Doc Deep dies during dive.

[tomfcrist]

The Captained also said that Dr. Garman’s body would not be retrieved from the ocean until an attempt next week, as plans were being made to obtain equipment required to lift the descent line.

Can someone provide some insight on how a descent line is normally setup and why special equipment is required to lift it? Also how are divers normally attached?

"Normally" a diver wouldn't be attached to a decent line at all. The only reason it would be beneficial in this case is if there are subsurface currents and such that pop up unexpectedly, or to facilitate a body recovery.

The special equipment would likely not be much different than a hydraulic winch used to pull crab pots. The problem is that with all that gear on, if he died while still defending he would be pretty darn negative....imagine trying to pull up a body wearing 6-8 tanks plus a 250lb weight by hand from 1200+'.

Now if there is a sturdy pulley available on one boat, another boat could conceivably tie the decent line off on the stern and drive away while the rope pulls through the stationary boats pulley. Probably easier said than done, but not beyond the realm of possibility.

 

[Wookie]

Can someone provide some insight on how a descent line is normally setup and why special equipment is required to lift it? Also how are divers normally attached?

a 250 lb weight with rope is fairly significant. Couldn't haul it by hand. My windlass would do it, but I wouldn't. I have a pot hauler rated for 400 lbs, but it's good for 1/2 inch rope max. Still wouldn't do it. Pot fishing is not allowed in St. Croix IIRC, so a boat with a pot hauler would have to come from St. Thomas.

"Normally" a diver wouldn't be attached to a decent line at all. The only reason it would be beneficial in this case is if there are subsurface currents and such that pop up unexpectedly, or to facilitate a body recovery.

The special equipment would likely not be much different than a hydraulic winch used to pull crab pots. The problem is that with all that gear on, if he died while still defending he would be pretty darn negative....imagine trying to pull up a body wearing 6-8 tanks plus a 250lb weight by hand from 1200+'.

Now if there is a sturdy pulley available on one boat, another boat could conceivably tie the decent line off on the stern and drive away while the rope pulls through the stationary boats pulley. Probably easier said than done, but not beyond the realm of possibility.

Not likely with a body that's been in the ocean for a couple of days. Pretty mushy, and a boat is hard to stop on a dime. Wouldn't do to have the wife see dr. Deep get strained through a pulley. They have a real problem on their hands.

 

[Centrals]

Can someone provide some insight on how a descent line is normally setup and why special equipment is required to lift it? Also how are divers normally attached?

I believe the line has to be prestretched in the beginning. A signed slate is then attached to it at the 1,200ft mark. If the line is not pre-stretched, the weight of the 'anchor" would stretch it beyond 1,200ft.
When late John Bennett first dived beyond 1,000ft about 14yrs ago, he was not attached to anything.

 

[Akimbo]

I believe the line has to be prestretched in the beginning. A signed slate is then attached to it at the 1,200ft mark. If the line is not pre-stretched, the weight of the 'anchor" would stretch it beyond 1,200ft...

Really??? Double-braided Nylon line in the hand-friendly 1/2 to 1" range wouldn't stretch much with only 250 Lbs on it. Rather than pre-stretch I "suspect" they would pull it taut enough to get the slack out, which would be in the 100 to 200 Lb range. As I remember the charts, you have to get into the range of 70%+ of working load to detect much actual stretch.

 

[The Chairman]

I take it that it was not attached to the boat at all. Was it attached to the top of a wall or something?

 

[Grender]

Pardon my ignorance, I am just a recreational diver with less than 100 dives under his belt.

I have read this entire thread, and have read several people talking about how this dive was foolish/impossible. In layman's terms, what happened to his physiology which made him unable to recover? What likely killed him? Was he just really narc'd and forgot what he was doing?

 

[BRT]

I certainly don't know anything about deep diving but to start out with each breath at 1200 feet would have 37 times as much gas in it as a breath on the surface. It has got to be a little effort just to breathe. He will be making multiple tank changes as he goes down and up between tanks that will be toxic for him to breathe at the wrong depths. Going down at that speed would affect is central nervous system and his joints will freeze up and be painful.

 

[ajduplessis]

Nuno mentioned that HPNS tremors was making it nearly impossible to keep the reg in his mouth. Add visual distortions and little control over motor skills with a bucketload of equipment. Even the experienced Mr Gabr turned becauce of being unable to deal with HPNS issues and I will be very surprised if he gives it another go.

 

[Bennno]

At first I didn't even realize that he was in a wetsuit... would it even be possilbe to survive half an hour without insulation in freezing cold water? How cold is it below 200m? Can't be much higher than 40 °F.

 

[Diver0001]

Pardon my ignorance, I am just a recreational diver with less than 100 dives under his belt.

I have read this entire thread, and have read several people talking about how this dive was foolish/impossible. In layman's terms, what happened to his physiology which made him unable to recover? What likely killed him? Was he just really narc'd and forgot what he was doing?

The answer to this can only be speculation. There are several possibilities, perhaps a combination of which contributed to the problem.

First of all the planned descent rate was very fast. This can lead to several physiological phenomena that can impair the diver's ability to use his hands. Narcosis is one, but rapid descents on trimix have been proven to cause other issues as well. One possible explanation is that he was simply unable to manipulate his inflator(s) during the increasingly rapid decent and that he just shot right off the end of the drop line at high speed and kept going.

Mechanically, an inflator will also only fill at a certain rate. If the decent is fast enough, it's theoretically possible that the diver could reach a decent speed that is so fast that even with the inflator wide open it won't slow the descent fast enough to compensate for the mounting pressure, which could lead to an uncontrolled descent. Add to that, the issues of being physically and mentally impaired due to the depth and it draws a nasty picture.

Other more mundane theories could have to do with severe narcosis, oxygen toxicity (missing a gas switch) or simply botching a gas switch and drowning while trying to multitask a rapid decent. The descent phase of such a dive would be very VERY busy and it would be easy to miss a step. There are many things you could think of that could have rendered the diver unconscious during the decent. To be a bit brutal given that his friends are likely to be reading this.... the amazing part about dives to this depth isn't that someone died. It's that so many divers survive the decent phase at all.

R..