Tom,

Your polite response to this Mark Andrews lunatic is laudable.  I will never
forget the occasion when we both observed the "late" Nick Comoglio
"training" himself for a deep air record off the coast of Pompano Beach.
Two days later this ended in a predictable tragedy. Variations on this same
tragedy have continued to repeat themselves with a diminishing regularity;
however the real "face" of deep air has morphed into a more subtle and
dangerous form within your own agency.

Diving to 51 meters(165ft) on air is deep and irresponsibly dangerous. In
fact diving to any depth on air is pointless and flies in face of the whole
underlying purpose of "technical diving". I remember very well sitting
through one of your first courses ever on mixed gas diving and recall the
point you made about air being a bad gas at any depth. We know now that this
is an incontrovertible fact.

Our experience in the WKPP erased any doubts regarding the insidious nature
of narcosis and it's affect on judgement in the 100 - 150ft range and some
years ago the use of air was permanently proscribed from any organization
related diving. You may recall that Rob Palmer's death really brought the
curtain call down on deep air. You also probably remember the publication of
the NACD historical death list.  Most all of these fatalities occurred
within the 100 - 200 ft depth range.

Technical diving is all about good judgement and we are constantly reminded
that death is the bedfellow of poor or questionable judgement. Deep air
diving is the very definition of bad judgement and I defy anybody on this
list to make a convincing argument that 165fsw on air is not deep.  I know
that there are lots of testimonials out there and I don't think you want to
go there.

This nonsense has got to stop. What on earth is the point of technical
diving if IANTD endorses, via it's other face,  a dangerous, obsolete and
proven failed practice.

Best regards,

Bill Mee

-----Original Message-----
From: Tom Mount <TOM.MOUNT@wo*.at*.ne*>
To: bdi@wh*.ne* <bdi@wh*.ne*>; techdiver@aq*.co*
<techdiver@aq*.co*>
Cc: techdiver@aq*.co* <techdiver@aq*.co*>; Christian Gerzner
<christiang@pi*.co*.au*>; Mark the Nark Andrews
<extreme@de*.fr*.co*.uk*>; Afonso Pinheiro Junior
<afonso0@ib*.ne*>; Barrie Heard <bheard@dc*.ne*.au*>; Bill Nadeau
<tekdiver@na*.ar*.co*>; Dick Rutkowski <dick@hy*.co*>; Erika
Haley <haley@ca*.ky*>; Fabio Amaral <fabio_amaral@ya*.co*>; Fabio Ruberti
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Howland <ghowland@fw*.gu*.ne*>; Gil <gildiver@di*.co*.br*>; Gina & Mark
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<regboer@bi*.co*>; Richard Nordstrom <74663.1663@co*.co*>;
Richard Pyle <deepreef@bi*.or*>; Shelley orlowski
<orlowski@at*.ne*>; Vebjørn Karlsen <karlsenv@on*.no*>; Victor
Williams <diving@sp*.co*>; William J Turbeville II
<bturbo@ga*.ne*>
Date: Wednesday, August 18, 1999 2:30 PM
Subject: Re:IANTD vs 70 m air instruction and 158 m air dives You gotta be
kidding


>Mark
>
>Having had the description of your dive read to me over the phone I would
>like to offer the following comments:
>
>1. First the dive sounded like the biggest screw up I have ever seen
>published. You were obviously out of it, lets see blind, overinflation of
BC
>to the point of rupturing the bladder, estimates of 130 meter/min ascent
>rate due to loss of buoyancy control. etc etc.
>
>2. It sounds like you are damn lucky to be alive and that if anything this
>should have taught you the reason to avoid ultra deep air divers rather
than
>have a desire to teach it to 70 meters.
>
>3. That your mental frame of mind as to the approach to do deep dives is
>outdated by 30 years or so and numerous deaths are proof of this outdated
>mind set
>
>4. You must be unaware that IANTD only offers air diving courses to a max
>depth of 51 meters and that a sister program to this course is Normoxic
>Trimix
>which is essentially the same program except all divers deeper than 40
>meters are made on trimix and it will allow dives to 60 m. With your goal
to
>teach deep air to 70 + meters you certainly do not need an affiliation with
>IANTD where this practice is expressively FORBIDDEN
>
>5. After completing the dive you did and still wish to promote this type of
>activity as such you would represent everything IANTD is trying to
>discourage and avoid, thus you crossing over to IANTD is a little absurd.
>
>6.  While if you had learned from this experience and god knows you had
some
>good clues dropped to you on the dangers of this type of activity
>A. Blind at 100 m (but you continued the dive to 158m) time for a sanity
>check,
>B. explosive ascent due to loss of control for whatever reason
>C. The need to do a omitted deco procedure because you could not recover
>your buoyancy on the dive and various other comments you made concerning
the
>dive.
>
>As stated if you had learned instead of being intrigued by that dive, you
>may have had good rational to share with divers about avoiding ultra deep
>air diving but it seems your primary goal is to teach air diving to depths
>that exceed accepted oxygen and nitrogen limits, Sorry that is something
>that will not be done under the IANTD umbrella. I recommend you stick with
>your present training agencies maybe they will allow this but we will not.
>
>7. While I agree with your statement on the rights of an individual to take
>risk on a personal level I cannot share your enthusiasm about wanting to
>encourage others to do this type (ultra deep air)activity. Plus I find it
>difficult to see your logic in wishing to do a 158 m air dive in the first
>place when there are other ways to have adventure and take risk that are
not
>proven both in theory and in practice physiologically insane endeavors.
>
>8.All you proved is for some reason on this one day, you as one person,
>survived a dive to 158 m. I hope you at least picked up enough warnings
from
>the events that happened to you to avoid this kind of a dive in the future.
>
>9. Deep diving even on propre mixes has its share of danger why try to
>exceed well documented physiological risk limits.
>
>10. In closing while my philosophy agrees with a statement by Dr Gil Milner
>along time ago.
>
>“You Have The Obligation to Inform One Honestly of the Risk, And As a
Person
>You Are Committed to Educate Yourself to the Total Risk In Any Activity!”
>“Once Informed & Totally Aware of the Risk, Every Fool Has the Right to
Kill
>or Injure Themselves as They See Fit!”
>
>So if you really understand and accept the risk then you have the right to
>kill yourself, but Mark we do not want you to be responsible for training
>IANTD divers if you feel ultra deep air diving is something you want to
>promote and teach them. So as long as your stated goal is to teach air to
>great depths,
>then we really would prefer that you were not an IANTD instructor
>
>So I do not know at what part of your instructor crossover you are at or
who
>with but I will have to prevent its completion at this time maybe when and
>if you "grow up we can reconsider this action".
>
>Respectfully yours,
>Tom Mount
>CEO IANTD World HQ
>http://www.iantd.com
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: bdi@wh*.ne* <bdi@wh*.ne*>
>To: Tom Mount <TOM.MOUNT@wo*.at*.ne*>
>Cc: techdiver@aq*.co* <techdiver@aq*.co*>; Christian Gerzner
><christiang@pi*.co*.au*>; Mark the Nark Andrews
><extreme@de*.fr*.co*.uk*>
>Date: Tuesday, August 17, 1999 11:46 PM
>Subject: Re: Darwin Award winner -'Mark the Nark'Andrews
>
>
>
>
>--
>Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aq*.co*'.
>Send subscribe/unsubscribe requests to `techdiver-request@aq*.co*'.
>

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