Florida diving accident

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spatman
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Re: Florida diving accident

Post by spatman »

ArcticDiver wrote:My basic point is that before anyone crucifies this person we ought to have some information that would pass the teat of a critical accident analysis. So far all I've seen is information that the guy is dead and that other people are guessing on his thoughts, motives and competence. In aircraft and other formal accident investigations there are very good reasons good analysis and unbiased information is required. We have very little of that here..
Sorry, but I don't see how we have little of that here. The father was untrained in cave or tech diving. The son wasn't trained at all. What exactly is it you think is needed to draw conclusions here? The father led his 15 year old son on a trust-me dive that killed them both.

No one will know his thoughts or motives but we sure as hell can deduce that his competence was shit. And in my very humble opinion he should be crucified for that.
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LCF
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Re: Florida diving accident

Post by LCF »

According to the folks who did the recovery dive, even if Spivey and his son had made it back to their staged bottles, they would not have had enough gas to do the required deco for the time they had spent at depth.

I am an avid cave diver, and I even have a technical cert. I do not do significant staged decompression dives in caves, and I suspect I never will. I don't cave dive or tech dive often enough to be sharp enough to do Eagle's Nest. I have repeatedly refused invitations to do Indian, which is a far less technical dive, because . . . I'm not good enough.

In this case, we had a father with no cave training, and a son whose only training was done by the father -- who obviously taught his son well, as far as he knew to do, because the two of them had been cave diving repeatedly, including prior dives in Eagle's Nest. (This is actually all well documented on line.) The problem appears to have been that the father didn't know as much as he thought he did, and he trained a son with the same holes in his understanding. They appear to have ignored two very basic concepts -- control of narcosis in a cave (and although many people espouse deep air diving in open water, I know of NO ONE who does so in caves), and adequate gas planning, including contingencies.

I take a couple of things away from this. One is that, as always, diving is great so long as nothing goes wrong. These two had spun the revolver in Russian Roulette a number of times before, and as so often happens, had become convinced that their failure to land on the full cylinder meant it would never happen.

The other thing is that you should be very careful who you teach, and what you teach -- because any gaps in your own knowledge or skill are simply going to pass along to your student. If they don't kill you, they may kill him. Classes have curricula because the information is felt to be IMPORTANT -- anything left out is a potential problem at best, or accident at worst.

I feel incredibly sorry for the recovery divers, one of whom is being pilloried on multiple boards for having been aware of the activities of these two, and having failed to stop it. How do you stop someone from doing something stupid, if they are hell-bent on doing it?
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Dusty2
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Re: Florida diving accident

Post by Dusty2 »

How can anyone blame the recovery diver for not stopping them? He was not there nor did he know they were going and how do you stop them from doing something like this? He tried talking to them and it did no good. What could he have done? There is no law against stupidity and he was not forcing the son to go as far as we know. There are no scuba police and this site is open with no way to prevent this kind of act. The only one who could have prevented this is dead and he will have to answer to a higher court for his foolish acts. Like Lynne said some people are compelled to push there limits and just because they haven't died yet doesn't mean that what they are doing is any less foolish. It simply means that murphy is waiting for another day.

I feel doubly sorry for the friend that had to go down there knowing that there was nothing he could do but bring them back up for the families. This will be with him for the rest of his life. He is a very brave man to be part of a recovery team. It is a thankless job I would not want.
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renoun
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Re: Florida diving accident

Post by renoun »

Does this remind anybody else of Chris and Chrissy Rouse? I can't be the only one here who read The Last Dive.
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H20doctor
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Re: Florida diving accident

Post by H20doctor »

why are we even talking about this ? it happened in a cave, in Florida, we dive in Washington.. what is the point
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AdrianSmith
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Re: Florida diving accident

Post by AdrianSmith »

renoun wrote:Does this remind anybody else of Chris and Chrissy Rouse? I can't be the only one here who read The Last Dive.
Other than the fact that they were father and son and were diving on air? Nope, not at all. The Rouse's were highly trained, had all the knowledge they required and spent a very long time learning what they needed to know in order to perform complex tasks at what were then great depths safely.

Mr. Spivey, on the other hand appears to have decided (from the information known publicly so far) that the training and experience to safely perform the dive that killed him and his son was not required for either of them.

As for the air diving, at the time when the Rouse's were diving air was the norm for gas even on deep dives. Not so in the Spivey's case. Trimix is now the accepted norm for deep diving, unless you're not trained in its use, in which case I personally don't believe you should be diving to that depth. Deep air enthusiasts are of course free to disagree with me.

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Marc
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Re: Florida diving accident

Post by Marc »

I am certified to dive caves and trimix.... I am not sure that I am ready for Eagles Nest. To take a bunch of new gear, air and your 15 year old in there? That is criminally stupid. However sad it may be, it was a bad choice.
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Grateful Diver
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Re: Florida diving accident

Post by Grateful Diver »

renoun wrote:Does this remind anybody else of Chris and Chrissy Rouse? I can't be the only one here who read The Last Dive.
Reminds me more of the young self-taught diver who disappeared in Vortex a couple years ago ...

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Re: Florida diving accident

Post by Grateful Diver »

H20doctor wrote:why are we even talking about this ? it happened in a cave, in Florida, we dive in Washington.. what is the point
Several of the participants in this thread do dive in those caves ... and the big concern is that the actions of irresponsible people not only cost them their lives, it often costs the responsible divers access to these sites. This particular site had been shut down for several years until, I think, about 2005. Other sites were simply deemed too much of a liability and dynamited.

Why does this matter to us here in Washington? Well, perhaps it's just because we're divers and interested in discussing it ... but ask yourself what would happen if, because of the irresponsible actions of a few people, you lost access to some dive site that you loved diving in? We're fortunate in our area to have access to a lot of places ... but several have been closed to us over the years for a number of reasons ... some of them used to be very popular.

As an activity, scuba diving is self-regulated. For many of us, we'd prefer to keep it that way. The best way to do that is to participate in a way that minimizes irresponsible behavior and diver casualties ... because those are all too frequently used as an excuse for government regulation ... and that rarely, if ever, works out to the advantage of the participants ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)
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lavachickie
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Re: Florida diving accident

Post by lavachickie »

H20doctor wrote:why are we even talking about this ? it happened in a cave, in Florida, we dive in Washington.. what is the point
I admit to voraciously following the dissection and discussion that follows events like this. I've stayed up very late the last few nights reading the Scubaboard thread, multiple threads on CaveDiver.net and others. (I'm not a cave diver, but it fascinates me, but also scares the hell out of me insuring I would never even start playing the "just a few feet in" game. If I'm ever ready to start down that route, the first act will be with a phone call to set up my training path.)

The point(s) for me is that each situation teaches me something. Sometimes it's about the diving method or equipment (although not much here to learn aside from idiots will kill themselves and others with their actions). But always it's ripe with things to learn about people, culture and community. How our own community reacts. Who within it is thoughtful, compassionate and reasonable, and who is otherwise. What the inside of diving looks like to those outside, and how that can be personally or litigiously complex and even dangerous. It gets tiring quickly can descend into worthless infighting for sure. That, too, can teach one a lot.
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H20doctor
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Re: Florida diving accident

Post by H20doctor »

they have closed a site 100 foot rock, and soon titlow will be gone, and soon mukilteo North fuel Pier... there are sites closed for good , and we cant do anything about it because the state controls the demo of these sites... Take a good look at what they did to Edmonds Oil dock , Gone forever...So if they closed up caves with Blasting and Dynamite guess what ? there gone to ... Ive read the post on scuba board, and its all people mad, upset, and bickering...and it seems like a waste of energy and breath..
Im sad because of the accident , but i also dont see the point of getting all flustered here on NWDC
@bob , id like to see you here more with dive pictures and write ups, but i only see you on post like this .. my 2psi
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Matt S.
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Re: Florida diving accident

Post by Matt S. »

ArcticDiver wrote:I have seen a lot of comments about his certification status, which may or may not be pertinent.
I don't think that anyone would argue that a certification is the only way to learn something. But the discussion needs to be around best practices. The very nuanced tap-dancing around how you may possibly learn good skills without a formal class is, in my opinion, worse than useless if your goal is making diving safer.

I am not a cave diver, not even a cavern diver. But it is pretty clear, even to me, that best practices were not followed in this incident. So, do we want to argue that the guy was maybe a misfit genius who had perfect skills and some lethally bad luck? Fine, I guess I have to allow for that possibility since we do not have all the data. But the evidence currently available makes it look most likely that he was simply in over his head.
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Re: Florida diving accident

Post by Grateful Diver »

H20doctor wrote: @bob , id like to see you here more with dive pictures and write ups, but i only see you on post like this .. my 2psi
You rarely see me here at all ... some of the reactions I got here since last year's octopus incident have pretty much discouraged me from posting here. I'll occasionally venture in, but for the most part I don't feel like I'm very much a part of this community anymore. I get tired of feeling like I have to defend myself all the time.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)
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cofford
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Re: Florida diving accident

Post by cofford »

H20doctor wrote:they have closed a site 100 foot rock, and soon titlow will be gone, and soon mukilteo North fuel Pier... there are sites closed for good , and we cant do anything about it because the state controls the demo of these sites... Take a good look at what they did to Edmonds Oil dock , Gone forever...So if they closed up caves with Blasting and Dynamite guess what ? there gone to ... Ive read the post on scuba board, and its all people mad, upset, and bickering...and it seems like a waste of energy and breath..
Im sad because of the accident , but i also dont see the point of getting all flustered here on NWDC
@bob , id like to see you here more with dive pictures and write ups, but i only see you on post like this .. my 2psi
I'm tired of it too. I'm tired of people dying because they dive beyond their cert level, or dive deep air, or dive overhead without training (including deco). It happens here too. It's totally preventable. Please stop.
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Dusty2
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Re: Florida diving accident

Post by Dusty2 »

My sentiments exactly! There are enough deaths due to medical reasons and equipment failures. Lets please stop with the "not me, I'm going to live forever" type stuff. I'm for maximum mitigation and minimum risk.
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