I haven't wanted to write this...
Sadly, I heard from one of the other divers on that boat that day, confirming that the diver was lost during the first morning dive on Sunday. But as you might expect, she couldn't provide definitive answers about what happened, or the closure the family understandably wants. My wife and I were diving from the same boat for the previous six days and overlapped with the missing man for a couple of them, including the two morning dives on the day before he was lost. Of the two divemasters on the boat the day of the accident, we had one for 14 of our 17 dives and the other for 11. They both seemed very competent. I would not hesitate to dive with them again.
THE DIVING
That week there were typically 8-12 divers per 42/46 ft Newton dive boat. Boats leave the dock about 8.30 am for two dives, returning around 12.30 pm. The first dive is typically just after 9 am. Weather for the week was mostly sunny. The water was slightly choppy on the south side of the island where the resort is, but the sea was calm on the north side where the wall is located and where the dives took place. There was a slight current on two of our dives, practically none for the remaining 15. A couple of times, we changed dive sites because there was a bit of a current at the first location.
The boats are equipped with oxygen, AEDs, and backboards. The dive staff is trained in their use. There were two divemasters on every trip, one getting wet while the other stayed on the boat. Pre-dive briefings were extremely thorough, with 3D diagrams drawn in multiple colors on largish whiteboards. Computer diving is mandatory. (The resort provides free use of Suunto Gekkos for divers who do not have a working computer; they are apparently set moderately conservatively and divers are instructed to not get within 10 minutes of a no-decompression limit.) The Buddy System is mandatory, and is emphasized when you sign the waivers, at the twenty-minute in-boat orientation briefing before your first dive of the trip, and as the last topic before every dive. The divemasters typically asked the question twice before clearing you to go into the water. "Does everybody have a buddy?", followed by, "Does anybody NOT have a buddy?". Single divers can buddy with the divemaster, who enters the water last and exits it first.
All dives are from a moored boat; there is no drift diving. The first morning dive typically starts just off the wall and ends up in the shallows under the boat. While divers are welcome to follow the divemaster, they are not required to. Maximum depth 110 ft, maximum time 50 minutes, subject to the limits set by your computer. Decompression diving is not allowed.
THE DIVER
The missing diver was male, 50+, moderately overweight (so am I, for that matter). No reliable info on health or fitness, but apparently he was talking that morning about having had spinal fusion surgery, intestines removed, shoulder surgery, etc. I heard him say he had 100+ logged dives on Little Cayman, and had known one of the two divemasters for almost ten years. Pleasant enough guy. His poor wife was also at the resort, although she was not a diver. (Our thoughts go out to her.) He did not have a regular buddy on the boat. I don't recall anything unusually retro or high-tech about his gear. He was one of the three people I saw that week that did not wear a wetsuit or a skin; water temperature was a consistent 80F. On the dives we had in common, he used Nitrox 32, as did I. I did not go deeper than a PO2 of 1.3, and did not see him deeper than me in the deep part of the dives. He did seem to be more negatively buoyant than I prefer to be, but so were maybe a third of the divers on the boat. He also seemed to be swimming apart from whoever his assigned buddy was on at least one previous dive, cutting in ahead of me as I was following my wife into a swim-through, but the situation was not dangerous -- a lot of us were just burning off air under the boat. In other words, in my very brief exposure to him, he didn't exhibit the sort of buoyancy control or diving skills you sit back and admire, but neither did he exhibit a level of incompetence that sets off warning bells, or makes you want to mention to the divemaster.
THE DIVE
I was flying out of Little Cayman as this happened, and am only relaying the account of someone else who was on the dive. She says that his absence was noticed when he failed to surface at the end of the 50 minute dive. His assigned buddy apparently said that a few minutes into the dive, at around 40 feet, the missing diver indicated he was having trouble with his ears and was going back to the boat. However someone else thought they may have seem him hovering at 80-90 feet later in the dive. No idea if this observer was below him or providing a guesstimate from above. At this point all the boats in the area, and some planes, started a surface search. Lots of divemasters, joined by several guests with rescue certifications, conducted an underwater search. Others searched the beaches of the small (10x1 mile) island in case he had swum to shore. The other divers on the missing man's boat were eventually transferred to another boat which dropped them off nearby, and they were taken back to the resort in vans. When all the dive boats finally returned to the pier at dusk, the diver's wife walked out to his boat. The female divemaster she and her husband had known for years embraced for a long time before walking away together.
THE LESSONS
We don't seem to know what happened, so it is hard to draw any definitive conclusions. Whether it was a heart attack, equipment failure, CNS toxicity from going too deep, or something else, one can only speculate. If the diver was negatively buoyant and on the wall, it is unrealistic to expect an underwater search to be successful. Personally, from what I saw, I would be quite comfortable diving with the resort/dive operation again. For me, the only lessons I can draw are to remind myself to know my buddy, to dive conservatively, and to get in physical shape before a dive trip.
L, and W's family will be in our thoughts and prayers.
