Heart attack killed rebreather diver, coroner says July 12, 2006
Posted by Andy Carroll in : Accidents, Rebreathers , trackbackDivester reported back in August 2005 that Gerry Tychansky, who had been scuba diving whilst assisting the making of a low budget horror movie, Marina Monster, died during the shoot. The result of the investigation into how Gerry died has been published by the coroner, who has concluded it was a heart attack.
Terry was diving with a rebreather, and it seems that many fatalities associated with rebreathers conclude with a heart attack verdict, but this does not seem to mirror fatality verdicts whilst scuba diving, which are usually confirmed as death by drowning. Gerry was only 43 years old. This from the Hamilton Spectator;
But even though Tychansky did not die as a result of malfunctioning equipment, the coroner’s office will recommend all divers, regardless of their experience, double check their equipment and make sure it’s working properly.“There was evidence his equipment was not maintained in the best order it could have been, but at the end of the day it ends up being a natural death.”
Tychansky and his wife, Darlene, were working on a $500,000-horror flick called Marina Monster, directed and produced by Hamilton filmmaker Christine Whitlock.
“Clearly there were some areas of safety that could have been optimized here,” the coroner said.
The experienced cave diver was using a rebreather, a highly technical kind of diving tank that recycles a diver’s exhalations to extract unused oxygen. A rebreather does not emit a stream of breath bubbles like regular scuba tanks, which is an advantage in filmmaking.
It is intriguing when the coroner says that the equipment was not maintained as it should have been. Does this mean the scrubber wasn’t changed and co2 was an attributing factor? Guess we will never really know.
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