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From: "Bill Mee" <wwm@sa*.ne*>
To: <kirvine@sa*.ne*>, <techdiver@aquanaut.com>
Subject: Re: Where was this guy's buddy?
Date: Fri, 30 Jul 1999 16:45:45 -0400
Like the recent Tony Smith and the Seeker's Doria fatalities of last year he
was no doubt diving without a buddy. This apparently is SOP on boats like
the Seeker. These people do not or can not learn.  Besides all of the other
egregious foolishness that goes on it is well known that solo diving or
diving solo with your buddy violates every possible tenet of common sense.
The latter behavior will get you axed from the WKPP faster than anything
else once you have graduated from the parking lot.

These ignorant behaviors are apparently still widely practiced and people
are proud of them.  If you don't believe me check out Christina Young's web
site and just ask yourself where on earth have these people been over the
last several years. Look at the ridiculous gear configurations which range
from the tank boots, steel stage bottles slung from both sides to the deco
bottle strapped in between  the back gas. The funny thing is that these
people are so impressed with their own foolishness that they even consider
publishing it on a website.

The Seeker represents the absolute worst example of self indulgent personal
preference. In my opinion and that shared by numerous others, most of these
multiple fataliities were avoidable by following a handful of simple rules.
The first and most basic, which is taught in every introductory dive course
is "dive with a buddy", dive properly marked bottles and don't dive narcotic
gas mixes.  The horrifying gear convolutions and other bozonity only
contributes to the CFs when they inevitably occur.

Captain Dan Crowell should be real proud of himself now that he has finally
called massive public attention to the worst examples of incompetence in
technical diving. It is totally gut wrenching to observe the families of the
deceased suggesting that the victims died doing something that made them
happy.  This is complete bs and they would think quite differently if they
knew that their relatives died as victims of incompetence and negligence and
by all rights should still be alive today.

These people think they are real smart and they continue to hide behind
behind their cleverly worded releases. The clock is running out on them
though. Most of these practices border on criminal negligence and sooner or
later a civil jury will agree with this viewpoint or a Coast Guard
Administrative court will cure the problem.



-----Original Message-----
From: Katherine Irvine <kirvine@sa*.ne*>
To: techdiver@aquanaut.com <techdiver@aquanaut.com>
Date: Thursday, July 29, 1999 5:44 PM
Subject: Where was this guy's buddy?


>http://www.newsday.com/news/nsecthu.htm
>
>      Somebdoy try to tell me this is not a bullshit operation. How
>about Christina Young - tell me how it is up there. Tell me how it
>should be done. You people are giving strokes a bad name.
>
>--
>Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'.
>Send subscribe/unsubscribe requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'.
>
By Joe Haberstroh, Zachary R. Dowdy and Andrew Metz
Staff Writers
A FORMER Vietnam War Green Beret intent on retrieving treasures from the
sunken passenger liner Andrea Doria died yesterday while exploring the wreck
90 miles off Long Island, the fifth diver to be killed at the site in 13
months and the second in the last week.

Like the other four men, Charles McGurr of Brick, N.J., 52, had taken the
Montauk-based charter boat Seeker to the wreck, where last year he had found
a prized plate bearing the name of the shipping line ''Italia.''

''He was so proud of it because it said 'Italia' on the plate,'' said
McGurr's mother, Blanche McGurr, of Manchester, N.J. ''We are shocked, but I
feel he went the way he wanted to go. He knew the dangers. How many of us
have this choice?''

But McGurr's death has shaken the diving community. ''What it means is, we
have to change something,'' said Tom Doherty, owner of Treasure Cove Water
Sports in Westfield, N.J. ''Something has to give. This is impossible. This
is five tragedies too many.''

McGurr, an auto body mechanic and father of two grown children, was the 12th
fatality at the Andrea Doria since 1981. He died a week after Christopher
Murley, 44, of Cincinnati, apparently suffered a heart attack July 21 while
swimming along a line leading from the Seeker to the wreck.


Newsday
This was the second summer McGurr had served as a crew member on the Seeker.
He turned 52 on Tuesday, and the trip was a birthday present to himself, his
wife, Kathleen, said last night. Before setting off for Montauk Friday,
McGurr and the owner of the Seeker stopped at the restaurant the couple ran
in South Belmar, N.J.

''They came to the restraurant and got ice and we said goodbye and that was
it,'' she said.

The Seeker was headed last night to the Star Island Yacht Club, where the
boat is based each summer. The Suffolk County medical examiner's office was
prepared to accept McGurr's body for autopsy.

Robert Wass, a Smithtown diving-equipment expert, said he had been contacted
by authorities and asked to examine McGurr's gear.

Authorities had few details of the accident. The Coast Guard said McGurr,
who was working as a crew member aboard the dive boat, was last seen at a
depth of 180 feet, where the Doria lies on its starboard side on the bottom
of the ocean.

The Seeker crew reported McGurr missing at 11 a.m., and the boat's skipper,
Daniel Crowell, dived to the wreck to locate McGurr. The lifeless body was
retrieved by two Seeker divers at about 1:45 p.m.

No charter boat takes more divers to the Andrea Doria than the Seeker, and
people who know Crowell said they were stunned by the boat's series of
accidents.

''This is going to upset Danny pretty good,'' said John Chatterdon, a friend
of Crowell's who has made more than 130 dives on the Andrea Doria. ''Last
year was a real bad year. You just don't expect that to be followed by
another very bad year.''

The 697-foot Andrea Doria, which sank on July 25, 1956, after a collision
with another liner, is often referred to as the ''Mt. Everest'' of scuba
diving. Only the most highly qualified divers attempt to explore the wreck,
a darkened maze of muck-filled passageways turned on their sides. The site
is also subject to strong ocean currents and summertime water temperatures
in the 40s.

Like the three divers who died last summer, McGurr apparently used a blend
of gases known as ''tri-mix'' in his air tanks as he explored the ship. To
avoid the narcotic effect of nitrogen at the high pressure underwater,
divers replace some of the nitrogen in their tanks with helium. So, tri-mix
contains oxygen, nitrogen and helium.

McGurr's family said he was a competition skydiver and an avid scuba diver
who dived at many wrecks over the years and was a member of a local diving
club.

Kathleen McGurr said that last summer her husband brought home a cache of
treasure from the Andrea Doria: two cups and saucers, two crystal salad
bowls, and the plate for his mother.

She said that even though her husband was a veteran diver, she always
worried about his safety. She said they had discussed the risks of diving
many times before.

''He said if he didn't feel right about something, he wouldn't do it,'' she
said. ''That was the talk we always had.''

Murley, the diver killed last week, was a newcomer to the wreck. After
making successful dives last week on Tuesday and Wednesday morning, he was
about to descend on his third dive Wednesday at 5 p.m. when he appeared to
be in trouble, said Joe Jackson, another Cincinnati diver who was swimming a
few feet away.

''I asked him what was wrong and it was apparent that things weren't
right,'' Jackson said yesterday from the Cincinnati home of Murley's
parents. ''He seemed to be struggling hanging onto the anchor line. Some
people on the boat said they heard him call out for help and as we
approached the back of the boat somebody said he's not breathing.''

Crew members pulled him onto the deck and tried to revive him with
cardiopulmonary resuscitation before Coast Guard personnel arrived and
airlifted him to Cape Cod Hospital in Hyannis. But Murley died of a massive
heart attack that was unrelated to the sport he loved so much.

Yesterday, about 150 people crowded into the Vorhees Funeral Home in
Cincinnati to honor Murley, who had plunged into the sport of diving with
great passion only two years ago, but had quickly gained the skills to
tackle the world's most feared dive.

''He was a fast learner,'' Jackson said. ''He was really comfortable in the
water. When things went wrong he would deal with them a lot better than more
experienced divers.''

Mark Kammer, Murley's best friend of 27 years and a civilian employee of the
U.S. Air Force, said Murley owned Better Telephones and Technology, a
successful telephone installation company that he had started 16 years ago
in Cincinnati.

Murley dived nearly every weekend in preparation for the big dive.

''He went at it with great gusto,'' Kammer said.

Oscar Corral, Tom Demoretcky and Lauren Terrazzano contributed to this
story.


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