Guy to Break World Record

[Eric Sedletzky]

All throughout our diving careers we are told by our instructors, mentors, people with a lot more experience than us on the internet, high ranking tech divers, etc - to NEVER take chances, safety safety safety, save your life, dive safe, seek the best training from the experts, never dive out of your comfort zone, don't dive air deep, don't go into caves or wrecks without the proper training and protocols, don't do 'trust me' dives, ask hard questions of yourself WHY you are wanting to tech dive - if it's ego driven or deep numbers driven think twice. etc etc etc. I've heard it all.
So this event comes along and pretty much blew up the boards worse than any other single event that I can ever remember in the 17 years I've been lurking on these boards.
This incident is a total black eye to diving and goes against everything that's ever been hammered into our heads about what not to do and the motivations exactly NOT to follow.
I can't blame anybody that had a moment on this board and said stuff. I don't think anybody here is really bad, the board does a pretty good job of weeding out the wing nuts and sociopaths. I think if we were to all meet somewhere we'd see that were a pretty balanced cross section of the diving society.
But what happened really hit a few raw nerves and people reacted. There was anger and frustration and we're human.
What really angered people was the whole thing about innocents that got dragged (or brainwashed) into the whole mess. And now we learn (at least I did) that the science was fatally flawed from the start but nobody had sense to know it. But people here knew it and then watched it go down, helpless. That's frustrating, or even maddening.
If the guy said nothing prior, then went out there alone and attempted this entirely solo, I doubt there would have been quite the global reactions.

 

[AJMcc]

All throughout our diving careers we are told by our instructors, mentors, people with a lot more experience than us on the internet, high ranking tech divers, etc - to NEVER take chances, safety safety safety, save your life, dive safe, seek the best training from the experts, never dive out of your comfort zone, don't dive air deep, don't go into caves or wrecks without the proper training and protocols, don't do 'trust me' dives, ask hard questions of yourself WHY you are wanting to tech dive - if it's ego driven or deep numbers driven think twice. etc etc etc. I've heard it all.
So this event comes along and pretty much blew up the boards worse than any other single event that I can ever remember in the 17 years I've been lurking on these boards.
This incident is a total black eye to diving and goes against everything that's ever been hammered into our heads about what not to do and the motivations exactly NOT to follow.
I can't blame anybody that had a moment on this board and said stuff. I don't think anybody here is really bad, the board does a pretty good job of weeding out the wing nuts and sociopaths. I think if we were to all meet somewhere we'd see that were a pretty balanced cross section of the diving society.
But what happened really hit a few raw nerves and people reacted. There was anger and frustration and we're human.
What really angered people was the whole thing about innocents that got dragged (or brainwashed) into the whole mess. And now we learn (at least I did) that the science was fatally flawed from the start but nobody had sense to know it. But people here knew it and then watched it go down, helpless. That's frustrating, or even maddening.
If the guy said nothing prior, then went out there alone and attempted this entirely solo, I doubt there would have been quite the global reactions.

Excellent post.

Thank you.

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

There's also this:
Why did he pick 1200' when the record was 1019' (not positive of the depth, correct me if I'm wrong).
That's 181' beyond the current record. Even at 1019' there were reports that the diver barely made it and had permanent lung damage from the stunt. So why not 1025 or 1040?
I'm assuming this guy knew about the circumstances of the current record holder but still intended to make it 1200' even though he knew he would be permanently screwed up at best.
Here's what I think - that his ultimate underlying motivation was to to break the record by such a wide margin to make absolutely sure that nobody would ever or could ever break his record again and he would remain the victor for eternity. If my suspicion is right then he indeed would be the single most egotistical and narcissistic human being I've ever heard of, at least in diving. I'm not saying this out of contempt, I'm just making an observation about the guys mental state. He was 54 years old and had been diving for 4 or 5 years. Wow! a mid life crisis on steroids.

This kind of ruined the board for me. I don't know what to discuss beyond this that doesn't seem extremely trivial now. All the threads about poodle jackets, split fins, BP/W, and the rest of it seems pretty small, even diving air to 200 feet seems somewhat benign compared to this.
Maybe trip reports only for me from now on. I don't see how anything else really has any relevance.

 

[kensuf]

Here's what I think - that his ultimate underlying motivation was to to break the record by such a wide margin to make absolutely sure that nobody would ever or could ever break his record again and he would remain the victor for eternity.

This seems plausible and likely.

BTW -- I deleted the rest, but sorry about your existential crisis. Split fins and poodle jackets are important discussions to have.

 

[dumpsterDiver]

Two things...
One, I'd hope that it would dissuade future clowns from trying the same stupid thing.
Two, I'd hope it would sting the family that allowed this clown to make this dive. The son was a backup diver. If "Like Father, Like Son" is accurate, do we need to worry about the son attempting this level of clownery in the future?
And Three, but most importantly, death sucks. We're mad. This didn't have to happen. So, we express our anger towards the arsehat that made it happen.

His son was filmed saying there are 1000 ways this could go wrong... yet he willingly helped his dad in this fiasco, so we can only assume that he too thought the depth was attainable and survivable.

Might his son be motivated to validate his father's legacy by PROVING that such an attempt is possible and that his father was not a clown, simply because he failed?

Hope not..

 

[nadwidny]

His son was filmed saying there are 1000 ways this could go wrong... yet he willingly helped his dad in this fiasco, so we can only assume that he too thought the depth was attainable and survivable.

Might his son be motivated to validate his father's legacy by PROVING that such an attempt is possible and that his father was not a clown, simply because he failed?

Hope not..

If he does then hopefully it's before he breeds because if he decides to attempt it then obviously there has to be a stupid gene that needs to be wiped out.

 

[PeterNBiddle]

This kind of ruined the board for me. I don't know what to discuss beyond this that doesn't seem extremely trivial now. All the threads about poodle jackets, split fins, BP/W, and the rest of it seems pretty small, even diving air to 200 feet seems somewhat benign compared to this.
Maybe trip reports only for me from now on. I don't see how anything else really has any relevance.

I view it the exact opposite. This is where SB actually calls it right. We said "dude is gonna die".

And then he did.

This is SB actually working. Carry on!


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

I view it the exact opposite. This is where SB actually calls it right. We said "dude is gonna die".

And then he did.

This is SB actually working. Carry on!


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

I don't see where it worked. If he would have gotten on here and listened to people and scrapped his plans because of scubaboard then I would say it worked.
What I mean by SB running it's course (with me at least) is after this incident nothing else we normally discuss can even compare and everything else just seems silly. It made me realize more than ever what a waste of time some of the arguments about diving styles, gear choices, and other trivial things, at least for me personally. Nothing ever changes. go back 10 years and there were the exact same things being hashed out.
That's why I said from now on I'm sticking with posting trip reports and reading trip reports.
For others who just joined and are seeking basic info it's great, but for me I need to go do something else for a while and clear my head.
I've been thinking about what happened when they pulled him up from that depth left me with a pretty bad visual.

I'm going diving tomorrow, the truck's all packed up.
See ya.

 

[PeterNBiddle]

The Internet is normally a game of inches. I'm guessing we've actually DOUBLED the number of people in the world who know about HPNS. (Yes, actually doubled.) This is a gain of yards.

By all means go diving.

But your participation in this (along with others) has probably nipped hundreds of stupid future events in the bud. Frankly if he had succeeded we'd be netting out with far more dead in the next 10 years, and reminding people (the next wave of newbie depth seekers) of this, of hubris and exploding alka seltzer tablet bodies and grieving kids and widows, is part of our "job".




Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk