Accident & Incident Discussion - Northernone - aka Cameron Donaldson

[lionfish-eater]

I can clear up a few things
Cam made a simple harness for the scooter.
He used a piece of string tied to two of the shroud supports with a bolt snap in the middle.
He clipped the snap to his waist band on his sidemount harness.
Not a D ring, but to the bottom edge of his waistband.
The snap didn't go through anything, just clipped onto the bottom edge of the waist strap.
Very easy to disconnect with a simple tug without even retracting the bolt snap.

We toured the fill station earlier this year.
Very low to zero chance the tanks had anything but air.
This station mainly fills with air and uses a nitrox stick to blend.
The tanks have different markings and they are filled in completely seperate runs.
There were Oxygen and CO sensors with alarms at various points in the system.
Obviously none of this should be a substitute for checking each and every tank, but it was enough to feel comfortable about the fill.

I think the crack in the wall is in front of the coral princess hotel, but I will check tomorrow to be sure.

The scooter was a used scooter that was new to Cam.
He put the 6 to 8 hours on it.
The scooter went to 150' the day before when Bonnie went with Cam.
He purchased three used scooters a few weeks ago.
He would have no problem letting it go if he needed to.

Cam had two tanks with seperate regs that were in good working condition. The regs were clipped on in the same way he always did so he could rely on muscle memory.

He used a sidemount harness with an orally inflated BC.
He used a Shearwater computer, but I don't know which model.
He was wearing two 3 mil suits. A henderson goldcore and the camo colored Kryptek that he purchased a few months ago. He was wearing a beanie cap.

With regards to being spotted from a plane, I was on two of the flights and can say that if he was out there he would have been found. The visibility was way better than I expected. We could see turtles on the surface. We could see for miles in both directions. We spotted a few items and circled until we were confident it was not important. We saw a red boat bouy that was about 16 inches round from 1000' feet up. We dropped to a low of 500' to circle and check out stuff. I feel more comfortable knowing that if a diver were floating in the channel they would most likely be seen from a plane. Especially a plane equiped with proper tools. Anything that was mixed with the sargasm was visible. Any trash that was caught in the seaweed was visible. I would surround myself with sargasm because the contrast was most noticable.

 

[gcbryan]

In this case it seems the bottom as about 150 fsw, right? So even if the scooter took him to 150 fsw before he could ditch it...so what?

This doesn't seem like a plausible (or likely) factor. If a scooter imploding and killing a diver is even possible it doesn't seem possible to prevent and still use a scooter.

Medical issue partially induced by pressure or accidental inhaling of water for whatever freak accidental reason seems more plausible since he hasn't been observed on the surface. This scenario would apply to most such incidents I would think.

 

[johndiver999]

No power inflator on a deep dive with down currents? I would think that being able to add a lot of lift in a hurry would be a distinct advantage in that type of situation. What kind of lift capacity did his side mount BC have? Is that common configuration with side mount?

 

[scubadada]

Hi @lionfish-eater

Thanks for the information regarding the meeting area at the crack in the wall. Await your confirmation that it is out from the Coral Princess

Do you happen to also know the location of the reef damage identified by the search divers?

 

[pepperbelly]

If it imploded or the battery exploded his mother should have heard it.

 

[Akimbo]

If it imploded or the battery exploded his mother should have heard it.

Maybe not when diving along a wall. Again, an implosion is an extremely remote possibility in this case. In my judgement and having communicated a lot with Cameron, I believe the probability is much higher that he made it to the surface and was lost at sea. Medical issues would probably be second, animal attack third, and an unrecoverable equipment failure fourth.

Of course that is based on so little hard information that it has little to no value. He might have been attacked by aliens or enemy frogmen -- if I were a Hollywood screenwriter.

 

[abnfrog]

no power inflator at 150 feet , that seems strange ...I have orally inflated bc at 150 , its no fun in an emergency it would really suck , if you had a med emergency or scooter implosion I drought you could do it fast you'd have real problems . day after day deco dives takes a toll, I asked "Brown "a dive master at bikini atoll (he did daily deco most times 2 a day) he described a lot of weird things medically he was going threw ,

 

[scubadada]

As was mentioned earlier by @ReefHound, it would be useful to analyze mom's cylinders from that day. Though low likelihood, it is one of the few concrete things that could be done at this point and would answer the questions about air vs. nitrox and CO. I am assuming their tanks were filled at the same time and place.

 

[Timmy V]

no power inflator at 150 feet , that seems strange ...I have orally inflated bc at 150 , its no fun in an emergency it would really suck , if you had a med emergency or scooter implosion I drought you could do it fast you'd have real problems . day after day deco dives takes a toll, I asked "Brown "a dive master at bikini atoll (he did daily deco most times 2 a day) he described a lot of weird things medically he was going threw ,

I've gotten light headed many years ago inflating a balloon. Not sure I'd want to be manually inflating in an emergency situation at any depth.

 

[Stoo]

I didn't know Cam well, and our most recent conversation had to do with the fact that I introduced him to the guy who ran the boat that sunk out from under him last summer. (In fairness, I did warn him that it was something of a POS!)

Reading through all of this, and knowing what I do of Cam's abilities, it really seems that some health issue is most probable, or a gas issue... either contaminated or an incorrect mix or something. I don't use a scooter very often, but really, any competent diver should be able to get detached from one, if that was required.

As an aside, one of my friends was scootering on a steel wreck up here, failed to navigate an overhead beam properly and clocked herself in the forehead hard enough that it rattled her. She speculated that had she not been wearing a 9mm hood, it would have been a much harder hit and could have even knocked her out potentially.

I don't imagine that there was anything out where Cam was diving that would constitute a risk, but that got me thinking.

Is there any possibility that Cam may have surfaced away from shore and been hit by a boat? A boat operator might not notice, or in a more nefarious situation, the driver might have known, but took off. It seems unlikely, but then the entire situation seems unlikely too.