March 16, 2007
Spiegel Grove
Penetration diving on sunken ships is one of the most dangerous things a human being can do. One of the problems is not only the confusion of being aboard a vessel that may no longer be sitting upright, but even the slightest movement can stir up silt and leave the diver with zero visibility. One of the best books I've read on the subject is 'Shadow Divers', which tells the tale of a group of men who dived on an unidentified U-Boat in American waters. Even if you've never been diving (I have not), it's worth a read.
One has to wonder if the diving boats which take people to these wrecks ask any questions of their passengers, like their level of experience. You could argue that it is not their place to guard divers from danger, but it must be a helluva feeling to know you took three guys out one day and they never came back.
Posted by Matthew at March 16, 2007 11:16 PMTrackBack URL for this entry:
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I am not a diver by any means and my very limited knowledge of penetration diving comes from Water Rescue training. That being said, the main culprits in any form of penetration diving accident are usually:
1) Divers operating below the level for which they are trained / equiped to dive. Technical diving below 130 ft requires specialized gas mixtures, specialized training and extra redundancy. It is easy to lose track of depth when involved in a penetration dive.
2) Improper use or not using guidelines. This is a most basic tenant of penetration diving and time and again, highly experienced divers ignore this advice and get themselves into deep trouble.
I don't know if this was the case here but the fact that the rescue team said they were so deep inside that recovery would be difficult gives a good indication that the divers probably got disoriented and swam deeper into the ship. A properly secured guideline is there to prevent exactly this king of catastrophe.
The stats on penetration diving are terrible, but so are the stats on Everest and hundreds of people still gather every year to give it a shot.
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at March 19, 2007 11:54 AM