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>Rod Farb wrote: >Would you please translate the coronor's report or whatever it is into >something that makes sense about how the rebreather killed him. Thanks. Rod What you read there is almost as much as I know. I also have the following from an article written by his widow: "On September 16, l986, my life unraveled. Robin was filming A9 underwater at the pebble beach. One way orcas threaten one another is to release a cloud of bubbles. Robin believed that they might be more accepting of his underwater presence if he weren't releasing air with each exhalation. That day he was using a rebreather system, scuba gear designed to emit no bubbles. He had used it before. But this time a tiny valve became clogged, reducing the flow of oxygen. Although everything seemed to be running normally, I sensed something was wrong when A9 approached him and then immediately departed. I jumped overboard but was unable to do anything more than retrieve his body. He had died among the whales he loved, a hundred yards from where I'd first watched him walk out of the sea." Having read the above, and the report I posted, you know have as much information as I do. The following is only speculation on my part: It sounds like the deceased diver was using a pure O2 rebreather. This rebreather was fitted with a constant mass flow valve (cmfv). The deceased did not flush the counter lung with pure O2 before diving. While the cmfv was functioning (presumably during the 5 years before his death) it provided sufficient O2 to meet the divers needs. However at some point the cmfv failed probably due to corrosion. The result was that the cmfv no longer met the divers metabolic needs and he became hypoxic and died. If the diver had flushed the counter lung with O2 prior to the dive then the reduction in breathing volume would have warned him that his O2 was running out. However since the counter lung was not flushed (and probably filled with air ) there was still sufficient volume to allow the diver to continue to respire even though his PO2 had dropped below that needed to sustain life. Once again the above is just speculation on my part based on the report I posted and the quote from the article above. I realize that my senario does not nessesarily fit the report which talks about a bypass valve and not a cmfv. If anyone else has a better explanation I'd love to hear it. Actually if anyone else has rebreather incident reports I'd love to hear them. The point being I'd rather not repeat other peoples mistakes. By the way I expect that most fully closed circuit MIXED GAS rebreathers (including the ccr-1000 line ) also have a cmfv which I would expect to be subject to the same kind of failure. Hopefully regular maintenance and electronic warning devices would prevent a similar tragedy. I assume that everyone realizes that semiclosed circuit constant mass flow units have cmfv's. Barrie Kovish Vancouver, Canada
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