Accident & Incident Discussion - Northernone - aka Cameron Donaldson

[Protondecay123]

I'm sure someone will correct me if I am mistaken, but I understood that he was diving near the north end of the Cozumel wall system, near Barracuda Reef. If that is true he was nowhere near the Marine Park.

@KathyV first posted this English translation “
From the point of view of César Zepeda, breaking the security rule of not diving from the beach was the first mistake made by the photographer who in his dives captured countless marine organisms from the reefs of Cozumel.

The recreational diving in the "walls" of the island must be supported by a boat, it is a basic safety rule that broke many times and it was recommended not to do it and leave from the shore to the cliff.

In his experience, if the diver were floating by the currents , at this moment he would already be in the Yucatan Channel; in the event that he could have risen to the surface.However, the president of the National Association of Operators of Aquatic and Tourist Activities (Anoaat), opined that what could happen is that he suffered some incident while under the surface as an oxygen toxicity or an anesthetic for exceeding the time of diving .

Germán Yánez Mendoza, diver and spelunker of the island, said he knew the Canadian and knew of his diving skills, not only in the sea, but in caves on the island. He is a highly trained diver, very experienced and in excellent physical condition who used to use two tanks.d“ From this article. Poca posibilidad de encontrar a buzo extraviado

 

[Mr. Manfrenjensenden]

Thank you for posting this. I had been thinking this for several days.

Just because someone did this type of dive many times before and got away without any issues, doesn’t mean it was okey dokey. Said diver just got lucky. Until the day he was unlucky.

Participation in this sport involves the assumption of risk, full stop. it's not a question of "this was risky" or "this wasn't risky," it's a question of degree. Choices that you make while planning or participating in a dive increase or decrease the level of risk you're exposed to. The amount of training you have alters the level of risk you take on for a specific dive versus other people who are in all ways equal to you except your level of training. Your level of health, known or unknown to you at the time, changes the amount of risk you assume. And so on.

At a certain point, there's an element of randomness in the outcome, and I think that's what you're alluding to, Marie. A dive can be fine any number of times before it isn't, but that can also be said about anything in life. A diver's risk tolerance, both for known unknowns and unknown unknowns has a direct relationship to how impactful the randomness will be. A high level of risk tolerance means that if things go bad for reasons out of your control, you may have less of a chance of taking back control of the ultimate outcome. In many ways that we might hypothesize what happened here, it's possible that Cameron's choices may have meant that a bad dose of randomness led to catastrophic results. For instance, he had no buddy, so he had no one to help him if he got in trouble. He either believed he could sufficiently mitigate those risks, or his personal risk appetite was high enough to accept them. From the descriptions on this site, it sounds like it was more the former than the latter.

I choose to participate in this sport so I assume some level of risk. I prefer to put myself in positions where I need a whole ton of bad randomness for something to go pear shaped. This means there are a lot of dives or types of diving I'll never do, and that's ok with me. I always want my ability to mitigate risks to far outpace my willingness to take them on.

As far as what we can learn from what happened in this specific event that can keep all of us safer, I don't know that there's much, because we simply don't know what happened, and as Ray keeps pointing out, we're all just speculating. But what I can say that I've taken away is that I will buy more safety gear like a PLB, I will get more training, and I will be even more vigilant about understanding what kind of risks I'm assuming on any given dive. What has happened makes me want to give a bad dose of randomness even less of a chance of causing a serious negative outcome for me.

 

[Marie13]

@Mr. Manfrenjensenden

There’s normal risk, and then there’s added risk. You don’t think solo deco diving is an added risk? Add in current and that ups the ante even more.

 

[Protondecay123]

Participation in this sport involves the assumption of risk, full stop. it's not a question of "this was risky" or "this wasn't risky," it's a question of degree. Choices that you make while planning or participating in a dive increase or decrease the level of risk you're exposed to. The amount of training you have alters the level of risk you take on for a specific dive versus other people who are in all ways equal to you except your level of training. Your level of health, known or unknown to you at the time, changes the amount of risk you assume. And so on.

At a certain point, there's an element of randomness in the outcome, and I think that's what you're alluding to, Marie. A dive can be fine any number of times before it isn't, but that can also be said about anything in life. A diver's risk tolerance, both for known unknowns and unknown unknowns has a direct relationship to how impactful the randomness will be. A high level of risk tolerance means that if things go bad for reasons out of your control, you may have less of a chance of taking back control of the ultimate outcome. In many ways that we might hypothesize what happened here, it's possible that Cameron's choices may have meant that a bad dose of randomness led to catastrophic results. For instance, he had no buddy, so he had no one to help him if he got in trouble. He either believed he could sufficiently mitigate those risks, or his personal risk appetite was high enough to accept them. From the descriptions on this site, it sounds like it was more the former than the latter.

I choose to participate in this sport so I assume some level of risk. I prefer to put myself in positions where I need a whole ton of bad randomness for something to go pear shaped. This means there are a lot of dives or types of diving I'll never do, and that's ok with me. I always want my ability to mitigate risks to far outpace my willingness to take them on.

As far as what we can learn from what happened in this specific event that can keep all of us safer, I don't know that there's much, because we simply don't know what happened, and as Ray keeps pointing out, we're all just speculating. But what I can say that I've taken away is that I will buy more safety gear like a PLB, I will get more training, and I will be even more vigilant about understanding what kind of risks I'm assuming on any given dive. What has happened makes me want to give a bad dose of randomness even less of a chance of causing a serious negative outcome for me.

Well put. And degree of risk crosses certain boundaries. 1. Diving by a method that is banned as pointed out in the Coz article above. Shore diving was banned according to the interviewee specifically because of a lack of additional support needed to be safe in those currents. 2. Going deeper increases risk of decompression obligation and nitrogen narcosis 3. Going solo increases your risk environment because ... solo... no help. Time and time again in A&I we see multiple failures of safety doctrines and this isn’t significantly different. But maybe there’s a giant man eating Kraken squid in those depths waiting.... maybe...

 

[Mr. Manfrenjensenden]

@Mr. Manfrenjensenden

There’s normal risk, and then there’s added risk. You don’t think solo deco diving is an added risk? Add in current and that ups the ante even more.

I don't think you can argue it the other way, but you do have to consider the potential offset of having additional training, etc. It's not for me to say what the net result was in Cameron's case -- people with far more experience than I have been arguing it both ways for the past week.

But I do know that anybody -- no matter how good or experienced a diver -- doing those things increases nonlinearity and thus changes the skew of the distribution of potential outcomes, which what I meant when I said that if something goes bad out of your control it makes it harder to regain control. A number of years ago Nassim Taleb wrote a great (though sometimes obnoxious in tone) book called "Antifragile," where he argues there are ways of doing things where shocks can be absorbed and may even be beneficial ("antifragile" systems) and then there are other ways where shocks can't be absorbed and can be catastrophic to the system ("fragile" systems). Going solo, incurring deco, adding in high current -- these all introduce fragility and increase the odds that if a shock happens (e.g. a scooter failure) things go bad in a way that's more difficult to overcome.

 

[BRT]

What else can you learn? We have no idea what happened. Easy to blame diving from shore but certainly diving from a boat isn't foolproof. Easy to say don't go deep, but I've been out on Coz when a lady was lost and never found who wasn't diving deep. You can say always carry a PLB, but we have no idea if he ever came up. Solo diving? As if people didn't die diving together. It is not "play with fire, get burned". It is "play with fire and you may get burned".

 

[tursiops]

Participation in this sport involves the assumption of risk, full stop. it's not a question of "this was risky" or "this wasn't risky," it's a question of degree. Choices that you make while planning or participating in a dive increase or decrease the level of risk you're exposed to. The amount of training you have alters the level of risk you take on for a specific dive versus other people who are in all ways equal to you except your level of training. Your level of health, known or unknown to you at the time, changes the amount of risk you assume. And so on.

At a certain point, there's an element of randomness in the outcome, and I think that's what you're alluding to, Marie. A dive can be fine any number of times before it isn't, but that can also be said about anything in life. A diver's risk tolerance, both for known unknowns and unknown unknowns has a direct relationship to how impactful the randomness will be. A high level of risk tolerance means that if things go bad for reasons out of your control, you may have less of a chance of taking back control of the ultimate outcome. In many ways that we might hypothesize what happened here, it's possible that Cameron's choices may have meant that a bad dose of randomness led to catastrophic results. For instance, he had no buddy, so he had no one to help him if he got in trouble. He either believed he could sufficiently mitigate those risks, or his personal risk appetite was high enough to accept them. From the descriptions on this site, it sounds like it was more the former than the latter.

I choose to participate in this sport so I assume some level of risk. I prefer to put myself in positions where I need a whole ton of bad randomness for something to go pear shaped. This means there are a lot of dives or types of diving I'll never do, and that's ok with me. I always want my ability to mitigate risks to far outpace my willingness to take them on.

As far as what we can learn from what happened in this specific event that can keep all of us safer, I don't know that there's much, because we simply don't know what happened, and as Ray keeps pointing out, we're all just speculating. But what I can say that I've taken away is that I will buy more safety gear like a PLB, I will get more training, and I will be even more vigilant about understanding what kind of risks I'm assuming on any given dive. What has happened makes me want to give a bad dose of randomness even less of a chance of causing a serious negative outcome for me.

The point is......if having done a risky dive successfully makes you think that was OK, and you do it again because now you think it must be a bit less risky than you thought....THAT is normalization of deviance. Having done some risky dive "hundreds of times" makes it seem like it is not as risky as you thought it was. But the dive hasn't changed, only your perception of the risk. It is Russian Roulette...and each time you spin and just go click you are NOT entitled to think, "Hey, that's not so bad! Let's do it again!"

 

[ggunn]

Out from Puerto Abrigo which is by Villa Aldora. The shore is a long ways off from Barracuda.

And as I said, he was a long way from the Marine Park. I meant Barracuda as a shore reference; he was a lot closer to Barracuda than he was to Palancar.

 

[chillyinCanada]

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[Protondecay123]

I don't think you can argue it the other way, but you do have to consider the potential offset of having additional training, etc. It's not for me to say what the net result was in Cameron's case -- people with far more experience than I have been arguing it both ways for the past week.

But I do know that anybody -- no matter how good or experienced a diver -- doing those things increases nonlinearity and thus changes the skew of the distribution of potential outcomes, which what I meant when I said that if something goes bad out of your control it makes it harder to regain control. A number of years ago Nassim Taleb wrote a great (though sometimes obnoxious in tone) book called "Antifragile," where he argues there are ways of doing things where shocks can be absorbed and may even be beneficial ("antifragile" systems) and then there are other ways where shocks can't be absorbed and can be catastrophic to the system ("fragile" systems). Going solo, incurring deco, adding in high current -- these all introduce fragility and increase the odds that if a shock happens (e.g. a scooter failure) things go bad in a way that's more difficult to overcome.

Love the fragile dichotomy presented! One good question is are the risk factors additive, multiplicative, exponential, non-linear or a complex algorithm of the former? It looks like 5 factors are important in this case. 1 Diving in a prohibited manner ( as pointed out in the article) 2. Possible Equipment Failure ( scooter flood/wreck/not working in extreme environment) 3. Solo 4. Incurring Deco 5. Ripping Current ( reported at 6 knots by other divers in Coz that day. It seem that a nonlinear model is more likely closer to reality. The scoot would have trouble with 3 knots or more. At 6 knots it may have turned from an asset into a liability. But regardless the mortal risk boundary appears to have been crossed.