Yasemin Dalkilic cancels record attempt after blackout

[efattah]

In response to Dr. Fitz-Clarke's question, I am aware of several divers who have blacked out from vertigo at depth. In several cases breaking the eardrums can precipitate a deep blackout.

Rudi himself blacked out at 50m during the descent after breaking his eardrums. A scuba diver here near Vancouver blacked out during an uncontrolled, overweight descent to 60m where she broke her eardrums on the descent (she died as well, but her buddy landed beside her and she was unconscious upon landing). Stefano Makula blacked out near 100m during a sled dive shortly after passing 90m. He was rescued by the safety divers and survived. Although loss of consciousness is normally precipitated by brain energy failure, I think in most of these cases there is absolutely no sign of systemic hypoxia.

 

[trux]

Rudi quickly replied on Yasemin's blog to the questions of Dr. Fitz-Clarke, and will try to communicate all data they have, but right now they are preparing their departure from Kas, so it may take a few days. Perhaps the best would be if Dr. Fitz-Clarke managed to speak directly to Rudi and also to the doctors who examined Yasemin. It is in the interest of all of us that this case is been reviewed by an expert who understands freediving physiology, and not only by regular medicine doctors (even if they may have expertise in hyperbaric medicine related to scuba diving).

 

[cebaztian]

Regarding safety.
S.Murat once pointed out something I find very wise.

Rule #1
Never base safety on a system that expects a certain logic behaviour from a freediver.


Safety systems must anticipate any kind of CRAZY behaviour or non responsive behaviour.

I think we should work with what we have - it can be improved.
- Better lanyards (I broke Herberts before is WR attempt in november by a very moderate slow pull)
- Better AB - smoother running - false proof.
- Better (deeper) safety freedivers. More of them.
- Sonar (the best ones and with people that know how to calibrate them).

Sebastian

 

[efattah]

One idea would be to have the safety freedivers take a breath of 32% nitrox prior to descending. This would allow them to dive to 40m and still bring someone up. I have done apnea dives on nitrox with incredible results.

Or, more dangerous, would be to allow the safety freediver to have a spare air bottle, such that in the case that they need to drag up the unconscious freediver, they can breathe a few breaths...

 

[wes]

Another idea/option for enhanced safety is to have special "scramble" safety divers that would take one breath off nitrox and have electric scooters and maybe equalization gas for mouth fills so they could go down to great depths quickly and without effort and then have them bring a diver up with fins or possibly with the scooter also. I think there is some fear/hesitation to activate the counter ballast when it may mean ruining someones world record dive and I don't think there would be that fear as much to launch the "scramble" divers down to check on the freediving athlete.

Cheers Wes Lapp

 

[nostres]

I like above ideas a lot - nitrox and scooters but I think there's even simpler way. What if safety freediver was equipped with compressed air tank and lift bag big enough to shoot them both to the surface?
Like a 1/2 no limits. This way there's no workload on rescue diver and victim of DW BO is going up faster
Posted via Mobile Device

 

[Fitz-Clarke]

In an earlier post someone asked" Would a case like that of reviving Yasemin be handled properly if it happened at an AIDA competition?" Well the answer is yes. Recent AIDA world competitions have been exceptionally well organized, and we continue to evaluate and revise our methods. The safety divers at WC 2009 were outstanding and effective. Medical equipment included advanced airway kit with laryngoscope and full intubation equipment, bag-valve-mask, oxygen, intravenous fluids, defibrillator, resuscitation drugs, as well as an ear and eye kit, suture kit, dressings and wound supplies, splints, and a wide assortment of medications. I seriously believe we were better equipped than the island hospital, which I checked out beforehand. To my knowledge, we have not had to deal with deep blackouts in our competitions, but we still prepare for the unexpected. We had one recent blackout around 20 metres that was handled very well, including prompt underwater recovery, removal, airway management, and oxygenation. There is no need to debate this issue in terms of specific organizations.

 

[Jouskari]

I like above ideas a lot - nitrox and scooters but I think there's even simpler way. What if safety freediver was equipped with compressed air tank and lift bag big enough to shoot them both to the surface?
Like a 1/2 no limits. This way there's no workload on rescue diver and victim of DW BO is going up faster
Posted via Mobile Device

A few capable freedivers from around here actually tested in 2007 using a inflatable life vest as an additional safety for the safetydivers (grab the athlete, pull the cord and get a free ride to the surface). Problem was that the 30 g Co2 / 150 N vest didnt provide enough buoyancy at 30 m to help in any way. A better designed vest (e.g. 60 g / 290 N ) could perhaps provide additional safety, especially when the safety diver needs to go deeper than originally planned, but these cost over 250 $ so no one have had the budget to test it yet. However, I also don´t like to add additional moving parts of this type to a safety procedure as if the organization depends to much on them you´ll soon have two divers to save instead of one.

I for my own part would still rely on the CB, but have the deep end covered with on-line surface monitored drop cameras (complete set costs about 1000 $). This way the CB (and the safety divers) can be launched with better knowledge of what´s going on in the deep.

- J

 

[Andreas Peper]

Hi,

thinking about construktions too. But i got stuck cause i don´t know how the sonar used at VB work. could someone explain in short, please.

 

[efattah]

Having the safety freedivers breathe nitrox before diving is by far the simplest and most reliable addition. There is no possibility of mechanical failure or relying on some sort of underwater mechanical device. Imagine if the safety freediver went really deep, and then tried to activate a lift device -- and it fails? Now we have a REALLY big problem -- two divers both deep, and the safety doesn't even have a lanyard ...!

 

[Jouskari]

Having the safety freedivers breathe nitrox before diving is by far the simplest and most reliable addition. There is no possibility of mechanical failure or relying on some sort of underwater mechanical device. Imagine if the safety freediver went really deep, and then tried to activate a lift device -- and it fails? Now we have a REALLY big problem -- two divers both deep, and the safety doesn't even have a lanyard ...!

Nitrox is really an interesting idea, however I think that many may see it as unsuitable to have at an comp (safety freedivers doing enriched air before going down might confuse an audience).

True, the vest isn´t really a practical Idea as it adds unreliability factors as you pointed out. The original intent was that if ever used It should be as an additional back-up for the safety diver.

 

[efattah]

Nitrox is really an interesting idea, however I think that many may see it as unsuitable to have at an comp (safety freedivers doing enriched air before going down might confuse an audience).

We already have a scuba O2 bottle on the platform right next to the freediver... and the freediver goes down to breathe O2 on scuba right in front of the spectators right after the dive... so I don't think it would be any more confusing... besides, are we going to sacrifice safety for the sake of avoiding confusion to the spectators? It isn't a spectator sport anyway...

 

[trux]

I am just afraid that using nitrox could bring more potential risks than it would remove. I remember a thread discussing nitrox freediving, but strangely I am unable to find it. It was quite interesting and many different aspects were discussed. I just found a very old thread now, where Eric also writes about some of the risks of the Nitrox freediving, though I remember much more info in the newer thread (that I did not find):

http://forums.deeperblue.com/freedi...57274-freediving-nitrox-40-o2.html#post504991

So we would possibly need to have very experienced and highly qualified nitrox freedivers, and would probably need to double their backing (safety safeties). It may be still better than scuba safeties, but I am afraid it wouldn't be without high risk anyway either.

And we would likely also need many of the nitrox freedivers for each competition, because you could not let each of them diving deep repeatedly all day long.

It may be finally cheaper training a dolphin for doing the safety. When US NAVY Seals can train them for placing and/or removing explosives, why not AIDA for rescuing freedivers Or, ... I heard there is a couple of unemployed tarpons in the Dean's Blue Hole.

 

[Kars]

I think with a good monitoring system and a solid CB system the nitrox safety is an extra. When the CB system somehow fails, a nitrox safety insurgency might provide some useful support.

In regard to reducing the rescue time, a motorised* and monitored CB system could follow the diver in his decent down and accent up until the depth of where the safety divers would take over.

Until now I think it's the only practical way to have a safe deep CWT-FIM-CNF competition.
For an individual record one could have scuba divers and nitrox safety freedivers.
I don't think it's wise to have safeties use Nitrox every safetydive.

I think Dean's Blue hole is a very good place, where you've got enough room under the plate, no current to speak of and no nets and lines drifting.
In unshielded situations, current, lines, nets, animals, the bottom can really mess things up and other systems are needed if you want a safe competition.

Now I wonder how Yasemina's rescue harness looks and works, and how big the danger is that an unconscious athlete gets water in the lungs when fainting underwater.

* or a legion of strong Greeks for the pulling in the line work.

 

[trux]

Back to the monitoring system. Sonars are generally problematic, since they are highly dependent on thermoclines, or layers of sediments or impurities in water, or layers of water of different salinity. They will act as mirrors, so depending on the conditions you may lose the diver from the screen at depth that worked another day, or even at another dive.

I knew about a wireless communication system for scuba divers, and tried to find it without success a few days ago. Fortunately, I found it just now when searching something else.

The UDI system from Underwater Technologies Center allows divers to communicate among each other, or with a surface unit via predefined text messages (such as: "send the CB" or "where is the tag, b*st*rds!?"). It works up to 500m of distance, so it should be enough even for Herb doing NLT (at least for the next couple of months). Besides the text messaging, the units send also the current depth, and other information to the counterpart. The wrist unit behaves also as a regular deco computer, it has a built-in digital compass, it can send an emergency signal, and it can beam localization signal, or navigate the diver to the homing signal of the surface unit.

Additionally, the system is not really expensive - the wrist unit costs 689€ and the boat unit 1,407€. The boat unit is not mandatory though - you can as well work with two (or multiple) wrist units. The boat unit can monitor up to 56 divers on 4 networks. So if you worked with two wrist units, you'd need to bill out some 1400€, but would save money for a Suunto or another official computer, so I think it is a real bargain for the added safety.

The system could be used not only for the diver to send an emergency signal in case of need, and for monitoring the depth of the freediver, but I imagine it would not be technically impossible to have a inflatable vest triggered by it remotely from the surface too.

I definitely think that depth competition organizers, and AIDA should have a closer look at it, and should try approaching the manufacturer - I guess they might be interested in offering a sample for some demonstration at one of the next competitions.

 

[efattah]

I spoke with the UDI people at DEMA in 2008 about using their product for freediving. Their product is awesome, especially when two people are freediving in murky waters, doing fun diving or spearfishing with no line. You can always find your buddy no matter what. The main drawback is the large size of the unit, it is way bigger than the Galileo. Otherwise it is awesome.

 

[trux]

Rudi posted an article about their rescue harness:

Brief overview of our harness safety system Yasemin Dalkilic

 

[Jouskari]

Hmmm... might be a little to constrictive for e.g. a CNF dive. But with a few mods there could be the option of a under suit version to use with a CB system.