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John, As to the accident that claimed the lives of Bill Mayne and and his diving buddy (Ariel). Bill and Ariel were diving a system south of Tallahassee Florida, that Bill was reported as very familiar with. However, Ariel was reported as doing his first dive there on this occasion. They were diving the "downstream" tunnel at ClearCut Sink, which is not a deep tunnel (the upstream tunnel goes to 200+), with a max depth of around 100ft. Bill and Ariel were making this dive on a Friday night, with the dive starting somewhere around 11:00pm (after work and school for the divers.) A guideline was run from the basin of ClearCut into the main tunnel, and tied to the permanent line in the downstream tunnel. When Bill did not come home, his wife called out the Sheriff's office. Divers found Bill's body approximately at the halfway point between ClearCut and the next sink, lying on the guideline. His tanks (steel 104's) were empty, and an empty aluminum 80 (stage bottle) was found about 50 -100ft futher downstream in the system. There is some question as to wheither Bill was diving air, or something else. Ariel's body was found at the end of the line downstream, with jump reel deployed, and entangled in the line. His tanks (double alum. 80's) were also empty. At the dive site, all equipment was reported as functional. Autopsy indicated death by drowning. To me, the only sceanario that fits this data is as follows - For whatever reason, Bill suffered some form of catastrophic medical disaster at the halfway point in the cave (possibly CNS oxygen toxicity, MI, water aspiration, etc.) Sinking to the bottom and stirring up the silt. Ariel probably tried to assist Bill, but when it became apparent that Bill was beyond help, Ariel decided to exit. So, not being familiar with the cave system, Ariel swam util he found a line arrow pointing the way out. We feel that Ariel was carrying the alum. 80 to help make his gas supply comparable to Bill's. Cave guidelines usually have "line arrows" that point the way out (to the nearest exit). However, on caves with multiple exits, at some point the line arrows will start pointing toward the other exit. It is felt that with Bill on the bottom in almost the center of the cave, that it was a 50-50 chance what line arrow Ariel would find (ie, if he swam upstream, he would have come across an arrow pointing back to ClearCut, and if he swam downstream he would have come across an arrow pointing to the next downstream sink). As witnessing your dive partner die is an extremely stressful situation, Ariel emptied his stage bottle about 50 - 100ft further downstream from Bill's body. At this point Ariel must have dropped the empty stage bottle. When Ariel reached the end of the permanent guideline (most permanent guidelines start inside the cave, to avoid luring into the cave those open water divers who might be diving the spring/sink), there was no light shining into to show the way out (into the sinkhole). It is obvious that Ariel made the decision to search for the exit, due to the deployed safety reel. It must have come as quite a shock to reach the end of the permanent line and not find the reel that they had deployed when they entered the system. It is felt that Ariel exhausted his air supply trying to find the way out, and in his stuggles as he drown he became entangled in his line. As to what caused Bill's accident, we will never know. But, the sceanario presented above does fit the facts as we know them. John Crea - Chairman, NSS-CDS and NACD Accident files Submariner Research, Ltd. (johncrea@de*.co*)
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