Rebreather diver dies in 6 feet of water - Cyprus

[DandyDon]

Sadly, he was watching his children diver.

CCR diver dies in shallows in Cyprus

Experienced technical diver Martin Dash, 46, from Liverpool, was on a family holiday with Alex Woolerton, his partner of 22 years, and their two children.

Kitted up with his rebreather he entered the water some time after mid-day on 13 July to photograph his 16-year-old daughter, an Open-Water Diver, and 11-year-old son, who were undergoing dive-training in shallow water with two instructors. His daughter later said that she had exchanged OK signs with her father before seeing him swim away.

Some eight minutes after Dash had submerged, Woolerton was swimming when she saw a diver being pulled from the water and start to be given CPR on the beach. As a large number of divers were training in the bay, she did not realise at first that it was Dash.

Despite 40 minutes of attempted resuscitation, Dash failed to regain consciousness. He was taken by ambulance to hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Two post mortems took place before Woolerton was allowed to fly his body home on 27 July, but back in Liverpool the Coroner ordered a further post mortem for 1 August.

Cause of death had been declared by the Cyprus authorities to be asphyxiation by drowning, although there was reportedly no water in Dash’s lungs.

The diver was using a new closed-circuit rebreather that he had bought just before his departure. An ISC Pathfinder, it replaced an ISC Megalodon that he had used for the past nine years on deep dives, diver friend Stephen Bennett-Squires told Divernet, describing Dash as “very efficient and skilled, having a ticket to 100m but passing that when the dives required”.

In the days leading up to the fatal incident Dash had carried out six dives down to around the 40m mark on the Zenobia ferry wreck, said Woolerton, diving through the Dive-In Larnaca centre. There had been no reported problems, although she told Divernet that he had complained to her about charging issues with the unit. “Martin was always so careful and particular about everything,” she said. Cyprus Police have retained the rebreather pending investigation.

Woolerton told Divernet that her partner’s dive-computer had not registered a dive, and that she had been told that his mouthpiece was still in place when he was recovered from the water.

 

[CuzzA]

That is very unfortunate to hear, especially for the daughter to be present.

[speculation]
Obviously not enough info to make any type of hypothesis of what happened. Obviously the usual suspects like medical incident come to mind, but given his daughter being present and him taking pictures of her, boy, the first thing I thought when reading that report was Temporarily Corrupted Motivation Paradigms as described in this video. Sounds eerily similar to the first illustrative case starting at 43:44 in the video.

 

[Steve_C]

Not a rebreather diver but I seem to recall a number of mentions of issues in shallow water, or maybe it is more sensitivity.

 

[KevinNM]

People make mistakes. People do things like forget to turn on the rebreather or install the absorbent. People also have severe medical issues under water, and medical examination of rebreather fatalities is notoriously poor, there was actually an entire scientific conference on how to improve that.

 

[tilikum]

I think Big Jet Driver was in shallow water when he died if I recall.

 

[ajduplessis]

Sad! Rebreather's don't discriminate... deep, shallow, newbie, skilled, old or young. If you fail to detect and rectify even the smallest changes the machine has the potential to expire the user in an disabling fashion.

 

[wgw04024]

So sad. I will gladly admit, as unforgiving as these machines are, they are certainly not for me.

 

[AJ]

Sad indeed. However, OC can go wrong as quick as an rebreather, don't think OC is much safer. Safety is between your ears, but there's always a risk in diving.

As far as I can tell not much more is known than that he was diving a rebreather. Could be an non rebreather related issue also. So blaming the rebreather is pure speculation for now.

 

[Dan]

Is this Hypercapnia - Wikipedia a possibility?

Bad CO2 absorber not scrubbing away the CO2, where the gas accumulated to a fatal concentration in the rebreather loop?

 

[rongoodman]

Hypoxia sounds more likely to me than hypercapnia.