Seventeen Years Today Oct 12.

[JS1scuba]

October 12, 1992
Seventeen Years Today

I was in NY the past few days on a "hit and run" mission to see a lot of people. Kathy and the kids had started up in Providence and I started in NYC - we interlaced the region seeing many of the important people in our lives. Including, best friends, family, and long time childhood friends. For some of the important people our window of time with them is closing. My father turns 89 this month, my mother is 83, our dear friend Dr Hamilton will be 80 next year, Kathy’s best friend is in her mid 70s with failing health.

On the flip side my son Charles at 25 is strong, virile and a joy to see making his way in life. I also got to see a group of talented high school friends, some I had not seen in over 30 years. Their creativity is invigorating. It was a hit and run visit that was very good for the soul.

Along the way yesterday while all traveling home from "back east" as my son Jona calls, it Kathy mentioned that Monday was Columbus day ........... and while filled with the overall good emotions of an outstanding few days "back east" that famous weekend from seventeeen years ago popped right back up again.

For the past 16 years or so I have written this memorial for two young men who died a horrific death while doing what they loved-diving. I’ve posted it on web boards and on blogs as a milestone reminder of where we have been, how far I have come and how much more I still have to do. Some have grown tired of seeing the XXX Years Today post and have expressed it loudly. Yet others appreciate the reminder.

Next weekend I am teaching a trimix course. These days it’s pretty easy to do. We have all the tools and techniques pretty well sorted out. What these students will do with it after we are done is entirely up to them. But as we step forward creating new "technical divers" it’s always good to go back and look at some of the events of the technical divers no longer with us. The memorial post about the Rouse’s does that.

I step back in time to a fateful Columbus day weekend in 1992 when we had gathered in Philadelphia for the NAUI International Conference on Underwater Education (ICUE) at a special session we had organized to discuss the concerns and problems of this new thing emerging-Technical Diving.

1992 was not a good year. We had experienced more than 10 fatalities – Alachua Sink, FL, Andrea Doria, Nantucket, Arundo, NJ, Chester Polling, MA, Devil's Ear, FL, La Jolla Canyon, CA., In addition to the US fatalities there were fatalities as well in Europe. There were also some injuries, June 92, the U_Who _ DCI blowup, Aug 92, Andrea Doria, DCI blowup, Lake Jocasse, NC o2 tox, but survived. And there were about to be two more fatalities within hours of our gathering.

I assembled a panel sponsored by my (then) magazine Sub Aqua and my colleague Michael Menduno’s magazine (then) AquaCorps. The panel included many of the divers and trainers who were at the forefront of this new technical diving movement. Menduno, Chowdhury, Garvin, Hendrick, Bielenda, Deans, Betts, Bohrer, Butler, Hamilton, Mount, Emmerman, Gilliam, Lander, Cush, and myself as organizer. The audience (over 250 and standing room only) were the seasoned and the novice diver. Some with decades of diving experience, others with just months. We discussed issues that were important to life and the survival underwater. This was Saturday. October 10, 1992. (I also met the woman who would become my wife that day.)

During the next day small groups got together to discuss issues and explore more of what we talked about. We were happy with the work we had done and planned to continue to work with each other in the future as this was just the beginning of our work. We went home in the hopes that we may have learned just one thing that will save us or will save just one other.

It was a rainy weekend in Philadelphia. But we were warm and comfortable embraced by the city of freedom, independence, and hope. But it was a Sunday and while we were finishing our meetings others were out diving. The dive season on the East Coast was still active, especially for the hard core wreck divers.

As we sipped our coffee during brunch in the hotel there were screams of fear and terror. Two young men, a father and son team 235 feet below the surface of the New Jersey Atlantic ocean struggled to live. While they gasped for breath, we were living life. While a father tried to save his son, we were planning our next adventure. And while the valiant crew and the people onboard the Seeker tried to breathe life back into them we were probably thinking that the work we had done this weekend was good.

Barb Lander, (one of our panelists) left the conference Saturday night to be on that trip. A registered nurse, she saw the death of one and the soon death of the other first hand. Another panelist, Cathie Cush, who had lost her long time lover that summer was best friends with the woman who has just lost her husband and son. Except we didn't know this happened until we got home that evening and the phones were ringing. The news hit home.

I did not know the two men who died. I had heard their names and may have met them once but that need not matter. By default they were friends. I did not have to know them to know some of how they felt about life. Since that weekend in 1992 I have lost way too many friends to diving. Some acquaintances, some very dear friends. Some that make me wonder why we continue to do these dives and others that just make me wonder. The big ones to me, Steve Berman, Tony Maffatone, Rod Farb and Steve Donothan. This year alone (2009) I lost my friends Capt. Zero and Paul Blanchette and my friend Joyce Haywood (medical reasons) I’ve also seen many divers get hurt, decompression sickness, oxygen toxicity, gas embolism. Most survive with little to no permanent damage, some still struggle with each days basic needs. Each one cuts a part out of my heart and each one leaves an indelible mark etched in my soul that requires, that mandates, that I continue to survive and succeed at my pathway of being the best I can be at this craft.

As I go on dive boats now and watch new tech divers who don’t really know who I am or where I have been I interact less and less with them. I watch and listen to them as they discuss dive plans and profiles with a cavalier attitude and for some with an intensity that has blinders on. I listen to some of the wildest statements of fact and shake my head in wonder. I might ask how long they have been diving only to find they have only accumulated a pile of equipment and a lot of certification cards, but never really have "dived." It gives me a moment of pause.

The view from my seat has changed over the years. I’ve become an old-timer, some of the new kids are on their own path, some however seek me out for advice and tutelage. Today’s diver scares me. Just like early tech divers like myself scared those who came before us. Note that of the panelists I listed above, all are still alive. Some of us are still active in technical diving, some have retired from diving altogether. I’ve been at the tech game since 1990.

17 years later, analysis, two books written, a documentary filmed, and a feature film still stuck in development, and more friends and acquaintances have passed away. We know beyond a shadow of a doubt that this stuff is dangerous -- that the ocean and caves are alien environments and we are just guests, and while equipment rarely fails, we know that men and women fail at the point when they can no longer perform. Many of you who are reading this know that some will be left behind. Not because we want them to but because the sea will take them. If you don’t, then, this is the time for the wake up call.

This past year there have been accidents and fatalities some as recently as a month ago. The fatalities in both open and closed circuit diving has continued to be out of hand. There will be more- but there should be NONE. There is no reason whatsoever for divers to die anymore. We have the tools, techniques, and know-how to prevent most if not all fatalities. But as we throw out the names of people who have died while diving and as we try to pick apart accidents in the search for more information. As some "demand" information in the un-earned right to have it when an incident occurs, take a moment and realize that the last time you came back from a dive you were lucky.

This year as I had turned 50 has been more of a reflection year than any other. My diving has run the gamut of deep water CCR diving to 10-hour a day shallow water movie-making diving, to taking my 8-year old diving in the lake. (In a few weeks he does his 2nd u/w pumpkin carving) On that weekend in 1992 I met my wife Kathy and our lives have taken us to many fabulous places since then. And, we have survived the loses of many of our friends too. It’s not easy as some of you know but life goes on. Unfortunately we will have to survive more.

I believe that luck begins with preparedness, others may say it's skill, but at the end of that day your name was not on that list. And, while you may continue to argue about which way is better and which way is right use some common sense and help yourself and the people who love you. If you know it's stupid just don't do it. If you know your prep just was not what it should be scrub the dive. If you do jump in and become one more name to add to the list, someday after the pain has subsided among those that knew you, someone may remember that fateful day.

In Memoriam for Chris Rouse Sr. and Chris Rouse Jr. October 12 1992

Godspeed


Joel Silverstein

[Sludge]

Wow, October really slipped up on me.

Ever since I bought Chris and Chrissy's Teknas I've taken them to Jackson Blue on the weekend nearest the 12th and made a dive on each. Last year the DV-100 wouldn't run right - the bearing had sat up wet and corroded. So I've had a year to fix it. This summer I disassembled the entire scooter to rebuild it like new, throughout. But I ran into a problem with getting the motor apart to replace the bearings. So I've been putting it off. I guess I need to do it this week, as I'll be at JB this Saturday.

Regardless, rest in peace, boys.

[WEPIV]

Thanks for the post Joel. Sounds like you and the family had a great trip "back East."

Gene

[BobK]

Sobering post, something we all need at times....

You're a good man Joel, and your departed friends are honered by your rememberences.

[sam]

Great post... Thank you for sharing. RIP to all that have gone.

[TraceMalin]

Joel, I always appreciate this post when you make it. I wind up reading it every time, every year, wherever I find it. This time, a couple of things jumped out at me about which I would like to comment.

The first is that as we get older, it is only natural to believe that we have diving down to a science as well as an art form. This Fall marks 27 years that I have been diving, and 20 years that I have been instructing. I vaguely remember being a young teen in the pool and trying to buddy breathe off a single regulator. Three days ago, I was teaching a class to a student who had completed NAUI technical training and was pretty solid with trim, buoyancy, propulsion and comfort in the water. He remarked that he wanted to attain my level of the same after the first dive. On the second dive, just to show off, I parked in front of him in an inverted "basic prone position" and did everything we were doing upside down. A decade ago, I was just trying to get that position correct (right side up) in Andrew G's DIR-F class. I was just glad I could clip an SPG with a bolt snap without losing trim.

When we start believing that no one should die underwater, we somehow demean those who have died and will die. Although your post is anything but demeaning, the Rouse fatalities are definitely a lesson learned and a good accident analysis. Neither felt like diving and were in a positive frame of mind and the benefits of trimix sacrificed for financial reasons are just two of many mistakes made in the clarity of hindsight and Monday morning quarterbacking.

Every accident, in the air, on land, and underwater is preventable in hindsight. When we start believing that we are somehow better than that, too good, or that our training, techniques, equipment, teams and gas choices can prevent an accident, we arrive at a level of over-confidence, complacency, or arrogance that begins to fan the funeral pyres of Greek tragedies.

Dives are becoming deeper and longer. Exploration records are broken, tearing open the known evelope, and sport dives are becoming deeper for recreation. Rebreathers are becoming more widely used, and combined with scooters, are allowing newbie tech divers to go where once only the oldest boldest salt or the youngest hotshot would dare to venture.

Training has improved in many ways and fallen by the wayside in others. Courses are broken down into smaller pieces and divers end up with many cards rather than a few. "Experience" is lost for adults in scuba gear much the same way that structured play has removed the perils and pitfalls of childhood.

Removing the perils ... strange, how attempts to save lives takes away from those trying to live them while alive. Diving boards in swimming pools are removed, go-kart rules state no-bumping, and the first season of Sesame Street on DVD carries a warning that it is for adults only since today's kids shouldn't crawl through pipes or stand on swings.

Despite attempts to remove danger, people seek it. People seek stress. How many of us swore that we were never going to go beyond Intro to Cave or venture more than several hundred feet? How many of us felt that we had our butts kicked enough after Trimix 1, yet started missing the challenge of being beaten upon and took Trimix 2 - just for the training and kept going? Wherever the bar is set, explorers will hurdle it and pull the sportsman further up the rungs in the process. For most of us, 150 feet was once a deep dive. Now, it's just entry level trimix.

When people die underwater, we read the threads with the same curiosity and aire of superiority as motorists rubbernecking at a roadside accident. We assess, critique, criticize, blame, judge and condemn. Death is entertaining. Yes, we care. We care about those we know, their families, and we care about people because we can both emphathize and sympathize. Yet ... we bury deaths in a shroud of pious condolences, yet the diving community is as fascinated by the demise of its own as the general public is with forensics.

To say that no one should die is to deprive those who have of the frailties that make us human. To deny the dead the right to error serves only to define them by their mistakes rather than their victories and contributions. Divers die. Divers die for the sport of it. Some play this sport rougher than others. In the end, safety and survival is just another tool of one-up-manship and a way of creating some sort of competitive score-keeping. To deny that is to deny the vanity of mankind.

What the Rouses died for, and what all divers have died for, is scuba diving - and scuba diving is pretty cool. To give them any less is what has been wrong with this sport for a long time.

Aside from the obvious intent of caution in your post, you made me think about all the nasty threads about those whom we've lost. Hopefully, we'll be giving those we will lose more respect. What always makes your post extraordinary is that you did not know the Rouses, yet you carry the torch. I understand why some would criticize your annual recitation of events, but obviously something happened within you, in your spirit, with the contrast of events between the mundane and the dramatic, between beginning a life of love with someone while others were losing the lives of those held beloved. Less is often posted in these boards by lesser divers.

[ronhend]

Wow!!
All I can say is great post Joel and TraceMalin.

Really thought provoking and timely in so many ways.

RIP to all!!

Ron

[JS1scuba]

Trace, interesting analysis. I appreciate it.

While I would love to have no more fatalities the realities are that there will be. The millions of things that lead up to a fatality are way to long to trace down to find that one thing to prevent it. I've always belived that a diving accident or fatality actually happend long before the final moment of it. For the Rouses their death was etched days if not months before they set out for that dive. All the research shows that.

I to have been in the spot you are where a student wants to be "just like us" and do it like we do ....... that just takes time. We developed it over decades they want it in hours. Maybe that's the monster we have created ?

Let's try to stay off the list just a little longer.

Cheers
JDS

[WJH]

Thanks for the reminder again this year, Joel.

I have been fortunate(?) in that I have only lost one close acquaintance to a diving accident (cave), but I feel that one loss deeply and often. The roots of the mistakes he made on his fateful dive were also etched months in advance--chief among them were his constant focus on the "goal" of the dive rather than just enjoying whatever dive was experienced and staying focused on the process of making a safe dive.

I have dedicated a number of my dives to his memory, and when I witness divers I know showing premature enthusiasm over some new training level or depth/penetration they wish to achieve I also honor his memory by relating to them that my deceased dive buddy also sought to reach achievements beyond his comfort level and experience. I know that it has slowed at least some of them, and perhaps saved their families and friends the grief that I have experienced.

I am quite sure that your annual reminder also saves some families. Keep posting it.

WJH

[rkij]

I find it ironic and fitting that the Rouses' died on Columbus day as they too were exploring an unknown place.

RIP Boys.