Breaking...Emerald Loses Divers off Jupiter 6/21

[scubadada]

I'll be on the Sirena boat tomorrow morning and Sunday morning.

Hi @Nikole

The seas have been around 2 feet all week and this will continue over the weekend National Weather Service Marine Forecast
You will do fine. The Palm Beach inlet is very forgiving.

Enjoy your dives and AOW,

Craig

 

[Johnoly]

I'll be on the Sirena boat tomorrow morning and Sunday morning.

Today was Glass flat topside, but underwater had a swift 2knot current. On my 3rd tank at 2pm, the upwhelling was really kicking in and it dropped the temps to 64 degrees in 85 ft deep {brings some hoods!} Really bad "gasoline effect" thru the thermocline. Viz is almost top to bottom, but the cold upwhelling make the bottom very hazy at 40ft. Still lots of fish and even a hand ful of lemons trying to stay warm. Have fun this weekend!!

 

[CaptRam]

How is it possible to lose 6 divers at once, someone was sleeping?

 

[CaptRam]

Good post thanks

 

[HalcyonDaze]

What I'd be curious to know is how common this sort of thing is in the area - after all, there is the jocular "sixpack/game bag" rule (if you have to get picked up by another boat, you either owe them a six-pack of beer or whatever fish/lobsters you have on you). Full-blown SAR efforts for entire groups of divers such as these are rare (and do warrant serious questioning of what went wrong), but between social media and personal experience I've seen plenty of instances of divers in that area having to be picked up or bird-dogged by another boat because the vessel they splashed from had lost track of them. I didn't invest in a DSMB, reel (eventually including a good Manta reel), and Nautilus unit just for the bling factor.

Given that the two incidents in question involved 6-7 divers on a boat that has a capacity of 14 plus a DM or two, and in the first instance it was apparently the DM's group that they lost track of, that's not losing track of a few stragglers. Either the boat was only half full and they lost track of the entire group, or the group split and Emerald picked up the remaining ones.

 

[Rred]

Deja vu all over again?
"Alpha flag is required in Federal waters if maneuverability is restricted by diving activities."
In the 80's an experienced diver, IIRC an instructor, was seriously injured when the dive boat ran over him with their prop. Part of the resulting debate was whether it could ever be considered safe to operate the engine while divers were in the water, period. This was in NY, where the norm was for a dive boat to anchor--even when that meant anchor in a wreck 100+ feet down. It was seriously under consideration that the engine key should go down with a diver, leaving only a spare "in case of emergency break glass" key on board, to guarantee there could be no accidents.
Florida? I heard a USCGAux member discussing lost divers, and he said there are SAR missions being run literally every day in Florida, for lost divers and boaters. Maybe it is time for the various associations (boat owners, tourist orgs, chambers of commerce, etc.) to consider doing what others have done for years in other places: Put out a mooring buoy. A big heavy mooring buoy. And that way, at least the dive boat will be in a predictable location when the divers go looking for it.
Lookouts and SMBs and all the rest, just isn't working. Time to look for other solutions.

 

[drrich2]

Jupiter has drift diving; a mooring buoy won't solve the problem. Even if divers surfacing at dive's end somehow knew where the boat is, they couldn't fin back to it.

Richard.

 

[CaptRam]

The current is swift on the south east coast of Florida. .sometimes 2 plus knots and what happens is folks get separated because there stopping for lobsters or a pictures. .I ran a commercial dive boat in these waters for 10 years and while once in a while you temporarily lose someone if your good your able to find them most of the time..you get a feel for where thay are and start a search pattern. If that fails likely another boat will pick them up and deliver them to you..I've never once had to call the USCG for help locating anyone..

 

[luscioman]

I have been told that Emerald now has a float in the water at all times with the DM. It should help alleviate this issue in the future as long as divers stay with the group DM.

 

[100days-a-year]

Good to hear albeit sad it took these FUBARs to get that much.
Hope it works for them.