American woman dead - Bell Island, Newfoundland

[rjack321]

re: Weighting

Based on several accident-and-incident threads, I've noticed several fatalities where the drysuit diver is heavily overweighed.

Perhaps I'm asking the obvious, but why/how does a dry-suit diver become so heavily over-weighted? Is it because....

• ....they don't have time to dial in their weights in a new environment? (colder temps, more clothes, salt-water, new dry-suit diver)
• ...a buoyancy-issue short-cut? (I'm too buoyant, slap on 12lbs, deal with proper-weighting later)
• ...for warmth?

I'm not judging the individual divers of course.

Probably because HOW to dial in your weighting is rarely taught - it's a travesty. Most OW instructors slap a bunch of lead on their students and park them on the bottom. If/when they eventually graduate to a drysuit they have one more air containing compartment to manage and they still don't know how to fine tune their weighting.

Just based on my towing Caroline back to the boat by her valve, I would guess she was 4 to 6 lbs overweighted. I did not ditch her weights (wasnt familiar with what she had at all, not sure if it was a belt or integrated or a combination TBH). But I was able to keep her face out of the water so at the time it seemed like a lesser urgency.

So you're on a boat dive in new gear and new waters and you're not totally comfortable adjusting lead floating on the surface after dive 1. Maybe at most you've taken lead on/off to fine tune your weighting at a beach site. Also there is no dedicated DM or supervisor reminding you and the rest of the boat are more experienced than you in these temps/conditions and not needing to adjust lead.

In Caroline's case... She was the least experienced diver on the boat - based on her own self-assessment at a briefing 2 days before. She was chilly on the previous two days diving. She was fussing with new and leaky dry gloves unsuccessfully. She didn't have heated undergarments. And she was wearing 5-6 different shirts and long underwear tops under her drysuit - presumably because none of them alone was suitable for ~2C bottom temps. So overall the lack of prioritization and motivation to shed lead isn't really that surprising or even unusual.

Peer-pressure, time, experience, reminders, lack of prioritization thoughout the traditional training curriculum, and warmth or lack thereof can all be factors in someone being too heavy.

 

[davecampbell]

View attachment 738059

 

[Ayisha]

...It’s also tricky getting air out of the suit on the way up, you need the right posture and a bit of wriggling to manage the bubble and get it out the valve. A few extra pounds gives you time to do that before you have a runaway ascent.

Bold added.

A few extra lbs means a larger bubble to manage and less time to react to buoyancy changes.

A couple of extra lbs is easy to manage. 4 or 6 extra lbs or more creates a larger buoyancy shift with every depth change.

 

[SlugLife]

Peer-pressure, time, experience, reminders, lack of prioritization thoughout the traditional training curriculum, and warmth or lack thereof can all be factors in someone being too heavy.

Peer-pressure (including imagined pressure) to get in the water quickly can be a leading contributor to many accidents an incidents. I've probably made several minor mistakes myself because of that. While I do practice donning and doffing for speed, when I'm actually getting ready for a dive, I remind myself that "anyone impatiently waiting can f-off."

So overall the lack of prioritization and motivation to shed lead isn't really that surprising or even unusual.

Which unfortunately may have contributed to this accident. I look at a lot of accidents as a sort of "3 strikes" rule, where usually 3 things often have to go wrong at the same time for it to become a severe or fatal incident. Sometimes the first strike, leads to the 2nd and 3rd. Being over-weighted is sometimes that first-strike.

In other threads I've spent some time pointing out that I start my dives relatively neutral, or marginally buoyant at the surface with an empty BCD and 50% lung-full, even with 2 AL80s (sidemount). Also that with a completely empty BCD, I am able to surface from depth with normal finning. If for example, someone jumped in the water properly weighted, with no air in their BCD and tank off, theoretically they should be able to surface with little effort and orally inflate or grab the boat. Proper weighting/buoyancy absolutely can be a redundancy, in some ways similar to having a pony-bottle.

In Caroline's case... She was the least experienced diver on the boat - based on her own self-assessment at a briefing 2 days before. She was chilly on the previous two days diving. She was fussing with new and leaky dry gloves unsuccessfully. She didn't have heated undergarments. And she was wearing 5-6 different shirts and long underwear tops under her drysuit - presumably because none of them alone was suitable for ~2C bottom temps.

I'll often do a shallow shore-dive, any time I haven't dove in several months, need a refresher, have unfamiliar equipment, or need to fine-tune equipment. Trying to fix problems when you're on the boat, or worse underwater, is by far the worst time and place to be fixing them.

 

[rjack321]

I'll often do a shallow shore-dive, any time I haven't dove in several months, need a refresher, have unfamiliar equipment, or need to fine-tune equipment. Trying to fix problems when you're on the boat, or worse underwater, is by far the worst time and place to be fixing them.

My personal vibe is that Newfoundland has just a convergence of contributory factors - weighting being one of a few. In my view the cold water (2C on the bottom in July, up to ~7c on the surface) creates a bit of a cascade of issues that the average diver doesn't anticipate when they sign up to go dive these wrecks. The depths are not especially deep but they are substantive (the shallowest parts are 55-60ft and the deepest sand dwelling bits are 150ft). Narcosis is legit in these conditions. People add layers under their drysuits, there's cold hands and ice cream headaches to address. Even minor suit leaks become major issues, 1st stages are cranky and finicky. 2nd stages are even more likely to freeze. At least on my trip there wasn't a "shakedown" day at the beach to address weighting. People pay for a charter and expect to get in the boat dives and even those are fickle and there's a weather day built into the week's schedule.

 

[Jonn]

I’ve been to St John’s and Bell Island, seemed like I dived everywhere except the wrecks I came there to see! The water is kinda barren compared to West Coast but there’s no shortage of neat little shore dives around. Those casual shakedown dives before the real ones on the boat are valuable in several ways: get to know your buddy above and below the water, see a little scenery and get a feel for the area on the way there, find something interesting if not spectacular on the bottom, remember that one little thing you forgot to pack, and get into that confident diving mindset. I’ve never regretted making the time, splashing for the first time off the stern is a false economy.

Not applicable here though, it seems the deceased diver was a few days into the trip.

 

[rjack321]

I’ve been to St John’s and Bell Island, seemed like I dived everywhere except the wrecks I came there to see! The water is kinda barren compared to West Coast but there’s no shortage of neat little shore dives around. Those casual shakedown dives before the real ones on the boat are valuable in several ways: get to know your buddy above and below the water, see a little scenery and get a feel for the area on the way there, find something interesting if not spectacular on the bottom, remember that one little thing you forgot to pack, and get into that confident diving mindset. I’ve never regretted making the time, splashing for the first time off the stern is a false economy.

Not applicable here though, it seems the deceased diver was a few days into the trip.

Yes Caroline passed on dive day 3 of a week long trip. As far as I can tell from the pre-dive briefing the day before we even boarded the boat, she didn't do any pre-charter shore diving. Some of the other trip participants had arrived earlier and gone for a shore dive earlier that day. Those 2 were experienced CCR divers from Montreal and some of the folks least needing to do a weight check.

 

[SlugLife]

Yes Caroline passed on dive day 3 of a week long trip. As far as I can tell from the pre-dive briefing the day before we even boarded the boat, she didn't do any pre-charter shore diving. Some of the other trip participants had arrived earlier and gone for a shore dive earlier that day. Those 2 were experienced CCR divers from Montreal and some of the folks least needing to do a weight check.

The water conditions, specifically 2c water, is something you clearly need to be prepared for, including skills, equipment, preparation, and even emergency-planning (i.e. dry-suit flooding).

Unless this is the kind of dive you do regularly, a pre-dive-dive almost seems vital. Last thing you want is to have to thumb the dive, or have an incident you can't handle. Same principle applies for many other situations and scenarios; I do these sort of "practice/check shore-dives" all the time (for new equipment, skill-practice, refreshers, etc), however I was never taught to do them, and rarely ever heard people talk about them. I suppose that gets in the way of training agencies selling refresher-courses.

Personally I would have not been safe on that dive, so it's not a knock on her skills or experience.

I got some second hand informatio....

I was on this boat and towed Carolin....

Re-reading these two posts, and with the additional information, I'm getting a strong impression that she started the dive with 1 to 2 strikes on the 3-strikes rule. Why she refused the regulator, had a gas issue, or whatever else happened is perhaps a slight gray area. My guess is, that by that point she's unprepared, cold, stressed, and panicked.

Perhaps "technically speaking" there may have been things she, or another diver could have done to avoid the fatal outcome at the point a problem was known but my read is all of these things would have depended on chance, luck, or extra-ordinary skill beyond a mere rescue-course. (To be clear, I do not intend to stop anyone from discussing the "how could she have been rescued" angle)

The point of "3-strikes" is almost entirely about redundancy. Imagine it like rolling dice, and all-1s means you're injured. Ideally, the more dice you have to roll, the better off you are. For example, one might "remove a die" by solo-diving, but add one with other redundancies. (Maybe I should rebrand it the "3-dice rule")

 

[grf88]

If you have never experienced a full blown free-flow it can be very disconcerting and disorienting the first time it happens on a dive especially if you are having other issues such a narcosis. I am not talking about a slight flow from your second stage but a major 1st. stage free-flow where you cannot see anything but bubbles. Diving in water as cold as you can find around Bell Island a free-flow is quite possible and you may want to practice handling one in confined water beforehand. My own response is to grab my alternate which will always be one on a separate 1st. stage, either doubles or H-valve, and shut down the offending reg. A pony is also a good alternate in these conditions.

 

[rjack321]

I don't know where @awetmedic got their information.

I was on this trip. I was on the boat before and after the accident day. I helped Caroline with her dry glove rings the day before, watched her set up her gear, and had heard her self-assessment predive over beers 3 days prior. I helped her Caroline's buddy put on her right sided al40 pony bottle. I heard her buddy scream for help about 200ft away from the boat and started to gear up (I did not get into the water with dive gear on however). After towing Caroline back to the swim platform/lift, I was one of the first people her buddy started describing the scene to as CPR was initiated.

The surviving buddy was distraught. To my non-professional psychologist mind, they had clearly experienced perceptual narrowing during the incident (to be expected). So while their accounts are all we have, I am trying to be open-minded to the fact that it was a complex, dynamic situation with 2 people yo-yo-ing in midwater all of which unfolded in seconds.

I guess I prefer @GLOC (pheww I tagged him right) swiss cheese accident model. There was a convergence of factors which on a "normal" day would individually have been minor annoyances. Unfortunately, they aligned in just the right way at precisely the wrong time to lead to a major accident with major consequences.

I'm not sure anything on this day was by itself without the benefit of hindsight a "strike"

Ps timeline wise as I recall

• we all arrived day1 in the afternoon/evening, 2 CCR divers from Montreal area had shown up the day prior at a minimum, then there were 3 OC divers from the mid-Atlantic region, Caroline and 2 buddies, one CCR diver from NYC, and myself (on CCR).
• days 2 and 3 were diving days,
• day 4 was a bad weather day and people visited museums and such
• day 5 was the day of the accident,
• day 6 a new OC person arrived, and everyone dove except Caroline's buddy who DMed on the boat.
• day 7 everyone dove and we left a small memorial on the wreck near where she passed (a bottle of wine)