The Rules Apply to All of Us

If you are a technical diver — a cave diver, a trimix diver, a rebreather diver, something of that sort – you have read someplace that complacency kills experienced divers. Fact is, you may have read it several times and heard it said repeatedly because that phrase is contained in most if not all technical diving textbooks. It is so commonly bandied about that for some of us, it may have become a little trite… a cliché… something to become complacent about.

Time to smarten up.

Recently, there was yet another senseless death, which might serve to illustrate the point. This one happened at Ginnie Springs in north Florida.

A young guy named Carlos Fonseca had an oxygen toxicity episode a couple of hundred metres inside the cave and died. He was breathing from a stage bottle clearly marked oxygen and later analysed to be just about pure O2. According to statements from the folks diving with him, Carlos thought he was breathing air.

Before the dive started, he was questioned about the bottle, challenged about analysing it, but insisted that he had filled it with air, even though it was labeled for dedicated oxygen service. Now he is dead.

This incident is sad and terribly tragic… a family without a dad/husband/son/brother et al… But unfortunately it is not surprising that a certified cave and trimix diver died doing a simple, run of the mill dive that was WELL within the scope of his training and experience. As slight as his experience may have been, and as rapidly as he had progressed from open-water diver to cave diver, the dive was a simple one for which he had adequate training.

Diving is an activity that requires some restraint because it is so easy to push beyond one’s capabilities… as Steve Berman once said — and I paraphrase — any twerp can get to the back of a cave. But not everyone can manage the journey back out.

I did not know Carlos… never even met him… but I do know the fella who taught him to cave dive and a couple of buddies had dived with him during the past couple of years. He had progressed from open-water punter to trimix and cave in a couple of years. He had the money, time and desire to do so.

The over-arching assessment from the people I know who knew Carlos was that he was very confident… perhaps to the point of arrogance… but so what. He was certainly enthusiastic. He had completed 100 cave dives in a couple of years, and when you live a 16-20 hour drive from the caves, 100 dives is enthusiasm in bold letters. But, in truth, he really had not been diving long, and he certainly did not have vast experience regardless of his many postings on onLine forums and Facebook, and even though he had ticked off several “big” dives in his logbook. However, I do not believe any of that had anything to do with him being dead right now.

Experience whispers strange things in our ear. I have lost many, many friends to diving, and have seen many people who I did not know personally… like Carlos Fonseca… die in the water. Part of the work I choose to do involves picking through the debris folks like Carlos leave behind. The task is to identify what went wrong and make sure others understand the circumstances surrounding the incident, the events that triggered an incorrect reaction perhaps, so that nobody makes the same bloody error. Sometimes this is difficult, but not in this case. There is no doubt about what happened; no question what triggered the victim’s death or whose actions contributed to that death. Of course, the resulting analysis may be difficult for some to accept.

A buddy of mine is a lawyer who specializes in cases where some poor bastard has died, and he tells me his staff have a kind of open pool going to see how long it is before a friend or relative says, writes or posts on the internet something along the lines: “He was the best diver in the world… I simply do not understand how a thing like this could happen…”

Someone always says that, even when the diver is a total novice… just like that kid who died in California a couple of years back trying to do an air dive to 80 metres. He was a divemaster… maybe, I forget. Anyhow, he had ZERO training to do that sort of dive but the boy’s father insisted his son was a “professional” and would not accept evidence to the contrary… or that his son had probably been lulled into complacency and hubris by his slightly more experienced and certainly older dive buddies.

In the case of Carlos, we know what went wrong and we have evidence that the victim ignored warnings from his fellow divers. He certainly ignored best practice. He is not the first diver to make such a rookie mistake, and the fact that a few years ago he knew nothing at all about diving is truly irrelevant. He DID know what SHOULD have been done. He had sat through training and certainly had correctly answered exam questions on gas management. HE CHOSE TO IGNORE WHAT HE KNEW. This is not because of lack of experience or because he progressed rapidly. He simply ignored what he knew to be the right thing to do… that’s a function of character, poor judgement, pressure or stress: take your pick.

In the final assessment, Carlos Fonseca believed the rules did not apply to him. He certainly knew that the established practice is to ANALYSE and LABEL every cylinder that goes into the water.

Is there something to learn from this incident? Of course there is. It’s the title of this piece. But there is also something else I would like to remind you of just in case someone reading this has ANY doubt. YOUR BUDDY IS CARRYING YOUR CONTINGENCY GAS… IF YOU DO NOT KNOW WHAT IT IS (first-hand, having checked for yourself) THEN YOU SHOULD. YOU may need to breathe it at some point. There can be NO credible argument against this, in my opinion.

Advertisement