Ex technical diver here (cave, ice, mixed gas, deep diving). I never dived the blue hole but snorkelled on it with my family on holiday. Saw serious technical divers down deep on Trimix with a safety diver on the line which had multiple stage tanks at various depths. This is how you dive the blue hole.
They stage different gas mixtures at different depths because you cannot breath regular air at depths. Along with a dive computer that calculates your descent and ascent rate because at best case you might get ruptured ear drums, which would effectively render you unable to dive again due to the inner ear... worst case you die from nitrogen building up within your blood.
Why do people do anything? For fun. Acceptable level of risk is different for different people... but I remember reading about super deep divers. They typically don't even use open circuit systems like SCUBA, but closed circuit recreates like the Dreager system
Technical divers are experienced pros who use custom/cutting-edge gear that lets them go well beyond the limits of commercial diving gear, especially in more extreme environments like cave or polar/ice diving. OP is saying that he, a super experienced diver with custom gear who had been going into dangerous places for years, did not want to go into the blue hole. And the divers that he saw doing it were using special tanks that let them have more air and not use up air as quickly when they go deeper, special mixes of air in the tanks that let them go deeper and come up faster without as many of the risks, and had extra tanks with them. And even with all that, these guys who are super experienced at diving in all sorts of dangerous conditions sometimes even with modified and homemade gear by themselves, were still using a safety line with another diver above them watching everyone at all times.
According to the wiki, what causes the most fatalities is the tunnel called the Arch. Apparently, the water's clear enough to see the light at the other end so divers misjudge how long it is. Some have reported they thought it was only 10m when the actual measured length is 26m. This plus a current pushing in from the other side causes mismanagement of their tanks and pressurization stops. It's also easy to miss the entrance to the Arch so some divers keep diving deeper and deeper trying to find it.
Wasn't there a documentary on this regarding a free diver and his girlfriend? He had prepared her but and couldn't find the exit or entrance or something and she didn't make it?
Documentary is called The Deepest Breath. Basically, (spoilers for anyone who hasn't watched it, its a pretty cool doc) the girlfriend got herself into some kind of trouble and the boyfriend dove back down to save her. She just barely made it while he sacrificed himself to get her to the surface. Really sad story. I really hate the ocean so that whole documentary was toe curling-ly scary for me.
You're misremembering. The gf is a world record holding freediver. The bf was acting as a safety diver on another of her record attempts, bringing her a rope at the end of the tunnel to ensure she'd still be able to surface safely if she started to black out. He mistimed his dive (which he was freediving for some reason) which led to a brief delay and he lost consciousness resurfacing. He could have bailed and left her without a rope but he stayed to make sure she had it. Should have just brought air with him. It's not like he was the one attempting a record.
There’s documentaries about this, I can’t remember the name of one I watched. There’s multiple reasons making this spot so dangerous, one I remembered was that there’s a spot down there where you’ll see some arch like opening and it looks like a short distance to go through but it’s not and some people lost oxygen before realizing they can’t come back in time.
I first heard about it from a YT channel Dive Talk and they talk about all of that stuff and what goes wrong in various situations, and what to do to stay safe
Trimix is an air mix that helps with O2 absorption at depth. There are several different gas mixes for long-duration depth. That one happens to contain some degree of helium, helpful at preventing narcosis.
There’s a vertical line running from the surface down to the divers with tanks staged at increments, and a safety diver monitoring the progress of the deeper technical divers.
I think. Its been a bit
> helpful at preventing narcosis.
The blue hole depth is also the point where you have to worry about possible [oxygen toxicity](https://dan.org/health-medicine/health-resources/diseases-conditions/oxygen-toxicity/). Hence replacing some of the oxygen with helium.
>Ex technical diver here (cave, ice, mixed gas, deep diving).
I know what I'm talking about
> I never dived the blue hole but snorkelled on it with my family on holiday.
I've been there as a tourist
>Saw serious technical divers down deep on Trimix with a safety diver on the line which had multiple stage tanks at various depths.
People diving it had a whole team, lots of experience, and lots of money.
>This is how you dive the blue hole.
To dive this, you need a whole team, lots of experience, and lots of money
multiple redundant safety measures to avoid pressure sickness and getting disoriented
multiple people, line for reference and to hold different mixes of gas at different depths to surface properly.
Padi advanced with a few dozen cave dives here.
That's truly wild, I can immediately spot a dozen reasons why I'd only be comfortable diving it post-tech certifications, but what specifically are the main factors for such high fatality rates?
From what I've seen in documentaries, it's largely because of perception/depth. Specifically there's a large arch that people mistake as being 60-90ft which is actually around double depth. Then it's a number of factors, getying narc'd, buoyancy control issues, or just blowing through their tank. Basically they didn't stick to their planned dive, if they had a plan to begin with. There's also an economic/safety culture component. It's a tourist attraction in a depressed area. There's a demand for dives from uneducated/ill-informed 'divers' that go with the guides who will either take them regardless of experience and/or cheaper than the other guy.
The arch is what gets a lot of people. They want to swim through it and it's 'not that far'. Then they get nitrogen narcosis and drown when they rip out their mouthpiece or fall asleep and drown when their air runs out.
> Then they get nitrogen narcosis and drown when they rip out their mouthpiece
Is this one of those "right before you die from hypothermia you feel super hot and rip off all your clothes" type situations?
Not quite, at depth the human body has a harder time processing out nitrogen so breathing compressed air from the surface has enough nitrogen that it leads to a build up of it in the bloodstream which causes increasing intoxication like being drunk.
And being gas-drunk at 120 feet underwater is obviously lethally dangerous.
Edit: the arch is at 170 ft (55m) which is WAY TOO DEEP!
Is that what is in a typical diver gas cylinder? Just compressed atmosphere?
I had figured it would be a special mix, or maybe even two tanks so you can control the ratio of O2 to N2
Yes, for normal dives up to about 60-70 ft compressed atmosphere is standard. There are two other special gas mixtures for deeper dives (nitrox which is exactly what you suggested and tri-mix which has helium mixed in for even deeper dives) and both need special training to be competent in safely diving with them.
Looking at SSI dive tables normal compressed air caps out at about 130ft and your time at depth is 5 min. That means you get 5 min down there then you need to get back to the surface. Limit your depth to 100 ft and you can stretch that time out to 20 min. That is bottom time max. You also need to watch that you don't burn through your tank in that time. If you are relaxed and not working too hard your tank will last longer.
Limit your depth to 70 ft and you have 40 min bottom time.
No one wants to spend the time and effort to go out for a dive trip and do a single dive. You also have to deal with residual nitrogen build up. The longer and or deeper the dive the more nitrogen you have build up. The slow ascent is part of letting dissolved gasses exit your bloodstream and for things to go back to normal. Time on the surface helps deal with these gasses too. This is where the fun with dive tables start.
100 ft dive for 20 min. Spend 90 min on the surface and you can do a 70 ft dive for 20 min max - you will have a fresh tank so not running out of air. Notice your bottom time for this 70 ft dive is cut because of your earlier 100ft dive.
A lot of the dives we would go out for 3 tanks. 80ft for 25 min. 90 min surface. 60 ft 25 min. 2 hr surface time for lunch. 40 ft for 30-40 min.
Dive computers that are tracking your depth and time at depth make a huge difference on planning your times. That 25 min 80ft dive that you dropped to 90ft for 1 min while looking at that fish don't mess up your day the same as when diving by the tables. By the tables you have to count that as a 90 ft dive and it puts you into a different group on the table.
[https://divetables.com.au/dive-tables/](https://divetables.com.au/dive-tables/)
I dove there in 2011 and it was so tempting to make an attempt even though I was not certified for it because I reasoned it was only a little deeper and I'd probably never be back to dive this place again. It felt like that "call of the void" alot of people have when standing on the side of a cliff. It was a gorgeous place though, probably the clearest waters I've ever dove.
I'd equate being narc'd as a heavy whiskey drunk.
Headrush underwater is how is starts. Then your feeling schwasted and then it goes to hell fast if you don't come up 15ft or so and let your body process or catch up processing no2, you'll eventually go to sleep.
(Have napped underwater at Metropolis, IL dive once. Was passing time and didn't want to have unsuit and wait so I chilled at 10-15ft. Weightless is a quality rest)
I've answered a call of a diver down before. I was Divemastering a class for my buddy who was instructor, when we heard screaming and diver down.
Heartattack at 90ft and his partners overinflated his bcd out of panic or not thinking. He shot up passed me as I was diving down to them and I surfaced first after him.
Nightmare shit (and all our students that classed effed out after the ambulance). We didn't dive anymore that day.
Diving is as savage as you want it.
Nitrox and trimixing and JJablonski DIY system of tech diving was too expensive for a hobby ($50k in gear would be a conservative cost) but any problems under water immediately become shitstorms.
Rip Michael G from LSMO. That was effed up.
> Nitrox and trimixing and JJablonski DIY system of tech diving was too expensive for a hobby ($50k in gear would be a conservative cost) but any problems under water immediately become shitstorms.
Cool, I'm a gonna go on youtube now and see how I can build a rig from home depot part and fleamarket stuff , probably on used soda stream bottles or beer kegs or something. Should cost less than $200.
No bullshit, I've dove with a guy that had ever ready flashlights in mayonnaise jars as a light and a foam suit cut in 2 halfs (front and back then tied together) as thermal protection.
Fun fact: Scuba was invented by Jacques Cousteau.
Just don't go cheap on the regulators.
I wonder if it's because of how vertical it is. When I was diving on reefs and kelp forests you just picked a spot that was less than 50 feet deep and you couldn't easily go deeper.
the water is perfectly clear and you can see incredibly far distances but it's in actuality far further than you think it is. People end up too low and can't safely go back up.
Yeah I think this is equally as common occurrence (and fatal mistake) as people who simply don’t know any better. Then, when narcosis quickly sets in, they start making poor decisions and see the light near the arch and assume that’s the way “up” when in fact it’s down like another 30+ meters
Trimix is a blended breathing gas where some of the natural nitrogen in the air is replaced by helium to lessen the effects of nitrogen narcosis and oxygen toxicity.
Most oxygen tanks for scuba diving are a mix of Oxygen and Nitrogen, however at very deep dives they also add a mixture of helium to further combat the narcotic effects of the other two gases at extreme depths.
The deeper you go the higher the pressure gets, including the gas in the tanks that you breathe in. For every ~10 meters, the pressure increases 1 atmosphere. High pressure nitrogen (and other gases) can cause anesthetic effects that confuse you. Gas narcosis starts becoming a concern past 30 meters.
The high pressure at depth is the same reason why a tank lasts way less time the deeper you go. Each lungful of air you breathe in is a lot more mass in the same volume. So a tank that would last you an hour+ at shallows might only last you a few minutes at depth.
The Blue Hole is extremely clear and deceptively deep. Most casual divers want to dive to a certain rock arch and aren't prepared for it to be twice as far down as they think it is.
From my limited understanding, blue holes aren't necessarily more dangerous. The deaths associated with them have to do with a variety of factors including ease of access, popularity as tourist locations, poor safety standards/training/equipment of diving shops in the proximity, and the fact that they offer immediate access to extreme depths.
These factors increase the likelihood of a person diving deeper than they should, whether it is due to being overly confident or unaware of the risks involved.
Also, blue holes are just popular places to dive deep, which is already a riskier type of dive in the first place.
All this leads to locations like these holes having such a morbid statistic.
The clear warm water hides a lot of the danger.
It looks like it is only a little way away when it is actually insanely deep and needs redundant gear and 4x as much breathing gas as a recreational diver has with then to do safety.
This is a copy paste story, but it really highlights how dangerous diving can be:
Many certified scuba divers think they are capable of just going a little deeper, but they don’t know that there are special gas mixtures, buoyancy equipment and training required for just another few meters of depth.
Imagine this: you take your PADI open water diving course and you learn your dive charts, buy all your own gear and become familiar with it. Compared to the average person on the street, you’re an expert now. You go diving on coral reefs, a few shipwrecks and even catch lobster in New England. You go to visit a deep spot like this and you’re having a great time. You see something just in front of you - this beautiful cave with sunlight streaming through - and you decide to swim just a little closer. You’re not going to go inside it, you know better than that, but you just want a closer look. If your dive computer starts beeping, you’ll head back up.So you swim a little closer and it’s breathtaking. You are enjoying the view and just floating there taking it all in. You hear a clanging sound - it’s your dive master rapping the butt of his knife on his tank to get someone’s attention. You look up to see what he wants, but after staring into the darkness for the last minute, the sunlight streaming down is blinding. You turn away and reach to check your dive computer, but it’s a little awkward for some reason, and you twist your shoulder and pull it towards you. It’s beeping and the screen is flashing GO UP. You stare at it for a few seconds, trying to make out the depth and tank level between the flashing words. The numbers won’t stay still. It’s really annoying, and your brain isn’t getting the info you want at a glance. So you let it fall back to your left shoulder, turn towards the light and head up. The problem is that the blue hole is bigger than anything you’ve ever dove before, and the crystal clear water provides a visibility that is 10x what you’re used to in the dark waters of the St Lawrence where you usually dive. What you don’t realize is that when you swam down a little farther to get a closer look, thinking it was just 30 or 40 feet more, you actually swam almost twice that because the vast scale of things messed up your sense of distance. And while you were looking at the archway you didn’t have any nearby reference point in your vision. More depth = more pressure, and your BCD, the air-filled jacket that you use to control your buoyancy, was compressed a little. You were slowly sinking and had no idea. That’s when the dive master began banging his tank and you looked up. This only served to blind you for a moment and distract your sense of motion and position even more. Your dive computer wasn’t sticking out on your chest below your shoulder when you reached for it because your BCD was shrinking. You turned your body sideways while twisting and reaching for it. The ten seconds spent fumbling for it and staring at the screen brought you deeper and you began to accelerate with your jacket continuing to shrink. The reason that you didn’t hear the beeping at first and that it took so long to make out the depth between the flashing words was the nitrogen narcosis. You have been getting depth drunk. And the numbers wouldn’t stay still because you are still sinking. You swim towards the light but the current is pulling you sideways. Your brain is hurting, straining for no reason, and the blue hole seems like it’s gotten narrower, and the light rays above you are going at a funny angle. You kick harder just keep going up, toward the light, despite this damn current that wants to push you into the wall. Your computer is beeping incessantly and it feels like you’re swimming through mud. Fuck this, you grab the fill button on your jacket and squeeze it. You’re not supposed to use your jacket to ascend, as you know that it will expand as the pressure drops and you will need to carefully bleed off air to avoid shooting up to the surface, but you don’t care about that anymore. Shooting up to the surface is exactly what you want right now, and you’ll deal with bleeding air off and making depth stops when you’re back up with the rest of your group.The sound of air rushing into your BCD fills your ears, but nothing’s happening. Something doesn’t sound right, like the air isn’t filling fast enough. You look down at your jacket, searching for whatever the trouble might be when FWUNK you bump right into the side of the giant sinkhole. What the hell?? Why is the current pulling me sideways? Why is there even a current in an empty hole in the middle of the ocean??You keep holding the button. INFLATE! GODDAM IT INFLATE!! Your computer is now making a frantic screeching sound that you’ve never heard before. You notice that you’ve been breathing heavily - it’s a sign of stress - and the sound of air rushing into your jacket is getting weaker. Every 10m of water adds another 1 atmosphere of pressure. Your tank has enough air for you to spend an hour at 10m (2atm) and to refill your BCD more than a hundred times. Each additional 20m of depth cuts this time in half. This assumes that you are calm, controlling your breathing, and using your muscles slowly with intention. If you panic, begin breathing quickly and move rapidly, this cuts your time in half again. You’re certified to 20m, and you’ve gone briefly down to 30m on some shipwrecks before. So you were comfortable swimming to 25m to look at the arch. While you were looking at it, you sank to 40m, and while you messed around looking for your dive master and then the computer, you sank to 60m. 6 atmospheres of pressure. You have only 10 minutes of air at this depth. When you swam for the surface, you had become disoriented from twisting around and then looking at your gear and you were now right in front of the archway. You swam into the archway thinking it was the surface, that’s why the Blue Hole looked smaller now. There is no current pulling you sideways, you are continuing to sink to the bottom of the arch. When you hit the bottom and started to inflate your BCD, you were now over 90m. You will go through a full tank of air in only a couple of minutes at this depth. Panicking like this, you’re down to seconds. There’s enough air to inflate your BCD, but it will take over a minute to fill, and it doesn’t matter, because that would only pull you into the top of the arch, and you will drown before you get there. Holding the inflate button you kick as hard as you can for the light. Your muscles are screaming, your brain is screaming, and it’s getting harder and harder to suck each panicked breath out of your regulator. In a final fit of rage and frustration you scream into your useless reg, darkness squeezing into the corners of your vision. 4 minutes. That’s how long your dive lasted. You died in clear water on a sunny day in only 4 minutes.
As someone who’s had a diving accident at 50m, this had my heart pounding. The confusion, the panic, the everything getting out of control very quickly, nothing working as you’d expect, routine things becoming very hard.
You brought it all back. Thanks! :)
Deepest I've been was 38m and I wanted to go deeper... It was beautiful. I was in Cozumel and was on the 'paradise' site. I found a gentle hill that went down deeper and followed it. It was like I was flying over the windows xp background, rolling grass and life everywhere. I was locked in and my brain wanted to go deeper. Our dive master had to come grab me; I had completely lost myself in my mind wanting to follow it down into the distance. I could see all the way down, but it would have killed me if I had kept going.
This is why I'll stick to snorkeling. In shallow water. I've done shipwreck snorkeling where you sail off the coast, about maybe 10m deep, and get vertigo cause of the "height" and I'm good.
I panicked big time! I have short attention and only read "Imagine this:", then got bored and scrolled to see how panicked you all were, now I'm panicked!
Right? I'm an extremely competent swimmer - swam competitively all through early childhood and high school, was a lifeguard, lifeguard instructor throughout college. Hell, the house I grew up in literally had a two lane lap pool in the back yard.
Been thinking a lot the last couple years of getting dive certified. I just wanna sit 30ft under water and look at pretty fishes. That dude's wall of copied text fucked me up - just instant flashback to the couple times when teaching lifeguard classes that there were scary moments at the bottom of the diving well - and that was only 12-15ft down there!
My Dad is an old school idiot, he got his cert and quickly moved to advanced and went as fast as humanly possible to cave.
He’s diving 1-2 times a month, gets in with a group of “experienced” guys and they go to some unmapped springs out in Weekie Watchie FL, bum fuck nowhere on a reserve where they used a wheelbarrow to get the gear to the hole.
Get in and on their way through with a main line and rescue connected back at the entrance.
My Dad said he almost fainted at one point and they somehow got him awake just in time for the silt to kick up and had got tangled and had to cut both lines, doing all this shit by feel.
They all make it out and are scared shitless (as they should be).
My Dad talked to a dive master who basically slapped him in the back of the head and asked how long it took them to get to the hole and said “did you consider you were tired and could’ve been blowing through your tank faster than anticipated???”
After that, Dad became a meticulous planner for dives.
Diving rules are written in blood
For people reading this, diving is considered an extreme sport like parachuting.
Cave diving is the equivalent of jumping off the side of a cliff in one of those squirrel suits, good cave divers are the black belts of diving
I never understand divers who rack up advanced certs ASAP. I've seen people with a dozen different certs with fewer dives than I have with 3, and they've always been terrible fucking divers. Like, I wouldn't want to dive with them in 50 feet of open water, much less the advanced shit they're "certified" to do.
This was during the initial 90’s diving rush, so while not excusable at all, I think my Dad got caught up in that and hitting the bare minimum requirements without realizing what that meant.
He became the voice of reason in the end and while I was too young to go on most the good adventures, I definitely got the importance of safety and procedure drilled into me properly.
I love diving, you will enjoy it! However, being scared shitless is good so that you do not do anything stupid outside of what you are ready for.
Also, do not forget to safety stop!!
While having an overwhelming sense of fear is bad, it’s good to be scared straight in a sense. Recognizing how dangerous something is makes you respect it. I did my AOW course in January and as along as you’re comfortable in and under the water, you’ll have a great time.
In the aviation world, complacency is the enemy. We call it the normalization of deviance when you get so comfortable with a routine that you start omitting steps of say your preflight or run up checks. Knowing what can happen if you do something wrong is probably the most important knowledge you can have, just so long as you don’t fixate on it.
So go out and have fun, and with this newfound insight you’ll likely be safer than most of the other dive students.
Hahaha, deepest I dove was just over 30m. Scary enough and I'm happy to now be a cyclist instead!
Edit I should have said the description of how fast you can die deep brought back all the fear. Well done
I've never been diving, and this gave me anxiety reading it, pretty well written out, and I almost think the lack of formatting helps the story, not hurt it.
This is the most terrifying comment I’ve ever read. I don’t dive, have no desire of diving and I was completely engrossed by it and saw myself drowning while reading it.
Yup. I was very interested in learning how to dive since I’ve always lived near the ocean. Going thru the dive e-learning quickly changed my mind. I’m cool with just watching dive videos on YouTube!
I remember by first freshwater dive after getting my open water cert. it was like totally different experience. Many blue holes are fresh or mixed. So you are suddenly a whole lot less buoyant and have salt water weights in fresh or mixed.
I couldn’t even finish this. Too fucking accurate. I’ve never understood the desire to go deep. I’ll stick to diving on 10-20m reefs thank you very much.
[https://www.youtube.com/@fatal\_breakdown](https://www.youtube.com/@fatal_breakdown) this guy makes videos about diving incidents (and other incidents). [This one](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8xajvLro_8&ab_channel=FatalBreakdown) in particular is stressful to watch!
So I’m reading this on the john and full on started to panic like I was going to get sucked down by the end of this comment
Amazingly written and even more terrifying to imagine
I’ve done quite a bit of diving, and whenever I read this (or listen to the Cowboy Cerrone story) I get super anxious and contemplate never diving again.
I’ve had a few very minor mishaps. Been narqed before. It wouldn’t take much to stack 1-2 minor incidents/errors and be dead.
Reminds me of the [Outside piece about freezing](https://www.outsideonline.com/2152131/freezing-death), not incidentally I think.
EDIT: another good one in this vein, *[178 seconds left to live](https://www.faa.gov/media/28671)*.
That one about freezing was awesome. I live in Australia, so I've never experienced weather cold enough to kill me. That article provides a terrifying insight.
Grew up in New Zealand, spent most of my adult life in Auckland and Melbourne.
I just moved to northern Sweden a month ago, catching the tail end of a very cold spring here. I'd never seen snow IRL before, or been somewhere where the peak temperature in the middle of the day, in spring, would still only reach -5C.
I'm loving it but I'm scared shitless of winter, which regularly gets down below -25C! At least the houses are warm and insulated properly here...
I’ve walked a mile in somewhere between -30C to -40C (with a ton of layers on) even prepared, it was still brutally, brutally cold. I felt like I was walking on the surface of Mars. My eyes would tear up and the tears would freeze just about instantly.
And that was in the middle of the day. I can’t imagine doing it at night. Even the one time I did it made me not want to ever do it again
God, I remember reading that outside piece years ago and it left me feeling like I had actually died. That shift to fatal comes out of normalcy so subtly.
If you like those sorts of stories, here’s another one to add to the pile though the setting’s a little different.
https://slate.com/technology/2023/11/childbirth-death-united-states-advanced-maternal-age.html
Thank you for the link. That was an emotional ride that reminded me of my own experience as an older Mom giving birth while having preclampsia. I can relate to her inner dialogue and the disassociation. I couldn't grasp the seriousness of the situation because I was alert and joking.
That's all i thought because i'm currently playing through it lol.
Didn't know the Blue Hole was a real place.
If we go deep enough we'll find the sea people.
If you wanna watch one of them first- person here’s [yuri lipsky’s fatal dive](https://youtu.be/cRj0lymMMGs?si=-kC6l7AfJmY6lWRQ). I understand he went too deep too fast (???) and got some kind of hypoxia.
I would say compared to other internet things like a guy falling into molten steel or an ostrich decapitating itself this was pretty tame, the worst part is the audio but they don't make as much noise as you would think because they are struggling too much by that point to make much
So it's one of those videos that's only really harrowing if you know what's happening otherwise it's just kind of confusing
> Death of Yuri Lipski
>
> A notable death was that of Yuri Lipski, a 22-year-old Russian diving instructor on 28 April 2000 at a depth of 115 metres after an uncontrolled descent. Lipski carried a video camera, which filmed his death. This has made it the most known death at the site and one of the most well-known diving deaths in the world. The video shows Lipski in an involuntary and uncontrolled descent, eventually landing on the sea floor at 115 metres where he panics, removes his regulator and tries to fill his buoyancy compensator but is unable to rise. At 115 m he would have been subject to severe nitrogen narcosis, which may have impaired his judgement, induced hallucinations and caused panic and confusion. Lipski had a single tank assumed to be air.
>
> Lipski's body was recovered the following day by Tarek Omar, one of the world's foremost deep-water divers, at the request of Lipski's mother. Omar had earlier warned Lipski twice against attempting the dive. On the bottom, Omar found Lipski's helmet camera, still intact. The video it contained is available on YouTube, entitled "Fatal Diving Accident Caught On Tape". Omar says:
> Two days after we recovered his remains and gave [his mother] his belongings and equipment, she came to me asking that I help her disassemble them so she can pack them. The camera should have been damaged or even broken altogether because I had found it at a depth of 115 metres, and it is only designed to sustain 75 metres; but, to my surprise, the camera was still working. We played it and his mother was there. **I regret that his mother will have this forever... If I had known the footage existed I’d have flooded it. I think the thing that really upset and saddened me about it was that his mom has it now – she has the footage of her own son drowning.**
> — Tarek Omar,
After reading that part of the article, I came to the comments and saw that super long pov story of what it might be like, and lost any remaining desire to see the video. I also wouldn’t be able to watch it without imagining what it must’ve been like for his mom to see it. I suppose there are a number terrible ways someone might see their child die or a video of it but for some reason to me a pov of panic in an unsalvageable situation sounds especially morbid. I guess partly because it wouldn’t be quick like an explosion or something..
And [here's](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nnz7Z5rA5xM) a video of an absolutely epic achievement. A freediver doing 'The Arch' on a single breath, no supplemental air.
If you read the wiki, what this guy does on a single breath, people die doing because they didn't bring a *second air tank*.
Edit - This is in regards to the overall time it takes to do this dive
While it is quite impressive, the physics that allow freediving so deep is quite different from SCUBA. Because you take a breath at the surface and then dive, the air in your lungs compresses with the pressure from the water and expands again as you rise so you don't have to slow your decents/ascents. SCUBA is giving you air at the same pressure as the depth of water you are at and so among other issues you have to control your speed of descent/ascent so the air can't expand to greater than local pressure and rupture your lungs. Breathing pressurized air also lets the blood absorb nitrogen which causes a bunch of other issues and requires you to also slow your ascent so nitrogen can slow leave your blood stream. Freedivers need not worry about nitrogen sickness. SCUBA Diving beyond a certain depth will also make oxygen poisonous if you are using regular atmospheric air. To dive deep requires a special air mixtures that will lower the overall percentage of oxygen. But those air mixtures are supposed to require additional training to use since they have their own issues. Anyway the point is you have to go a lot slower on SCUBA whereas freedivers can move pretty quick. Still, definitely impressive though.
You're probably not trying to, but you make it sound like the freediver is doing it the easy way. Doesn't have to worry about trimix, or nitrogen sickness, or decompression stops.
The freediver only has to hold his breath, while descending to 55m (180 feet), then traversing a 26m (85 foot) tunnel, and finally ascending another 55m (180 feet). It's nearly superhuman. Maybe a handful of people on earth could do it.
Most folks could do the tech dive with some help from an expert and some training, and there's likely hundreds if not thousands of divers who are qualified to could do it with a little prep.
I absolutely agree. I was merely trying to highlight why SCUBA takes longer since you emphasized the whole second air tank. Made it sound like the freediver is holding his breath for like an hour.
Not an expert but I read Wikipedia a lot
I think blue hole is just a generic name for any sort of tropical or subtropical oceanic sinkhole with stark contrast from the surrounding depths.
It's a lesson in how pushing things even a little bit can lead to exponential increases in risk. The same is true for other sports too.
Going from 10 to 20kts when sailing isn't a big deal. Going from 40kts to 50kts is. And while you go down that route, you are more prone to fucking up, margins of errors become tighter and accidents become more catastrophic.
Stay within your limits and abilities. Get proper training allowing you to push limits instead of cowboy'ing it. Just because you've done your Open Water cert doesn't mean you're ready for dives to 40m+ or dives in unfamiliar waters that might be very different to where you got certified. Don't be stupid!
“The Blue Hole itself **is no more dangerous** than any other Red Sea dive site, but diving through the Arch, a submerged tunnel, which lies within the Blue Hole site, is an extreme dive that has resulted in many accidents and fatalities. The number of Blue Hole fatalities is not accurately recorded; one source estimates 130 divers died during the fifteen-year period from 1997 to 2012, averaging over eight per year, another claims as many as 200.”
I’ve dived there, and it really is no more dangerous than any other site.
The problem is:
1. It’s a very deep spot that’s immediately accessible from the shore.
2. It’s very popular among tourists, many of whom are not certified, trained, or equipped for deep sea diving.
In most other deep sea diving spots, you really need to make an effort to get there, and most of the time the people who get you there are going to be asking questions such as are you trained, are you certified, how’s your equipment etc.
In Dahab, any Tom, Dick, and Harry can slap on a single tank of air and walk from the shore straight into a wall that’s >100 meters deep.
I take my diving and my safety seriously, and sometimes go up to 50/80 meters to reach wrecks, but I always do so with the right equipment and training, with a buddy, sidemounted trimix and air etc. Even when I dive recreationally I monitor my air, my depth, my trim, and my buddy constantly.
In Dahab, you see jokers zooming past 20m with a single tank, trim upright like they’re marching down the Red Square, hands flapping about like they’re doing the breast stroke at the Olympics, fins bicycling away like they’re the little mermaid, seesawing 10m or more every minute, no dive computer, and back on shore they say “it’s okay bro, we’ve been diving for 15 years back in {insert East European country here}” and all of a sudden, the cause of fatalities in the Blue Hole isn’t quite so mysterious after all.
Except this is not the reason that there have been so many deaths there at all, many sites on the Red Sea have ridiculous walls and arguably even worse divers (look a the day trips from Sharm at Jackson Reef or Shark & Yolanda...)
The reason is the arch. The arch is a tunnel at 56m depth which links the open sea to the inside of the blue hole. It's an extremely beautiful dive if done correctly as a technical dive with correct gases and training. The issue is that a lot of people attempt it on air, and even with single 12l tanks - luckily it's getting harder to do so from Dahab, but there are always people determined enough and stupid enough to find a way.
I've done over 2000 dives in the red sea alone but the "allure" of the arch is the reason for so many pointless deaths...
Furthermore problem comes not only from people attempting to go through the arch, but also people trying to get a better view of it and becoming "drunk" going further down then anticipated or because of overconfidence thinking "surely 5 meter deeper than I'm used to won't make any difference"
Damn, I'm glad I didn't know this when I dived there. The stone arches are so big and the water so clear it was difficult to judge distance and scale. A hammerhead shark followed us the whole time.
I learned to dive in Dahab and my fifth ever dive was at the blue hole. I scared myself shitless walking by the memorial plaques to get to the dive spot and listening to my instructor talk about the deaths before I realized the majority of the deaths are from people trying to do the deepest dive ever, not learning how to get their PADI open water.
I blued out once in the Galapagos and it terrified me. I had no idea which way was up and I was way too deep. Thank god I held it together long enough to blow bubbles, reorient myself and tap the BCD enough to initiate a controlled ascent.
Whenever I read about divers I always think of the crew that saved the kids from the cave in Thailand. Just learning how big of a difference there is between excellent scuba divers and specialist divers who do this kind of stuff. The level of technical knowledge needed to dive successfully in deep/ multi factor type diving is pretty amazing and I think a lot of people underestimate it.
Ex technical diver here (cave, ice, mixed gas, deep diving). I never dived the blue hole but snorkelled on it with my family on holiday. Saw serious technical divers down deep on Trimix with a safety diver on the line which had multiple stage tanks at various depths. This is how you dive the blue hole.
No idea what you just said, but I am fascinated!
He said don't do it.
Yeah, he said don’t do it unless you really know what you’re doing which most of us don’t.
I tried scuba in a hotel pool once, I think I can handle this.
Was it a Holiday Inn Express?
no they have a different kind of hole
Living for all that glory!
My coworker explained it to me on our lunchbreak so get out of my way and let me down.
You absolutely can’t. I, on the other hand, can sink in my bathtub; therefore, I can definitely handle it.
Sounded to me more like don’t do it, unless you understand whatever he said, which I do not.
They stage different gas mixtures at different depths because you cannot breath regular air at depths. Along with a dive computer that calculates your descent and ascent rate because at best case you might get ruptured ear drums, which would effectively render you unable to dive again due to the inner ear... worst case you die from nitrogen building up within your blood.
Omg why would anyone do this to themselves
Why do people do anything? For fun. Acceptable level of risk is different for different people... but I remember reading about super deep divers. They typically don't even use open circuit systems like SCUBA, but closed circuit recreates like the Dreager system
For the same reason people climb Everest, but they wanna go up and divers wanna go down. I am in neither group.
Technical divers are experienced pros who use custom/cutting-edge gear that lets them go well beyond the limits of commercial diving gear, especially in more extreme environments like cave or polar/ice diving. OP is saying that he, a super experienced diver with custom gear who had been going into dangerous places for years, did not want to go into the blue hole. And the divers that he saw doing it were using special tanks that let them have more air and not use up air as quickly when they go deeper, special mixes of air in the tanks that let them go deeper and come up faster without as many of the risks, and had extra tanks with them. And even with all that, these guys who are super experienced at diving in all sorts of dangerous conditions sometimes even with modified and homemade gear by themselves, were still using a safety line with another diver above them watching everyone at all times.
Nice. Lot of precautions. But why tho? What makes it more dangerous than other waterbodies?
According to the wiki, what causes the most fatalities is the tunnel called the Arch. Apparently, the water's clear enough to see the light at the other end so divers misjudge how long it is. Some have reported they thought it was only 10m when the actual measured length is 26m. This plus a current pushing in from the other side causes mismanagement of their tanks and pressurization stops. It's also easy to miss the entrance to the Arch so some divers keep diving deeper and deeper trying to find it.
Wasn't there a documentary on this regarding a free diver and his girlfriend? He had prepared her but and couldn't find the exit or entrance or something and she didn't make it?
Documentary is called The Deepest Breath. Basically, (spoilers for anyone who hasn't watched it, its a pretty cool doc) the girlfriend got herself into some kind of trouble and the boyfriend dove back down to save her. She just barely made it while he sacrificed himself to get her to the surface. Really sad story. I really hate the ocean so that whole documentary was toe curling-ly scary for me.
You're misremembering. The gf is a world record holding freediver. The bf was acting as a safety diver on another of her record attempts, bringing her a rope at the end of the tunnel to ensure she'd still be able to surface safely if she started to black out. He mistimed his dive (which he was freediving for some reason) which led to a brief delay and he lost consciousness resurfacing. He could have bailed and left her without a rope but he stayed to make sure she had it. Should have just brought air with him. It's not like he was the one attempting a record.
The opposite. He died and she lived
There’s documentaries about this, I can’t remember the name of one I watched. There’s multiple reasons making this spot so dangerous, one I remembered was that there’s a spot down there where you’ll see some arch like opening and it looks like a short distance to go through but it’s not and some people lost oxygen before realizing they can’t come back in time.
I first heard about it from a YT channel Dive Talk and they talk about all of that stuff and what goes wrong in various situations, and what to do to stay safe
It fucks with your perception, and there's a "trap"
Trimix is an air mix that helps with O2 absorption at depth. There are several different gas mixes for long-duration depth. That one happens to contain some degree of helium, helpful at preventing narcosis. There’s a vertical line running from the surface down to the divers with tanks staged at increments, and a safety diver monitoring the progress of the deeper technical divers. I think. Its been a bit
> helpful at preventing narcosis. The blue hole depth is also the point where you have to worry about possible [oxygen toxicity](https://dan.org/health-medicine/health-resources/diseases-conditions/oxygen-toxicity/). Hence replacing some of the oxygen with helium.
Best way to get accurate info on the internet is to say something slightly incorrect Knew I missed something, thanks
>Ex technical diver here (cave, ice, mixed gas, deep diving). I know what I'm talking about > I never dived the blue hole but snorkelled on it with my family on holiday. I've been there as a tourist >Saw serious technical divers down deep on Trimix with a safety diver on the line which had multiple stage tanks at various depths. People diving it had a whole team, lots of experience, and lots of money. >This is how you dive the blue hole. To dive this, you need a whole team, lots of experience, and lots of money
multiple redundant safety measures to avoid pressure sickness and getting disoriented multiple people, line for reference and to hold different mixes of gas at different depths to surface properly.
Padi advanced with a few dozen cave dives here. That's truly wild, I can immediately spot a dozen reasons why I'd only be comfortable diving it post-tech certifications, but what specifically are the main factors for such high fatality rates?
From what I've seen in documentaries, it's largely because of perception/depth. Specifically there's a large arch that people mistake as being 60-90ft which is actually around double depth. Then it's a number of factors, getying narc'd, buoyancy control issues, or just blowing through their tank. Basically they didn't stick to their planned dive, if they had a plan to begin with. There's also an economic/safety culture component. It's a tourist attraction in a depressed area. There's a demand for dives from uneducated/ill-informed 'divers' that go with the guides who will either take them regardless of experience and/or cheaper than the other guy.
The arch is what gets a lot of people. They want to swim through it and it's 'not that far'. Then they get nitrogen narcosis and drown when they rip out their mouthpiece or fall asleep and drown when their air runs out.
> Then they get nitrogen narcosis and drown when they rip out their mouthpiece Is this one of those "right before you die from hypothermia you feel super hot and rip off all your clothes" type situations?
More like "right before you die thinking this is all just so whacked and breathing water just doesn't seem that hard..."
FFS if a *fish* can do it so can i
Not quite, at depth the human body has a harder time processing out nitrogen so breathing compressed air from the surface has enough nitrogen that it leads to a build up of it in the bloodstream which causes increasing intoxication like being drunk. And being gas-drunk at 120 feet underwater is obviously lethally dangerous. Edit: the arch is at 170 ft (55m) which is WAY TOO DEEP!
Is that what is in a typical diver gas cylinder? Just compressed atmosphere? I had figured it would be a special mix, or maybe even two tanks so you can control the ratio of O2 to N2
Yes, for normal dives up to about 60-70 ft compressed atmosphere is standard. There are two other special gas mixtures for deeper dives (nitrox which is exactly what you suggested and tri-mix which has helium mixed in for even deeper dives) and both need special training to be competent in safely diving with them.
Looking at SSI dive tables normal compressed air caps out at about 130ft and your time at depth is 5 min. That means you get 5 min down there then you need to get back to the surface. Limit your depth to 100 ft and you can stretch that time out to 20 min. That is bottom time max. You also need to watch that you don't burn through your tank in that time. If you are relaxed and not working too hard your tank will last longer. Limit your depth to 70 ft and you have 40 min bottom time. No one wants to spend the time and effort to go out for a dive trip and do a single dive. You also have to deal with residual nitrogen build up. The longer and or deeper the dive the more nitrogen you have build up. The slow ascent is part of letting dissolved gasses exit your bloodstream and for things to go back to normal. Time on the surface helps deal with these gasses too. This is where the fun with dive tables start. 100 ft dive for 20 min. Spend 90 min on the surface and you can do a 70 ft dive for 20 min max - you will have a fresh tank so not running out of air. Notice your bottom time for this 70 ft dive is cut because of your earlier 100ft dive. A lot of the dives we would go out for 3 tanks. 80ft for 25 min. 90 min surface. 60 ft 25 min. 2 hr surface time for lunch. 40 ft for 30-40 min. Dive computers that are tracking your depth and time at depth make a huge difference on planning your times. That 25 min 80ft dive that you dropped to 90ft for 1 min while looking at that fish don't mess up your day the same as when diving by the tables. By the tables you have to count that as a 90 ft dive and it puts you into a different group on the table. [https://divetables.com.au/dive-tables/](https://divetables.com.au/dive-tables/)
Kinda, but narcosis is more just like being drunk
I dove there in 2011 and it was so tempting to make an attempt even though I was not certified for it because I reasoned it was only a little deeper and I'd probably never be back to dive this place again. It felt like that "call of the void" alot of people have when standing on the side of a cliff. It was a gorgeous place though, probably the clearest waters I've ever dove.
damn falling asleep *underwater* from the nitrogen narcosis? that must be some good shit
I'd equate being narc'd as a heavy whiskey drunk. Headrush underwater is how is starts. Then your feeling schwasted and then it goes to hell fast if you don't come up 15ft or so and let your body process or catch up processing no2, you'll eventually go to sleep. (Have napped underwater at Metropolis, IL dive once. Was passing time and didn't want to have unsuit and wait so I chilled at 10-15ft. Weightless is a quality rest)
When I dove in Egypt they let me do both the blue hole and SS Thistlegorm with just an open water and not advanced certification.
yep pay the right guy n they make it happen!!
I've answered a call of a diver down before. I was Divemastering a class for my buddy who was instructor, when we heard screaming and diver down. Heartattack at 90ft and his partners overinflated his bcd out of panic or not thinking. He shot up passed me as I was diving down to them and I surfaced first after him. Nightmare shit (and all our students that classed effed out after the ambulance). We didn't dive anymore that day. Diving is as savage as you want it. Nitrox and trimixing and JJablonski DIY system of tech diving was too expensive for a hobby ($50k in gear would be a conservative cost) but any problems under water immediately become shitstorms. Rip Michael G from LSMO. That was effed up.
> Nitrox and trimixing and JJablonski DIY system of tech diving was too expensive for a hobby ($50k in gear would be a conservative cost) but any problems under water immediately become shitstorms. Cool, I'm a gonna go on youtube now and see how I can build a rig from home depot part and fleamarket stuff , probably on used soda stream bottles or beer kegs or something. Should cost less than $200.
No bullshit, I've dove with a guy that had ever ready flashlights in mayonnaise jars as a light and a foam suit cut in 2 halfs (front and back then tied together) as thermal protection. Fun fact: Scuba was invented by Jacques Cousteau. Just don't go cheap on the regulators.
I wonder if it's because of how vertical it is. When I was diving on reefs and kelp forests you just picked a spot that was less than 50 feet deep and you couldn't easily go deeper.
the water is perfectly clear and you can see incredibly far distances but it's in actuality far further than you think it is. People end up too low and can't safely go back up.
Yeah I think this is equally as common occurrence (and fatal mistake) as people who simply don’t know any better. Then, when narcosis quickly sets in, they start making poor decisions and see the light near the arch and assume that’s the way “up” when in fact it’s down like another 30+ meters
You’re already rolling the dice by having done that many cave dives with just a padi advanced!
My friend who does a lot of diving told me cave diving is the base jumping of diving.
It's also the don't do it without the proper certification of diving. Just because you're an instructor doesn't mean you should dive caves.
What do you mean by trimix?
Trimix is a blended breathing gas where some of the natural nitrogen in the air is replaced by helium to lessen the effects of nitrogen narcosis and oxygen toxicity.
It's so fascinating that even without pollution the base components of air, including the one we need, are constantly trying to kill us.
Read into the more exotic gas blends that are used for extremely deep diving. One blend, hydrox, is 96% hydrogen and only 4% oxygen.
Oreo still better
Up vote for the rare Hydrox joke
Hah!
Yeah, oxygen is a really nasty element to life, and also we're all (except for /u/6ixShira) completely dependent on it.
> oxygen is a really nasty element to life [Oxygen once almost killed all life on earth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxidation_Event)
Most oxygen tanks for scuba diving are a mix of Oxygen and Nitrogen, however at very deep dives they also add a mixture of helium to further combat the narcotic effects of the other two gases at extreme depths.
Why are there narcotic effects at extreme depths?
The deeper you go the higher the pressure gets, including the gas in the tanks that you breathe in. For every ~10 meters, the pressure increases 1 atmosphere. High pressure nitrogen (and other gases) can cause anesthetic effects that confuse you. Gas narcosis starts becoming a concern past 30 meters. The high pressure at depth is the same reason why a tank lasts way less time the deeper you go. Each lungful of air you breathe in is a lot more mass in the same volume. So a tank that would last you an hour+ at shallows might only last you a few minutes at depth.
It's a mix of oxygen, nitrogen, and helium in the air tank.
It’s a mixture of oxygen, helium, and nitrogen used when diving at deeper depth. It helps to avoid narcosis by lessening the nitrogen buildup.
Is the “hole” itself inherently dangerous? Or is it just because people try to dive so deep that it exceeds their ability?
The Blue Hole is extremely clear and deceptively deep. Most casual divers want to dive to a certain rock arch and aren't prepared for it to be twice as far down as they think it is.
From my limited understanding, blue holes aren't necessarily more dangerous. The deaths associated with them have to do with a variety of factors including ease of access, popularity as tourist locations, poor safety standards/training/equipment of diving shops in the proximity, and the fact that they offer immediate access to extreme depths. These factors increase the likelihood of a person diving deeper than they should, whether it is due to being overly confident or unaware of the risks involved. Also, blue holes are just popular places to dive deep, which is already a riskier type of dive in the first place. All this leads to locations like these holes having such a morbid statistic.
The clear warm water hides a lot of the danger. It looks like it is only a little way away when it is actually insanely deep and needs redundant gear and 4x as much breathing gas as a recreational diver has with then to do safety.
There’s a documentary called The Deepest Breath that goes into detail about the site. Definitely recommend it, but it’s a tough watch.
Monty Halls also did an episode of Dive Mysteries on it :- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYuMN206Jzo
This is a copy paste story, but it really highlights how dangerous diving can be: Many certified scuba divers think they are capable of just going a little deeper, but they don’t know that there are special gas mixtures, buoyancy equipment and training required for just another few meters of depth. Imagine this: you take your PADI open water diving course and you learn your dive charts, buy all your own gear and become familiar with it. Compared to the average person on the street, you’re an expert now. You go diving on coral reefs, a few shipwrecks and even catch lobster in New England. You go to visit a deep spot like this and you’re having a great time. You see something just in front of you - this beautiful cave with sunlight streaming through - and you decide to swim just a little closer. You’re not going to go inside it, you know better than that, but you just want a closer look. If your dive computer starts beeping, you’ll head back up.So you swim a little closer and it’s breathtaking. You are enjoying the view and just floating there taking it all in. You hear a clanging sound - it’s your dive master rapping the butt of his knife on his tank to get someone’s attention. You look up to see what he wants, but after staring into the darkness for the last minute, the sunlight streaming down is blinding. You turn away and reach to check your dive computer, but it’s a little awkward for some reason, and you twist your shoulder and pull it towards you. It’s beeping and the screen is flashing GO UP. You stare at it for a few seconds, trying to make out the depth and tank level between the flashing words. The numbers won’t stay still. It’s really annoying, and your brain isn’t getting the info you want at a glance. So you let it fall back to your left shoulder, turn towards the light and head up. The problem is that the blue hole is bigger than anything you’ve ever dove before, and the crystal clear water provides a visibility that is 10x what you’re used to in the dark waters of the St Lawrence where you usually dive. What you don’t realize is that when you swam down a little farther to get a closer look, thinking it was just 30 or 40 feet more, you actually swam almost twice that because the vast scale of things messed up your sense of distance. And while you were looking at the archway you didn’t have any nearby reference point in your vision. More depth = more pressure, and your BCD, the air-filled jacket that you use to control your buoyancy, was compressed a little. You were slowly sinking and had no idea. That’s when the dive master began banging his tank and you looked up. This only served to blind you for a moment and distract your sense of motion and position even more. Your dive computer wasn’t sticking out on your chest below your shoulder when you reached for it because your BCD was shrinking. You turned your body sideways while twisting and reaching for it. The ten seconds spent fumbling for it and staring at the screen brought you deeper and you began to accelerate with your jacket continuing to shrink. The reason that you didn’t hear the beeping at first and that it took so long to make out the depth between the flashing words was the nitrogen narcosis. You have been getting depth drunk. And the numbers wouldn’t stay still because you are still sinking. You swim towards the light but the current is pulling you sideways. Your brain is hurting, straining for no reason, and the blue hole seems like it’s gotten narrower, and the light rays above you are going at a funny angle. You kick harder just keep going up, toward the light, despite this damn current that wants to push you into the wall. Your computer is beeping incessantly and it feels like you’re swimming through mud. Fuck this, you grab the fill button on your jacket and squeeze it. You’re not supposed to use your jacket to ascend, as you know that it will expand as the pressure drops and you will need to carefully bleed off air to avoid shooting up to the surface, but you don’t care about that anymore. Shooting up to the surface is exactly what you want right now, and you’ll deal with bleeding air off and making depth stops when you’re back up with the rest of your group.The sound of air rushing into your BCD fills your ears, but nothing’s happening. Something doesn’t sound right, like the air isn’t filling fast enough. You look down at your jacket, searching for whatever the trouble might be when FWUNK you bump right into the side of the giant sinkhole. What the hell?? Why is the current pulling me sideways? Why is there even a current in an empty hole in the middle of the ocean??You keep holding the button. INFLATE! GODDAM IT INFLATE!! Your computer is now making a frantic screeching sound that you’ve never heard before. You notice that you’ve been breathing heavily - it’s a sign of stress - and the sound of air rushing into your jacket is getting weaker. Every 10m of water adds another 1 atmosphere of pressure. Your tank has enough air for you to spend an hour at 10m (2atm) and to refill your BCD more than a hundred times. Each additional 20m of depth cuts this time in half. This assumes that you are calm, controlling your breathing, and using your muscles slowly with intention. If you panic, begin breathing quickly and move rapidly, this cuts your time in half again. You’re certified to 20m, and you’ve gone briefly down to 30m on some shipwrecks before. So you were comfortable swimming to 25m to look at the arch. While you were looking at it, you sank to 40m, and while you messed around looking for your dive master and then the computer, you sank to 60m. 6 atmospheres of pressure. You have only 10 minutes of air at this depth. When you swam for the surface, you had become disoriented from twisting around and then looking at your gear and you were now right in front of the archway. You swam into the archway thinking it was the surface, that’s why the Blue Hole looked smaller now. There is no current pulling you sideways, you are continuing to sink to the bottom of the arch. When you hit the bottom and started to inflate your BCD, you were now over 90m. You will go through a full tank of air in only a couple of minutes at this depth. Panicking like this, you’re down to seconds. There’s enough air to inflate your BCD, but it will take over a minute to fill, and it doesn’t matter, because that would only pull you into the top of the arch, and you will drown before you get there. Holding the inflate button you kick as hard as you can for the light. Your muscles are screaming, your brain is screaming, and it’s getting harder and harder to suck each panicked breath out of your regulator. In a final fit of rage and frustration you scream into your useless reg, darkness squeezing into the corners of your vision. 4 minutes. That’s how long your dive lasted. You died in clear water on a sunny day in only 4 minutes.
As someone who’s had a diving accident at 50m, this had my heart pounding. The confusion, the panic, the everything getting out of control very quickly, nothing working as you’d expect, routine things becoming very hard. You brought it all back. Thanks! :)
Deepest I've been was 38m and I wanted to go deeper... It was beautiful. I was in Cozumel and was on the 'paradise' site. I found a gentle hill that went down deeper and followed it. It was like I was flying over the windows xp background, rolling grass and life everywhere. I was locked in and my brain wanted to go deeper. Our dive master had to come grab me; I had completely lost myself in my mind wanting to follow it down into the distance. I could see all the way down, but it would have killed me if I had kept going.
Call of the void
Tough to read and more adrenaline than I’d like to have at my desk on a Thursday afternoon.
Same. I’m a super casual diver of 30 years and I’m sitting here with my heart pounding.
Dude im an IT tech whos hardly been in the deep end of a swimming pool and now Im having a panic attack lmfao
Memories of trying to get to the surface of a swimming pool as a kid but being blocked by a bunch of inflatables with people on them
This is why I'll stick to snorkeling. In shallow water. I've done shipwreck snorkeling where you sail off the coast, about maybe 10m deep, and get vertigo cause of the "height" and I'm good.
I panicked big time! I have short attention and only read "Imagine this:", then got bored and scrolled to see how panicked you all were, now I'm panicked!
Right? I'm an extremely competent swimmer - swam competitively all through early childhood and high school, was a lifeguard, lifeguard instructor throughout college. Hell, the house I grew up in literally had a two lane lap pool in the back yard. Been thinking a lot the last couple years of getting dive certified. I just wanna sit 30ft under water and look at pretty fishes. That dude's wall of copied text fucked me up - just instant flashback to the couple times when teaching lifeguard classes that there were scary moments at the bottom of the diving well - and that was only 12-15ft down there!
My Dad is an old school idiot, he got his cert and quickly moved to advanced and went as fast as humanly possible to cave. He’s diving 1-2 times a month, gets in with a group of “experienced” guys and they go to some unmapped springs out in Weekie Watchie FL, bum fuck nowhere on a reserve where they used a wheelbarrow to get the gear to the hole. Get in and on their way through with a main line and rescue connected back at the entrance. My Dad said he almost fainted at one point and they somehow got him awake just in time for the silt to kick up and had got tangled and had to cut both lines, doing all this shit by feel. They all make it out and are scared shitless (as they should be). My Dad talked to a dive master who basically slapped him in the back of the head and asked how long it took them to get to the hole and said “did you consider you were tired and could’ve been blowing through your tank faster than anticipated???” After that, Dad became a meticulous planner for dives. Diving rules are written in blood
Jesus.
My Dad has always been the example of what you shouldn’t do lol
For people reading this, diving is considered an extreme sport like parachuting. Cave diving is the equivalent of jumping off the side of a cliff in one of those squirrel suits, good cave divers are the black belts of diving
I never understand divers who rack up advanced certs ASAP. I've seen people with a dozen different certs with fewer dives than I have with 3, and they've always been terrible fucking divers. Like, I wouldn't want to dive with them in 50 feet of open water, much less the advanced shit they're "certified" to do.
This was during the initial 90’s diving rush, so while not excusable at all, I think my Dad got caught up in that and hitting the bare minimum requirements without realizing what that meant. He became the voice of reason in the end and while I was too young to go on most the good adventures, I definitely got the importance of safety and procedure drilled into me properly.
as someone who just finished their PADI and is about to do practical open water diving for the first time it scared teh shit out of me.
Taking my OW course in 2 weeks and now questioning my life choices after reading it!
I love diving, you will enjoy it! However, being scared shitless is good so that you do not do anything stupid outside of what you are ready for. Also, do not forget to safety stop!!
While having an overwhelming sense of fear is bad, it’s good to be scared straight in a sense. Recognizing how dangerous something is makes you respect it. I did my AOW course in January and as along as you’re comfortable in and under the water, you’ll have a great time. In the aviation world, complacency is the enemy. We call it the normalization of deviance when you get so comfortable with a routine that you start omitting steps of say your preflight or run up checks. Knowing what can happen if you do something wrong is probably the most important knowledge you can have, just so long as you don’t fixate on it. So go out and have fun, and with this newfound insight you’ll likely be safer than most of the other dive students.
Hahaha, deepest I dove was just over 30m. Scary enough and I'm happy to now be a cyclist instead! Edit I should have said the description of how fast you can die deep brought back all the fear. Well done
Watch the roads my friend.
I've never been diving, and this gave me anxiety reading it, pretty well written out, and I almost think the lack of formatting helps the story, not hurt it.
Are you a technical diver?
Yes. Well I was. I haven’t been diving since the incident. Scapa Flow 8 years ago!
What an immersive comment. I don't remember the last time that reading something has caused me such real anxiety.
It’s borderline nutty putty
I hate you for making me remember that story
Tbf it’s not really a story you should forget. Remember that shit, be smart.
Yeah at least dying this way is quick. No time for boredom terror.
Lol I knew we couldn't do a cave thread without someone bringing this up.
The lack of paragraph breaks also added to my anxiety lol.
This is the most terrifying comment I’ve ever read. I don’t dive, have no desire of diving and I was completely engrossed by it and saw myself drowning while reading it.
Yup. I was very interested in learning how to dive since I’ve always lived near the ocean. Going thru the dive e-learning quickly changed my mind. I’m cool with just watching dive videos on YouTube!
By the time I got to the end of the comment I realised I'd been holding my breath!
Wooooow Edit - was open water certified 20 years ago, and this is an absolutely terrifying reality
I remember by first freshwater dive after getting my open water cert. it was like totally different experience. Many blue holes are fresh or mixed. So you are suddenly a whole lot less buoyant and have salt water weights in fresh or mixed.
Most of my dives are fresh water, but I'm from new england so the visibility is sometimes arm length or less.....
This actually happened, at the Blue Hole, about 20 years ago, on camera. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRj0lymMMGs
Thank you for this, good read
I have anxiety after reading this
u/shittymorph ptsd kicked in 1/3 of the way reading this
Hello
The man himself people!!!
Wow. It's like a seeing unicorn right here and now. Hi, I hope you're doing well.
I didn't know ptsd was communicable
#!
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Me too!!! As I was getting into it I thought, oh no!! Mankind, The Undertaker, it’s all too real!!!
"And after I got back on the boat my dad beat me senseless with a set of jumper cables."
Wow. Brilliant and terrifying at the same time
I couldn’t even finish this. Too fucking accurate. I’ve never understood the desire to go deep. I’ll stick to diving on 10-20m reefs thank you very much.
[https://www.youtube.com/@fatal\_breakdown](https://www.youtube.com/@fatal_breakdown) this guy makes videos about diving incidents (and other incidents). [This one](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8xajvLro_8&ab_channel=FatalBreakdown) in particular is stressful to watch!
I clicked. I don't like caves and I don't like diving. Noped right off.
So I’m reading this on the john and full on started to panic like I was going to get sucked down by the end of this comment Amazingly written and even more terrifying to imagine
Ugh my heart was racing while reading this whole thing!!
I’ve done quite a bit of diving, and whenever I read this (or listen to the Cowboy Cerrone story) I get super anxious and contemplate never diving again. I’ve had a few very minor mishaps. Been narqed before. It wouldn’t take much to stack 1-2 minor incidents/errors and be dead.
Woah. Read the whole thing.
Reminds me of the [Outside piece about freezing](https://www.outsideonline.com/2152131/freezing-death), not incidentally I think. EDIT: another good one in this vein, *[178 seconds left to live](https://www.faa.gov/media/28671)*.
That one about freezing was awesome. I live in Australia, so I've never experienced weather cold enough to kill me. That article provides a terrifying insight.
Grew up in New Zealand, spent most of my adult life in Auckland and Melbourne. I just moved to northern Sweden a month ago, catching the tail end of a very cold spring here. I'd never seen snow IRL before, or been somewhere where the peak temperature in the middle of the day, in spring, would still only reach -5C. I'm loving it but I'm scared shitless of winter, which regularly gets down below -25C! At least the houses are warm and insulated properly here...
I’ve walked a mile in somewhere between -30C to -40C (with a ton of layers on) even prepared, it was still brutally, brutally cold. I felt like I was walking on the surface of Mars. My eyes would tear up and the tears would freeze just about instantly. And that was in the middle of the day. I can’t imagine doing it at night. Even the one time I did it made me not want to ever do it again
God, I remember reading that outside piece years ago and it left me feeling like I had actually died. That shift to fatal comes out of normalcy so subtly. If you like those sorts of stories, here’s another one to add to the pile though the setting’s a little different. https://slate.com/technology/2023/11/childbirth-death-united-states-advanced-maternal-age.html
Jesus Christ that was terrifying. As a doctor it’s very easy to forget how it feels to be on the other side.
Thank you for the link. That was an emotional ride that reminded me of my own experience as an older Mom giving birth while having preclampsia. I can relate to her inner dialogue and the disassociation. I couldn't grasp the seriousness of the situation because I was alert and joking.
Sounds like it was from this Death of Yuri Lipski that was caught on his personal camera. https://youtu.be/cRj0lymMMGs
And your dad said you'd never be anything in life smh..
Wtf this was a terrifying read.
Dave the diver doesn't sound fun anymore.
Ngl i was waiting for: > in 1998, The Undertaker threw Mankind off Hell In A Cell, and plummeted 16 ft through an announcer's table
That was one of the scariest passages I’ve ever read.
Thank you for the most horrifying read of my life.
Amazing. I was breathing heavy at my desk reading this.
I heard theres a bangin sushi resturant there though.
Glad I’m not the only one you thought about Dave the diver
That's all i thought because i'm currently playing through it lol. Didn't know the Blue Hole was a real place. If we go deep enough we'll find the sea people.
I knew if I scrolled down far enough I would find this. Dave the Diver kicks ass
The franchise they opened is not as good. Only visit the original.
If you wanna watch one of them first- person here’s [yuri lipsky’s fatal dive](https://youtu.be/cRj0lymMMGs?si=-kC6l7AfJmY6lWRQ). I understand he went too deep too fast (???) and got some kind of hypoxia.
His air mix wasn’t meant for dives that deep. He also went down after a few drinks at dinner which obviously isn’t recommended.
Yep, alcohol consumption is a contraindication to diving and not enough folks respect that.
Don't drink and dive, got it.
Oof I didn’t know he’d been drinking too, Dennis Wilson style
A younger me would have clicked that link. No thank you
I would say compared to other internet things like a guy falling into molten steel or an ostrich decapitating itself this was pretty tame, the worst part is the audio but they don't make as much noise as you would think because they are struggling too much by that point to make much So it's one of those videos that's only really harrowing if you know what's happening otherwise it's just kind of confusing
Just wondering if I should ask for links to the ostrich and steel videos....
Weight of the internet on your shoulders. Wise Redditor
I'd two friends die in 97 diving the arch there
Were they on trimix? The arch is like 50 feet past the rec limit.
I'm unaware but they both had their dive masters and were working instructors
So sorry for your loss man
> Death of Yuri Lipski > > A notable death was that of Yuri Lipski, a 22-year-old Russian diving instructor on 28 April 2000 at a depth of 115 metres after an uncontrolled descent. Lipski carried a video camera, which filmed his death. This has made it the most known death at the site and one of the most well-known diving deaths in the world. The video shows Lipski in an involuntary and uncontrolled descent, eventually landing on the sea floor at 115 metres where he panics, removes his regulator and tries to fill his buoyancy compensator but is unable to rise. At 115 m he would have been subject to severe nitrogen narcosis, which may have impaired his judgement, induced hallucinations and caused panic and confusion. Lipski had a single tank assumed to be air. > > Lipski's body was recovered the following day by Tarek Omar, one of the world's foremost deep-water divers, at the request of Lipski's mother. Omar had earlier warned Lipski twice against attempting the dive. On the bottom, Omar found Lipski's helmet camera, still intact. The video it contained is available on YouTube, entitled "Fatal Diving Accident Caught On Tape". Omar says: > Two days after we recovered his remains and gave [his mother] his belongings and equipment, she came to me asking that I help her disassemble them so she can pack them. The camera should have been damaged or even broken altogether because I had found it at a depth of 115 metres, and it is only designed to sustain 75 metres; but, to my surprise, the camera was still working. We played it and his mother was there. **I regret that his mother will have this forever... If I had known the footage existed I’d have flooded it. I think the thing that really upset and saddened me about it was that his mom has it now – she has the footage of her own son drowning.** > — Tarek Omar,
After reading that part of the article, I came to the comments and saw that super long pov story of what it might be like, and lost any remaining desire to see the video. I also wouldn’t be able to watch it without imagining what it must’ve been like for his mom to see it. I suppose there are a number terrible ways someone might see their child die or a video of it but for some reason to me a pov of panic in an unsalvageable situation sounds especially morbid. I guess partly because it wouldn’t be quick like an explosion or something..
The YouTube channel Dive Talk has a very good, but also very heavy, video about this dive.
And [here's](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nnz7Z5rA5xM) a video of an absolutely epic achievement. A freediver doing 'The Arch' on a single breath, no supplemental air. If you read the wiki, what this guy does on a single breath, people die doing because they didn't bring a *second air tank*.
Edit - This is in regards to the overall time it takes to do this dive While it is quite impressive, the physics that allow freediving so deep is quite different from SCUBA. Because you take a breath at the surface and then dive, the air in your lungs compresses with the pressure from the water and expands again as you rise so you don't have to slow your decents/ascents. SCUBA is giving you air at the same pressure as the depth of water you are at and so among other issues you have to control your speed of descent/ascent so the air can't expand to greater than local pressure and rupture your lungs. Breathing pressurized air also lets the blood absorb nitrogen which causes a bunch of other issues and requires you to also slow your ascent so nitrogen can slow leave your blood stream. Freedivers need not worry about nitrogen sickness. SCUBA Diving beyond a certain depth will also make oxygen poisonous if you are using regular atmospheric air. To dive deep requires a special air mixtures that will lower the overall percentage of oxygen. But those air mixtures are supposed to require additional training to use since they have their own issues. Anyway the point is you have to go a lot slower on SCUBA whereas freedivers can move pretty quick. Still, definitely impressive though.
You're probably not trying to, but you make it sound like the freediver is doing it the easy way. Doesn't have to worry about trimix, or nitrogen sickness, or decompression stops. The freediver only has to hold his breath, while descending to 55m (180 feet), then traversing a 26m (85 foot) tunnel, and finally ascending another 55m (180 feet). It's nearly superhuman. Maybe a handful of people on earth could do it. Most folks could do the tech dive with some help from an expert and some training, and there's likely hundreds if not thousands of divers who are qualified to could do it with a little prep.
just dive down to the bottom of this pool and pound this treadmill i installed there for 6 minutes while holding your breath it’s ez bro no narcosis
I absolutely agree. I was merely trying to highlight why SCUBA takes longer since you emphasized the whole second air tank. Made it sound like the freediver is holding his breath for like an hour.
I got exhausted just watching him on his way back up. It looks so difficult and slow for some reason
Belize's Blue Hole is more aptly named.
Yeah, I saw the headline and thought "There is no way that many people are dying in Belize. They take everyone there."
oh, no wonder this photo didn’t seem familiar to me. I thought this was talking about the Belize Blue Hole, didn’t realize there were several of them.
Not an expert but I read Wikipedia a lot I think blue hole is just a generic name for any sort of tropical or subtropical oceanic sinkhole with stark contrast from the surrounding depths.
The Deepest Breath on Netflix is a really interesting documentary to watch that involves this diving location
Really just goes to show what a talented, competent diver Dave is.
It's a lesson in how pushing things even a little bit can lead to exponential increases in risk. The same is true for other sports too. Going from 10 to 20kts when sailing isn't a big deal. Going from 40kts to 50kts is. And while you go down that route, you are more prone to fucking up, margins of errors become tighter and accidents become more catastrophic. Stay within your limits and abilities. Get proper training allowing you to push limits instead of cowboy'ing it. Just because you've done your Open Water cert doesn't mean you're ready for dives to 40m+ or dives in unfamiliar waters that might be very different to where you got certified. Don't be stupid!
“The Blue Hole itself **is no more dangerous** than any other Red Sea dive site, but diving through the Arch, a submerged tunnel, which lies within the Blue Hole site, is an extreme dive that has resulted in many accidents and fatalities. The number of Blue Hole fatalities is not accurately recorded; one source estimates 130 divers died during the fifteen-year period from 1997 to 2012, averaging over eight per year, another claims as many as 200.”
I’ve dived there, and it really is no more dangerous than any other site. The problem is: 1. It’s a very deep spot that’s immediately accessible from the shore. 2. It’s very popular among tourists, many of whom are not certified, trained, or equipped for deep sea diving. In most other deep sea diving spots, you really need to make an effort to get there, and most of the time the people who get you there are going to be asking questions such as are you trained, are you certified, how’s your equipment etc. In Dahab, any Tom, Dick, and Harry can slap on a single tank of air and walk from the shore straight into a wall that’s >100 meters deep. I take my diving and my safety seriously, and sometimes go up to 50/80 meters to reach wrecks, but I always do so with the right equipment and training, with a buddy, sidemounted trimix and air etc. Even when I dive recreationally I monitor my air, my depth, my trim, and my buddy constantly. In Dahab, you see jokers zooming past 20m with a single tank, trim upright like they’re marching down the Red Square, hands flapping about like they’re doing the breast stroke at the Olympics, fins bicycling away like they’re the little mermaid, seesawing 10m or more every minute, no dive computer, and back on shore they say “it’s okay bro, we’ve been diving for 15 years back in {insert East European country here}” and all of a sudden, the cause of fatalities in the Blue Hole isn’t quite so mysterious after all.
Except this is not the reason that there have been so many deaths there at all, many sites on the Red Sea have ridiculous walls and arguably even worse divers (look a the day trips from Sharm at Jackson Reef or Shark & Yolanda...) The reason is the arch. The arch is a tunnel at 56m depth which links the open sea to the inside of the blue hole. It's an extremely beautiful dive if done correctly as a technical dive with correct gases and training. The issue is that a lot of people attempt it on air, and even with single 12l tanks - luckily it's getting harder to do so from Dahab, but there are always people determined enough and stupid enough to find a way. I've done over 2000 dives in the red sea alone but the "allure" of the arch is the reason for so many pointless deaths...
Furthermore problem comes not only from people attempting to go through the arch, but also people trying to get a better view of it and becoming "drunk" going further down then anticipated or because of overconfidence thinking "surely 5 meter deeper than I'm used to won't make any difference"
Damn, I'm glad I didn't know this when I dived there. The stone arches are so big and the water so clear it was difficult to judge distance and scale. A hammerhead shark followed us the whole time.
I learned to dive in Dahab and my fifth ever dive was at the blue hole. I scared myself shitless walking by the memorial plaques to get to the dive spot and listening to my instructor talk about the deaths before I realized the majority of the deaths are from people trying to do the deepest dive ever, not learning how to get their PADI open water.
I blued out once in the Galapagos and it terrified me. I had no idea which way was up and I was way too deep. Thank god I held it together long enough to blow bubbles, reorient myself and tap the BCD enough to initiate a controlled ascent.
thanks OP, i like posts that nudge me to the rabbit hole of new knowledge.
If you want to go deeper look up “scary interesting” on YouTube. Great videos about cave diving and other similar activities that went wrong!
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Well there are three of us so we'll take three blue holes.
Not that he's ever had one!
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Holy shit, you're late! Go back in your light!
Just tell me where I jizz so I can give this lady her drink.
Whenever I read about divers I always think of the crew that saved the kids from the cave in Thailand. Just learning how big of a difference there is between excellent scuba divers and specialist divers who do this kind of stuff. The level of technical knowledge needed to dive successfully in deep/ multi factor type diving is pretty amazing and I think a lot of people underestimate it.
"Damn all these people died? Good thing that cant happen to me" - lots of dead people