and Scheck dive 300 foot deep caves, in Florida and Mexico.

 

[gianaameri]

While I agree that 233 feet in a cave on air is crazy, I believe Scheck and others of his era did this routinely. EN was mapped by Scheck and I wonder if he used trimix or air when he mapped it. His map goes to nearly 300 feet.
In the book Submerged, by Daniel Lenihan, there are several instances where the author and Scheck dive 300 foot deep caves, in Florida and Mexico.

It does not matter who did it and when.

To today's standards it is madness to go in a cave that deep on Air. I honestly still do not think they planned or intended to go that deep on Air and they ended up to that depth due to narcosis or some other reason.

According to this ZACATON: The Tragic Death of Sheck Exley | Gilliam , Sheck used Heliair for very deep dives.

Clearly the deceased Father and Son had no training in cave diving (and this they did not keep a secret), but the Dad was OW certified.

Now, if these were cave trained divers, we'd also be strongly speculating of the possibility of bad gas (contaminated gas/bad mix) given that both died on the same dive and taking into account the circumstances.

Has this hypothesis (bad gas) been ruled out?

 

[grey2112]

Question since I'm relatively new to diving:

Can you get Trimix if you have basic Nitrox (EAN 32/40) card? Or do you have to have Trimix cert card (is there such a thing?)

Does anyone even know if daddy dearest was Nitrox certified?

I saw a pic or two of the dynamic duo with some Nitrox tanks, so I don't know if dad was Nitrox certified.

 

[RJP]

do you have to have Trimix cert card (is there such a thing?)

Yes, TMx cert available/required.