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> Harold, when you said you believe in "open discussion" of >accidents, I guess you meant that I should have sent my message >to the list instead of to you personnally. I see your point now, >but there is not much to discuss, now is there? But I still have >to ask, who is teaching this stuff? It just makes no sense. Why >can't we do it right? Bill Gleason's starting to sound better to >me every day. - George > The diver who lost his life was not a personal friend, but the two "buddies" on the trip with him are personal friends. One had been trained in both cave and trimix by Sheck Exley and the other more recently on the East Coast (by whom I'm not sure). The area they were diving was one which is really beautiful at depth, but the seamount doesn't even come up higher than about 145-160fsw with most of the top of the seamount at the 160-180fsw range. The next "ridge" down is at about 300fsw, the view and sealife are really incredible as the place is 25 miles out to sea and the surrounding sea is several thousand feet deep. I agree that depth for the sake of a "record" personal or otherwise is stupid; I also would not choose to do the dive to 250fsw on air both for possible O2 tox. reasons as well as narcosis (my personal limit is about 160 or so if I want to remember much of the dive). Thus, if done as a trimix dive, the spot can be great in good conditions and one may choose to go to those depths is prepared and experienced. Both of his "buddies" dive "same day, same ocean" diving and he knew ahead of time that he'd be on his own from 250fsw and in fact one of the buddies tried to call the dive for him due to conditions, but he took off anyway as I understand it. It turns out that the diver involved was cave certified, but not formally trained in mix gas diving. I also disagreed with their configuation; I'd have my trimix in my twins on my back and carry my deco gases on this dive. I would not use "air" at all. If it had been from my boat and I learned what the guy was planning, I'm not sure what I'd do since I do have a belief that each of us should have the choice of diving the way we please etc. (I started diving before certification even existed), but like you I also am concerned that accidents like this one will lead to governmental intervention at some point. So far there has not been one word on the news etc. Perhaps because it was technically outside the jurisdiction of the U.S. it hasn't been of public interest so far. I do however think that we need to let one another know about these accidents and the facts as we know them. Hal Harold Gartner hgartner@ra*.or* CompuServe ID 71470,1423 6900 Via Alba Camarillo, California 805 482-9743
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