https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-15820741/Twist-fate-saved-SIXTH-diver-Maldives-cave-tragedy-woman-flies-home-rescue-teams-hunt-bodies.html

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5866618&forum_id=2,#49885431)

There should be a law just banning shrews from cave diving.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5866618&forum_id=2,#49885471)

I know we were locked out for a while and there may be a burning need to argue, but this isn't it

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5866618&forum_id=2,#49885555)

What I'm saying: If you're going to such a depth (particularly in a cave of all things), you are basically fucked if your gas mix is off. The fact that all five died tends to indicate to me that there was a gas issue rather than someone getting crazy from nitrogen narcosis and killing themselves or one or two attempted rescuers

I admit that it's also entirely possible there was no gas issue and the person who wigged out or had problems succumbed in a narrow passage that the others couldn't maneuver the body through to clear. Or that the lead took the wrong branch and went deeper than intended or...[insert various things here]

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5866618&forum_id=2,#49885601)

2. caves often go underground while weaving about. accordingly, it's like you're going deeper underwater. sometimes you might travel like 1000 feet but descend 100 feet.

3. caves have lots of really fine silt that's easy to stir up causing 100% loss of visibility. if you don't have a guide line or even get spun around it, you are fucked.

4. caves have lots of weaving passages and it's very easy to take a wrong turn and wind up somewhere unexplored/uncharted. that's part of the allure, but it's also suicide.

it should go without saying: the biggest problem with cave diving is you can't ascend if you have a problem. if you get lost in open water, nbd, you can just ascend. in caves, you're SOL. sometimes, caves can fuck with you by creating a "false surface" -- it's just the thermocline, but underneath it looks like you found an air pocket in the cave.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5866618&forum_id=2,#49887262)

I'm blaming the shrew because 99.9% of the time, they are the problem. This is true in firefighting, policing, roofing, scuba diving, and elsewhere in any job that requires calmness under pressure and executing every move according to logic and reason rather than emotion. Seemingly paradoxically, they tend to do okay in EMS despite a profound deficiency in remaining composed during emergencies and using logic and reason to dictate actions. This is only because the correct action according to logic and reason is so often the correct action according to pure emotion.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5866618&forum_id=2,#49888028)

Got my PADI Deep Diver cert and max recreational depth is 130ft

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5866618&forum_id=2,#49885681)

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1w2gv1gdnjo

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5866618&forum_id=2,#49887310)

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5866618&forum_id=2,#49887366)

but those furks were alive and actually thai

wtf wld u risk live for some det guido bodies, let the sharks eat them like pizza

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5866618&forum_id=2,#49887386)

The plan was to enter the cave, but not to venture into the inner chambers, since only one or two of us had any cave diving experience. That was the only time during the entire trip that I decided not to dive. It was simply beyond my skill level. I was not the only one who refused; in fact, only three of our group went down with the guide: two Italians, both doctors with 600–700 dives under their belts, and a diving instructor who was on vacation.

The three of them, together with the guide (also Italian), entered the cave, while the rest of us did a much simpler dive. When my group surfaced back onto the dhoni, we waited for the “cave divers” at the surface before heading back together to the mothership.

At one point, the instructor on vacation made an emergency buoyant ascent to the surface. He asked one of us for a BCD with a tank so he could descend again and complete his decompression stop. Obviously not an ideal situation, but at that moment you do whatever you can. Unfortunately, none of us had surfaced with enough remaining air to make much of a difference — I probably had around 30 bar left myself at that point.

The guy eventually decided to get back on the boat. He actually seemed fairly calm. He had pushed the ascent too fast, but not catastrophically so. His dive computer locked him out, but in the end he was okay.

The other three surfaced about ten minutes later, and the atmosphere was absolutely tense. We returned to the support boat, and no more dives were done for the rest of the day. Everyone stayed silent.

That evening, after dinner, the trip leader and the two doctors sat on the top deck discussing what had happened. One of the doctors, only a few minutes into the descent, after finning against the current for a short distance (anyone who has dived in the Maldives knows how demanding those currents can be), realized he was almost completely out of air. From there, everything became a mess. They probably still had 5–10 minutes of decompression obligations required for a safe ascent, but one out of four divers already had an empty tank. Not exactly an ideal scenario.

In the end, everything turned out fine. The instructor who had ascended too quickly spent the rest of the trip with his computer locked out. He still dived with us during the following days, but always stayed a few meters above the group, just hovering over us. The two doctors carried on with the holiday, and nobody ever mentioned the incident again for the remainder of the trip.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5866618&forum_id=2,#49889909)