Two fatalities in Monterey

[mdb]

We can all certainly make mistakes, no matter how many dives we have, or how much training in our background.

Threads, such as this, can be helpful reminders that may help prevent a future accident.

I know, for me, after thousands of dives, and a few emergency incidents, this thread continues to give me a wake up call.

Even though I normally dive solo, I do dive with close friends and family when we have the opportunity to do so. I have linked them all to this continuing discussion.

 

[K_girl]

I have dove off the Monterey Express for years and always had a great crew. They provide tanks or you can bring your own. When I first started diving with them in 2001, you would always get 3000 psi on steel 80s for the dives. A few years later, it went down to 2800 psi, last couple of years 2400 psi. I bring my own tanks because of it. I am not blaming the dive op for this accident. Every diver must monitor their air usage. In cold water, your air usage is not going to be as good as it is in warm water and the less the experience, even worse. These two boys had two dives in the cold water, including a night dive, must have given them some level of confidence. Since there aren't any boats that go out for night dives in Monterey, it is more likely that their first two dives were shore dives at the Breakwater. Those dives are going to be more shallow than the boat dive they did, probably only 30 feet, 40 max. They probaby had rental tanks from a local dive shop closer to 3000 psi. I am also speculating that this was their first boat dive of the Monterey trip and of a likelihood that the boat dive was deeper than their shore dives. Metridium Fields, you are going to be between 45-60 feet. I believe that the combination of less air available in the tank, the deeper dive, which means less dive time, and the building of confidence led to these boys losing track of a reduced available dive time, their air usage and utlimately, the accident. It was reported that one boy was out of air and the other was very low.

Again, I am not blaming anyone, just pointing out what could have potentially led to the accident.

 

[Michael Meyer]

I might have before my OW class, but (hopefully) not after. It was "beaten" into us to NEVER hold our breath. Never! We were to either exhale slowly, "make bubbles" (if possible), or, if not, at least maintain an open airway (hum, make a tone, or, if nothing else at least keep our airway relaxed and not "held"). Of course one never knows what one will do, in a real emergency, but I think if I never hold my breath on a drill, I am much more likely to "instinctively" not hold it when it happens for real.

It sounds like you are confident and have a plan; I just felt I had to comment, as I could see it possibly becoming dangerous (I know if I were to close my eyes and do a drill, I very well might ascend some). But I don't mean to tell you how to dive with your kids, and I am not a seasoned pro anyway, so I hope I didn't come across as meddlesome.

Blue Sparkle

No meddlesome taken. This drill that I'm suggesting will be part of our pre-dive activities. Not in the water. You know ...when you do your buddy check....Buoyancy, Weights, Releases, Air, Final okay... Just sort of a review of what to do in an emergency.

 

[Lobzilla]

I took it to mean that if your tank was empty and you were out of air, that you wouldn't have anything to breathe into the inflator. I mean, say you had breathed in from the tank, thought everything was okay, then exhaled and gone to breathe in again, and found no air. So now there you are, OOA, and you have just exhaled.

Presumably raftingtigger meant that the theoretical person's BC could not be inflated further from whatever its current state was.

I have not been in this situation, thankfully, so I don't know exactly how it would be; I'm just saying how I interpreted raftingtigger's assertion.
Blue Sparkle

Exactly.

While it may not have anything to do with the accident it is important to understand the following:

IF we are neutrally buoyant, in horizontal trim, we exhale and the next breath does not come out of our regulator, we will be slightly negative. We have to fix two problems: OOG (a big problem) and the slow start of a most likely unwanted descent (still a small problem). So, we swim to our buddy and use a small portion of our propulsion to fix the slightly (!) negative buoyancy. Once we get gas from our buddy, both problems will be solved immediately as we get back to neutral by inhaling. This is OOG as a non-event. OOG should not have happened in the first place but we and our team had the skills to deal with it. Happy ending.

Here is the more ugly scenario.

We are swimming at the typical 45* angle and maintain somewhat constant depth. That means that we are negatively buoyant already and constantly compensating for this with propulsion. This is inefficient and potentially dangerous.

Now, our next breath does not come out of our regulator. What is the most likely response? We stop kicking at least for a moment while we have the "Oh sugar" look on our face. Now what happens? We are going to sink and while sinking the compressible gas in our BC and suit will loose volume as the pressure increases. This makes us even more negatively buoyant.

We now have two BIG problems: OOG and the threat of a run-away descent. One way to stop the descent is propulsion (kicking up). However, we would rather use propulsion to get to our buddy an fix the immediately life threatening OOG situation. We could dump our weights and see our buddy disappear below us; we might make it to the surface and we might live.

But rather than looking at how many band-aids we can apply to unnecessary pain, let's look at what got us in the negative buoyancy pickle. Lack of proper trim and proper buoyancy control. If we had paid attention to that, we would have had more control over the OOG situation. The most expedient way to fix OOG is by taking the quickest way to a competent buddy close by. To quickly reach someone, who carries our reserve parachute (i.e. gas) on his/her back and is able to hand it to us when needed. Someone who does not start sinking either when he/she stops kicking. Otherwise, we will both struggle to maintain depth control while sharing gas.

"Team, buoyancy, and trim - and everything else in that order". If we hear something to that effect during a course, we have found the right instructor. If he/she also mentions the 'incident pit', even better. By being out of trim and out of neutral buoyancy due to laziness we are already taking a step towards the deep, dark center of the pit.

 

[Ken Kurtis]

Perhaps I'm missing something about your statement, or there was a word missing?

I believe his point was:

1. If the tank is OOA, the LP inflator is useless.
2. Given that the diver will have discovered the OOA immediately AFTER exhaling and then trying to inhale . . .
3. There will be no way for the diver to get another breath to orally inflate the BC.

Perhaps a better way to have stated would have been to say that the LP inflator (sometimes called "auto-inflator" wouldn't work and the diver - due to a lack of air - would not have been able to get a breath to orally inflate the BC.

(EDIT: I posted this right after reading Ed's post but before seeing that it had been replied to and dealt with. I need to follow my own advice below. )

Also Ed, not to beat you up too badly on this lovely day (at least here is SoCal), but I agree with Bruce. It sounds like you haven't read through the entire thread. You should at least skim the pertinent facts before wading in. More productive that way.

- Ken

 

[Blue Sparkle]

These two boys had two dives in the cold water, including a night dive, must have given them some level of confidence. Since there aren't any boats that go out for night dives in Monterey, it is more likely that their first two dives were shore dives at the Breakwater.

Do we know that the group went on a night dive? I thought it was said that they made a dive the evening before. To my mind that could be just, say, like a dive you make after work, which might conclude before dusk. I don't know what they did, but I also don't know that they made a night dive (unless I missed it somewhere, or you know from another source?).

(To clarify: To me a "night dive" is where you purposely wait until after dark, or nearly dark, and then go diving; the goal being to be diving after dark so that you can see "night" things.)

 

[Lobzilla]

To make the rant about the importance of buoyancy and trim a little more vivid, please look at this video.

At 0:17 you will see a diver with yellow sleeves. That's me on my 18th OW dive. While the trim is not horrible, it is not good enough to smoothly deal with an OOG drill later in the video.

At 17:17 Trace, one of our best local instructors, notices that my buddy and I are getting to far away from each other and decides to 'reward' us for it. He descends on me, tells me that I am OOG and that I have to get gas from my buddy.

You can clearly see how I pay for lack of trim control by struggling to stay at depth and close to my buddy. This was a drill and my buddy was still in excellent control of the situation. Can you imagine how that would look in a real OOG event with both divers struggling to stay together?

Practicing gas sharing while plopped on the bottom of a pool and pulling it off in open water are two different beasts.

(BTW: Trace was not responsible for the lack of skills that I brought into this dive. My OW instructor and his agency have to take credit for that.)

 

[K_girl]

Do we know that the group went on a night dive? I thought it was said that they made a dive the evening before. To my mind that could be just, say, like a dive you make after work, which might conclude before dusk. I don't know what they did, but I also don't know that they made a night dive (unless I missed it somewhere, or you know from another source?).

(To clarify: To me a "night dive" is where you purposely wait until after dark, or nearly dark, and then go diving; the goal being to be diving after dark so that you can see "night" things.)

This article below described it as "an evening dive." But this is not an important detail in the context of what I wrote in my post. There are no boats in Monterey that do "evening dives" either, so that was a shallower, shore dive.

School district issues statement about students' deaths | Carson City Nevada News - Carson Now

However, this article appears to clarify that they did one dive on Friday in the evening and the accident occurred on the second dive Saturday morning [on the Monterey Express]. So they did have one successful deeper boat dive on the 2400 psi tanks off the Monterey Express. Even though I am sure that the second dive was shallower than the first, you can actually use more air on the second dive because you are colder and fighting to stay warm. My last trip on the Monterey Express - 19 divers, only 7 did the second dive because the others were too cold. Only myself and one other diver were in dry suits.

 

[Blue Sparkle]

This article below described it as "an evening dive." But this is not an important detail in the context of what I wrote in my post.

K_girl,

I understand what you are saying. It just concerns me when "facts" creep in with little fanfare, even when they are not the main point of a sentence. I realize that you were not trying to do this (and in fact they may have made a night dive, I don't know).

I have no problem with speculation, as long as it's clear (I have written a few "I wonder if" possible scenarios myself in this thread, and I think they can be interesting and useful).

So they did have one successful deeper boat dive on the 2400 psi tanks off the Monterey Express.

Now you are probably going to think I'm a real nag, and I don't mean to be, but... do we know they were using 2400psi tanks? I know that your main point is that they had had an earlier dive, which does seem to be fact, and I understand you had some low fills on this boat in the past, but I don't think we know how much air was in their specific tanks to start off with (again, unless I have missed this) (actually, does anyone here know what type or size tanks they were even using?).

Blue Sparkle

 

[Dack]

Weights: Beginning diver, low body fat 'sinkers', going from fresh to salt water, thicker wetsuit for colder water (yes even Lake Tahoe is warm in comparison), difficulty letting out your breath in 48 degrees to descent, and maybe even an inadvertent switch from aluminum to steel... Add it up and you could easily be 10-15 pounds overweighted.

Buoyancy: Were they neutrally buoyant at depth or banging around on the bottom? Is a full BC at 40lbs required to offset weighting, and what if they'd dumped their BCs and then ran out of air? The swimming ascent becomes no longer possible. Panic and you forget those weights can be dropped - you swim and swim until you can't swim any more.


Pure speculation, but I'm a 'sinker' and when I'm diving Monterey with a 7mm farmer john I'm wearing 24lbs - and that's even a little heavy. But when I check out my equipment the scuba shop asks if I want the 35lbs weight bag vs. 28lbs.

Nobody wants to be the guy floating on the surface, so if you don't know for sure the tendency is to overweight. Could be easy to go wrong if you didn't understand the importance, and I did NOT get that knowledge in OW training. It wasn't until AOW that I got the experience and was able to shed ~7 lbs...and growing.