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1. Regarding Rob's death, I called the British High Consulate's office in Nassau yesterday afternoon, to see if I could get any information. They said that there was no press release to made yet, they were still ensuring that all family members had been notified first. 2. She told me that she could say that he was "presumed dead" due to the fact that his body was not recovered, yet there were other divers in the water with him that saw him going down, and they reported that he did not return from depth. 3. This information jives with some of what I have seen on the lists. She did not know whether the dive was on air or mix, those details were not available. 4. This is indeed a tragic event, and when the details are available, will surely be an event fraught with lessons learned (or to be learned!)! I knew Rob "from a distance". We had corresponded several times regarding locations of some of the cave systems here on Andros. He was always very helpful, and I will miss him, his gentlemanly way of dealing with me, and his willingness to share information to a relative "newbie" to the Andros cave diving community. 5. It is ironic that my cave diving here on Andros came to an end last Sunday, when I did my last dive here. My gear has all gone into my household good shipment and is bound for Hawaii now! The majority of the inland stuff out here is all deep. We (residents on the island) have no access to mix, and ALL of my dives have been on air. Therefore we have made it a practice to be extra cautious in our dive planning, diving, and decompression. But this tragedy makes one stop and think, rethink, about the wisdom that says "there is nothing in the cave worth dying for!". If indeed he was diving on air, then I am glad I have a break, albeit not by choice, to stop and think about where I want to go from here. I will have opportunity in Hawaii to train and use mix, and am not likely to do much air diving again for the rest of my life (which is hopefully a long time!). I leave Andros Monday 12MAY97, happy that I was able to do the hundreds of dives I did here! Among those dives were the 90+ cave dives over the last 9 months, in caves that are spectacular and unique! Not one of those cave dives was on mix, and not one of them was to depths less than 160'. And I leave Andros saddened by the loss of Rob, a man I looked up to and thought of as a fine example. I will not forget him and the conversations we had (on the phone and E-Mail), and although I will not dive again for a few months, (the next one will be out in Hawaii some place) I will be thinking of him when I re-enter the water, and will be thinking a lot about him between now and then! 6. Farewell Rob, you will be missed! Warm regards, Dave M. p.s. I am sending "unsubscribe" messages to "tech" and "cavers", so any replies should be directly to me and no later than Friday. See ya'll, and DIVE SAFE!!! Dave ******************************************* * Dave Montague, LT, USN * _____ 0000 * Andros Island, Bahamas * (_/ \_)ooo * subterraneous-submarine-speleologist * ---=>O< oo * aka: "Deco Dave - the Dive TERMINATOR" * Cave Diver's do it... * rso@wp*.nu*.na*.mi* * with deeper penetration * 562-655-5155 (x5178) * in the dark! ******************************************* -- Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'. Send list subscription requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'.
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