Go Herbert Go !!

[Alun]

i think there's a deeper philosophical issue here - at that's whether we consider it important to feel that we 'belong' down there for those few short minutes. isn't freediving meant to be about man being in some sort of 'harmony' with his underwater environment? (slightly fluffy language but i'm sure you know what i mean.) personally i think you should be able to go down and come up without any ill-effect, and go home feeling great! if you can't do that then you weren't really in 'harmony/equilibrium' with your environment. i think there can come a point where you stop being a freediver and essentially become an underwater stuntman. (but even professional stuntmen wouldn't take such risks and allow themselves to become injured in that way!)

i know these types of diving injuries/incidents happen from time to time to most freedivers, but the important difference is whether you accept them as being a normal and routine part of freediving. as we go deeper we'll probably have to battle with these philosophical issues more and more. there's no right or wrong of course. ultimately i think regulations will have to get tougher regarding these things otherwise deaths are absolutely inevitable and freedivers will develop a public reputation as being dangerous lunatics. (many see us this way already!) having record freedivers surfacing half-dead on live TV is not going help the public perception of freediving.

 

[samdive]

"freedivers will develop a public reputation as being dangerous lunatics"

have you ever met ANYONE from outside the freedive world who didn't already think that?

maybe we could have a happy, hippy, floaty - self certification rule on the records...

Surface Protocol Change to:

Mask
Signal
OK
Judge asks: how are you feeling? (peering in my ears for trace of blood)
Me: great, wonderful, what a beautiful dive
Judge asks: and did the sea welcome you this time?
Me: oh yes I was right at home...
Judge: Ok then, world record...

Nice idea : )

 

[Alun]

Sam, imagine you're judging a record where a diver is diving so deep that he basically expects to get bent and require serious deco treatment. this is not expected to be a problem as you have the chamber ready... but on the day something goes wrong due to a complication and the diver doesn't recover and becomes either permanently paralysed or dies. is this something you would feel comfortable with? it's no joking matter. sooner or later it's something that the freediving organisations will have to seriously address. FREE have already done this by no longer ratifying nolimits. i'm not saying that banning anything is necessary. that's just an example.

 

[samdive]

I wasn't joking and I agree with you in the main - an athlete should not go into something expecting or planning to get hurt... but occasionally they might and it would be almost impossible to bring in any kind of judging protocol that accounted for that fairly.

I would not consider a No Limits dive where the diver planned to jump into a chamber straight away afterwards to be acceptable. Of course, you should plan to surface in good health.

 

[SanSan]

Heres what i think once more.

I think people won't stop setting records and injuring themselfs, but I think its important tha Aida as the cover organisation doesnt except that, especialy as an organisation that educates young and future apneists. I wouldn't give my kids in the hadns of an organisation that permits or maybe incourages injuries if the sport isnt in fact injuring the opponent and if i had kids of course .

 

[Alun]

i think it would be easy enough to judge. the official doctor could be given a set of criteria of what is acceptable and what is unacceptable. i have no doubt that it would be workable in practice. if the diver surfaces with an unacceptable problem, whether it was expected or not, then it would be tough s***... he should have been better prepared. i think it's fair enough. besides safety should come before fairness in my opinion.

 

[turtle]

sam, that was very funny indeed. It made me think though, that maybe the actual basis for this whole debate is the way in which modern freediving seems to be shot through with a strange sort of ambiguity as to whether it's a sport or something closer to a private/shared experience of some sort. Your dialogue reminded me of a spoof news article in the Onion, about a 'Yoga world championship' with one yogi star who, pre-performance, pumps up the crowd with: 'Who's the serenest, baby?'

Freediving is unusual I think in some respects because out of all the other 'spiritually associated' physical activities (surfing, yoga, rock-climbing, whatever else comes to mind), it is the only one to which actual clear and cold numbers can be readily applied within the activity itself. Yet, as this debate shows, it appears to be in a lot of respects, a sport where depth/time per se are not enough to provide a frame of reference with which to judge performances.

I know this is unoriginal and cheesy, but what would freediving be like without depths and times? Is freediving a means or an end? Maybe the new approach of FRC diving is going to give some fresh ideas...? As the french say, 'bof?!'

I know this is all terrible third-rate philosophising, but I haven't got any strong opinion or moral agenda i'm trying to push on anyone - This debate has sparked off something I've been thinking about for a while to do with records and motivation and I'm just curious

 

[Ambra]

i think it would be easy enough to judge. the official doctor could be given a set of criteria of what is acceptable and what is unacceptable .

-can you give me example,please?


-It is very hard to draw a line.

"well,your eardrums were broken,but they will be OK in 2-3 weeks,your record is OK!"

or

"We saw on the medical exam,that you destroyed few thousand alveoli,and will never regenerate again,so you become a red card!"

I don`t know..................

 

[Alun]

it's easy...
if your drums are perforated. you fail.
if you clearly spit blood etc, you fail.
if you get bent, you fail.

it's all pretty clear cut and easy to judge...

 

[donmoore]

I agree with you, but for someone, like me, who has experienced a perforated eardrum, and kind of knew what was happening, I would probably try to hide it. It takes about 3 minutes for the body to compensate equilibrium wise. Follow the line up, look up at the sky when at the surface, move slowly to the boat, slowly climb the ladder and immediately sit down. All while ing!

Then get off by myself and :waterwork!
don

 

[tylerz]

no idea how you would police this - sometimes doctors can't even see a perforation that as a diver you can feel....

Simple... the point is not to catch any injury no matter how minute, but instead the purpose would be that somebody has not knowingly pushed through an obvious infraction to their body and secondary to that, that they did not completely have no sense of their limits.

So, policing for obvious perforations, obvious blood spitting, obvious signs of trauma would be the test. If there is a perforation that can not be seen easily, then you can safely say the diver was not pushing radically irregardless of body trauma. This satisfies that they dove close to their limits, the trauma incurred is not serious, and that they were not noticeably reckless. DCS might be trickier to catch, so I am not sure about whether to judge on that, suggestions?

I still suggest the need for two seperate disciplines, and maybe only one of those is supported by organizations such as AIDA. Currently it is a mixed message situation.

 

[Erik]

I know this is all terrible third-rate philosophising,

It's not, it's good philosophising
Peace,
Erik Y.

 

[Herbert]

I want to thank you for your mental support, but even more the people who physically made this dive possible. It was a great adventure!!!

I am really looking forward to going even deeper. To make this safe we need to streamline the dive profile, with a new sled. On my present sled, the ascent is very slow and I surface up to 75m away from the rope. I have to find out if a longer breath hold deco stop (1 minute+) is possible and good enough to set an official record. Or we just go for a “training dive” with O2 before surfacing.

Oh yes, equalizing... I wanted to talk about that too, but it seems some people are more interested in changing rules. [ame="http://forums.deeperblue.net/showthread.php?t=63579"]broken eardrums during records[/ame]

 

[perow1]

First of all; Congratulations, but sorry to hear about your eardrum.
Please tell us about your equalization. I would rather hear about that than to discuss changing of the rules.

 

[Billextreme]

[ame="http://forums.deeperblue.net/showthread.php?t=63579"]broken eardrums during records[/ame]

 

[jome]

Herbert, first of all, congratulations on a great achievement. Too bad you didn't get a chance to go at more records, I believe you would have gotten at least few of them.

Anyway, please, let's talk equalizing. The rules have already been beaten to death several times over...I think I speak for everyone when I say it would be much more interesting...

Also, why are you surfacing away from the rope? Your sled is not sliding up along the rope? Is it going at an angle or something? Can you share a picture or two of the sled?

You also mention narcosis. I would be really interested to hear how severe the narcosis is at those depths, how does it feel subjectively and what you did to deal with that.

Did you dive with full packing? How long was the dive (with such a deco stop, I imagine close to 4 minutes).

So here's a thought. If you would use some perfect wet equalizing method, why couldn't one dive no limits with FRC or at least less air? Should help for narcosis and DCS, no? Also apnea wise it shouldn't be impossibe?

 

[Manuel]

just found that picture...

MANUEL