Hey '75..

I hafta admit, I know very little about the situation and didn't even know diving was involved.. We've been super busy the last few days and I had only heard about the trapped kids..

So, in just briefly looking at a story, I see where UK divers reached them, which means they, I'm sure, tied a string line to mark the path, but from what I understand, its a very difficult dive due to small openings and, at times, zero visibility.. Not good for experienced cave divers, really bad for completely inexperienced kids.. I read they're working on expanding the openings, but at the same time, oxygen levels are running low.. Now, they say oxygen is at 15%, so I'm assuming they're going by regular air containing 21% oxygen and the oxygen levels in the mix are dropping.. So, priority 1 is upping the oxygen levels..

So, from what I understand, the the Thai Seal Diver died because he ran out of air while trying to transfer tanks of oxygen to them.. This tells me he either made a mistake calculating how much air he had left (not sure if he changed tanks to tried to go both ways on one tank) in his tank, or somehow got lost for a spell (shouldn't have happened if they ran a string through the path) or if he had equipment failure.. On one of our last cave dives, I was 100 feet deep in The Pit in Mexico, and my psi computer gauge (which tells me the amount of air left in the tank) kept jumping from around 1700psi to 800psi to 400psi back to 1700psi etc.. freaked me plum out.. Even at 400psi I had enough to get out, but at that point I have no idea how much air I actually had.. It will be interesting to see what his autopsy reveals..

As it stands, dive-wise, I don't know the depth they have to go to, or the distance and amount of time underwater, so tough to make a determination there.. Teaching the kids to breathe on a full face mask regulator system sounds cool and they'll make a great movie out of it, but they're taking a risk with kids who have never dove.. If they don't know how to swim is not a huge deal as someone who be guiding them and they'd stick to the string path, but pretty risky maneuver.. however, it may be their only hope..

As it stands, I'd keep trying to get oxygen to them because that's the number one threat right now, but I also hear it may start raining again, so they're in a bit of a pickle.. I'd probably keep getting them oxygen and go ahead and deliver masks and dive gear to get them out and start teaching them, just in case - that way you have an "all else fails" backup plan.. Other than that I need to get specifics on the length and depth of the dive.. If I read anything else, I'll chime in...

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