Bahamas: Missing Female Diver

[Kksmama]

I think that covered most of what you were asking if not let me know and I will try to answer if I have the info.

I think you have done a tremendous service to the diving community by posting here. I'm sure it has been difficult (perhaps helpful also) to replay and rethink your actions that day. You are a good writer, and your poignant account has prompted me to do a lot of reflection - and commit to future training for myself and family. Other contributors to the thread have said the same thing, so I imagine that countless other divers will also be improving their skills and attitudes. Thanks to you.

Your posts have been so thorough and detailed that I can imagine my husband and I in the same situation. And I can imagine that in the aftermath we'd have some stuff to work through. We came upon a car accident once (drunk meets bicyclist) and our inability to help left us with a mixed bag of emotions. I hope you and your wife will use this tragedy to make your skills and relationship even stronger (they are demonstrably excellent now) for your future dives together, getting help if necessary. We'd love to dive with you sometime.

 

[Scubaon]

I do have to say that I disagree with the last post that people who can't swim shouldn't dive. I myself am a terrible swimmer and found it very difficult to complete the swim required to passthe open water cert. I have never been a strong swimmer dispite working out regularly and being in very good shape I am not a confident swimmer at all, its just doesn't seem to be my thing. But under the water I feel comfortable and very relaxed. My wife on the other hand is a great swimmer and not as comfortable a diver as I am. I don't belive that swimming ability has anything at all to do with a persons potential to become a good diver.[/QUOTE]

I respect your opinion on this, but honestly, speaking of a person that can not swim at all, don't you find their chances of drowning higher in an out of air emergency at surface than say a diver that can swim? They will be struggling with a no air issue and an inability to tread water at the same time. It just seems like a really bad idea to strap on a bunch of gear and weights and jump in the water if you can not swim a stroke. You then are totaly reliant on your gear to save your life and not your own abilities. Just thinking out loud. I'm sure there are countless divers out there that are poor swimmers at best, but they CAN swim if need be. I was speaking of a person that can not swim at all.

 

[LeadTurn_SD]

I do have to say that I disagree with the last post that people who can't swim shouldn't dive. I myself am a terrible swimmer and found it very difficult to complete the swim required to passthe open water cert. I have never been a strong swimmer dispite working out regularly and being in very good shape I am not a confident swimmer at all, its just doesn't seem to be my thing. But under the water I feel comfortable and very relaxed. My wife on the other hand is a great swimmer and not as comfortable a diver as I am. I don't belive that swimming ability has anything at all to do with a persons potential to become a good diver.

You can be a great diver and a poor swimmer, but not nearly as safe as a great diver who is also good swimmer.

I respect your opinion on this, but honestly, speaking of a person that can not swim at all, don't you find their chances of drowning higher in an out of air emergency at surface than say a diver that can swim? They will be struggling with a no air issue and an inability to tread water at the same time. It just seems like a really bad idea to strap on a bunch of gear and weights and jump in the water if you can not swim a stroke. You then are totaly reliant on your gear to save your life and not your own abilities. Just thinking out loud. I'm sure there are countless divers out there that are poor swimmers at best, but they CAN swim if need be. I was speaking of a person that can not swim at all.

Over the years, the swimming requirement in scuba training has been reduced significantly. Not eliminated, but reduced.

I do think this is a mistake, and although I have no proof, I feel this HAS contributed to diving accidents.

Being a weak swimmer or nearly a non-swimmer makes you ENTIRELY reliant on your equipment for survival in the water. This should not be the case (on the surface, that is ). If you are going to be in or around the water, you need to be able to swim well enough to save yourself, without equipment. If you fell overboard, could you tread water for awile in just your swimsuit, or would you need to be rescued? If you jumped in and had a BC malfunction and began having problems remaining at the surface, would you panic? If you surfaced far from your entry point, and had to swim or tread water for awhile, could you?

Rant mode off.

Best wishes.

 

[Web Monkey]

I've read this a couple of times today and it's bothered me each time I've read it. What this says to me is I wouldn't be a good buddy. I am quite sure I would not have immediately recognized she was incompetent or assumed she was incompetent...if that's what she actually was. If I'm in my dive as say 80, look over the the wall, and then look back and see my buddy at 100 and dropping I'm pretty confident I wouldn't be able to bring her to the surface.

This is where "buddy skills" and attention to details beat "macho rescue" every time.

If you plan the dive as, say a wall dive with a 70' max depth, and maintain good buddy contact (side by side), you would notice immediately if you were at 60' and your buddy (and alternate air source) was heading towards 70' and on towards 80'.

You might not do anything immediately, but it should certainly get your attention, especially, since you've now exceeded "useful buddy distance" (the distance you could easily get to if you were OOA and had just exhaled).

At this point, it's still easy to drop down a few feet, try to get your buddy's attention, then decide if any action is necessary.

The trick to a good rescue is to not have an emergency. At this point, what you have is a sign that something might be wrong. A little sign-language conversation would let you know if your buddy just wanted to look at a cool fish or was in the process of doing something really dumb, and you're still only at 70'-80'.

Once you let your buddy get a huge distance away from your either horizontally or vertically, you're into "superman" territory, and a rescue becomes significantly more difficult and dangerous or even impossible.

I'm reminded of ahpoolman's video where he saved the two kids from certain death. I would not have been able to do that. I currently don't have the rescue training nor the experience at that depth.

Making more victims isn't a good idea. Another aspect of a good rescue is knowing your capabilities and limitations. If you know for certain that you can go grab someone and safely do what needs to be done, that's great! It's a whole different story than if they're at 110' and you've never been deeper than 60. Nobody wants a rescuer to commit suicide.

If being unable to recognize alleged incompetence in seconds and bring someone up from the deep means I'm a bad buddy, I guess I'm ok with that for now. Perhaps as you say rescue training would give me the tools to be able to react...but I'm not sure solely having the rescue card should be a benchmark to place someone into the good buddy category.

Training is valuable. Cards aren't worth squat (unless someone requires a particular card to take you somewhere you want to go). The most valuable thing you can get out of rescue training is learning to see ahead in time. The guy with the new camera who isn't watching his air or depth is probably going to run out of both. The buddy who isn't paying attention to anybody is going to get separated. The diver @80' on a 60' dive might be having issues. The girl who looks like she's going to cry before getting into the water has a good chance of panicing if anything at all happens and will be going through air like a jet engine.

I think your intent was to state a buddy with proper training may have recognized early warning signs and been able to bring her to the surface.

Exactly.

Good training and attentiveness could have eliminated the entire chain of events.

...and now I'm off to see if there is an SSI centre in my area...

Although I use and like SSI, it's only because I really like our LDS and they're affiliated with SSI. What you really need is a good instructor and a chance to do a bunch of diving. A Rescue class that runs most of the summer and includes lots of in-water time and practice scenarios would be great.

Terry

 

[scubadada]

You can be a great diver and a poor swimmer, but not nearly as safe as a great diver who is also good swimmer.



Over the years, the swimming requirement in scuba training has been reduced significantly. Not eliminated, but reduced.

I do think this is a mistake, and although I have no proof, I feel this HAS contributed to diving accidents.

Being a weak swimmer or nearly a non-swimmer makes you ENTIRELY reliant on your equipment for survival in the water. This should not be the case (on the surface, that is ). If you are going to be in or around the water, you need to be able to swim well enough to save yourself, without equipment. If you fell overboard, could you tread water for awile in just your swimsuit, or would you need to be rescued? If you jumped in and had a BC malfunction and began having problems remaining at the surface, would you panic? If you surfaced far from your entry point, and had to swim or tread water for awhile, could you?

Rant mode off.

Best wishes.

I must agree with LeadTurn_SD. Being a very weak swimmer or non-swimmer could be nothing but a significant liability. Being a strong swimmer has helped me immensely on numerous occasions. Tag line, wreck line, down line, dive in reasonable current is just one rather common example. It has also allowed me to assist others on numerous occasions, saving a dive or avoiding a more serious event. A weak or non-swimmer lacks the flexibility to effectively deal with a challenging situation for either themselves or others. Under ideal circumstances, diving is a piece of cake, under other circumstances, diving can be challenging for any of us. A strong, confident swimmer may welcome those challenges as an opportunity for experience and improvement.

Good diving, Craig

 

[Thalassamania]

You can learn to dive and not be able to swim. Let's put that concept aside for a moment.

Swim tests are an abstracted measure of your comfort in the water. Strong swimmers are rarely uncomfortable in the water or apprehensive about water activities and it much more likely that weak swimmers are uncomfortable in the water or apprehensive about water activities. These are not perfect measures and I have know rare individuals who defied both stereotypes.

People who are comfortable in the water are easier to teach to dive and all diver training schemes that I am familiar with (except for HSA's) are predicated on the idea that the student is fairly comfortable in the water.

If I were to have to train a non-swimmer or weak swimmer I would, in all good conscience, have to both equip and train them differently than I do adequate swimmers. Suddenly just being confident in ones ability to get to the surface in a crisis is not the solution, it becomes more a question of being confident of not having to ever do so, or (at worst) being confident that if you had to, you could stay alive there. Training becomes much more equipment dependent and equipment intensive, and lots of good things like heightened SA and incident avoidance are brought to the fore. All systems become redundant, redundant systems become triply so, lots of time gets added to the class and these non-swimmers or weak swimmers probably turn into much better divers than your run-of-the mill resort trained tourist diver.

But if you try and force a round peg into a square hole and teach a non-swimmer or weak swimmer to dive without making substantial changes to the typical training program to accommodate them you're doing everyone an injustice.

 

[bsee65]

IMO Dive Masters wear many hats depending on the role that they happen to be fulfilling at that moment. A DM that is hired to lead a dive such as those in tropical waters have limited responsibility for the certified diver. They are there to provide supervision and dive management skills. Each diver needs to asses their own skills and determine if the planned dive is appropriate for them and their buddy. Let's not forget that based on statements made, the DM attempted to provide rescue skills but was unsuccessful. This DM also has a responsibility to himself and to the other divers.

I know it may sound harsh, but in OW training my students are taught and evaluated for the ability to ascend, drop their weights, the use of a power inflater, and the ability to kick. PADI recommends that a new diver without proper training dive no deeper than 60 feet.

There is a point when one has to draw the line between being able to respond to an emergency and to stop because you are putting yourself or others at risk. For each person, the line is different and we should not judge where it falls for another person.

Clearly, you are either not referring to this incident or you haven't read much about it. The DM in this case was female and specifically hired as a buddy for the victim rather than to perform traditional guide service. As such, your comments and perspective seem misguided relative to this incident. If she wasn't prepared or capable of performing this task at a professional level, she shouldn't have accepted the contract to do so.

 

[Thalassamania]

... For each person, the line is different and we should not judge where it falls for another person.

Unless, of course, they hire out for a function that they fail to provide.

 

[bsee65]

I hope no one in this thread really looks at tourist DMs as anything more then tour guides and sherpa. There is always a chance that you are getting a DM that is 50 dives out of OW. Unless you are fresh out of OW then the only thing of value you should expect from a DM is dive site information, boat procedures and where all the cool stuff underwater is. Sure you might get lucky and get a DM with 1000s of dives but I wouldn't count on it. I sure as hell am not going to assume the DM is going to keep me safe nor am I going to put blame on a DM when a diver does something incredibly stupid.

It's amazing the number of people in this thread that are faulting the DM on this fiasco. Seems to me that this lady did exactly what she wanted to do.

We don't know what the lady wanted to do, only what she did. With very limited underwater communication, we have no real knowledge of the state of mind of the victim during this episode, or even if she was in conscious control of her actions at the time. Again, this particular dive professional was hired as a buddy for a diver who, for whatever reason, was deemed to require a professional diver as a buddy. The responsibilities of a professional diver acting in this role have to differ from what is expected of a DM acting as a guide.

 

[Grover48]

The DM was hired to be a buddy to the missing woman. That carries responsibilities. No punishment for failure to perform, but the responsibilities are there.

The DM surfaced and then went to be by herself, it has been stated she was in shock. OK, now what? She cannot handle the stress of seeing a diver lost and still perform as a DM. It's time to do a gut check and stop being a DM. She did not aggressively pursue the victim, it seems she was "waved off" and stopped. Not good in a rescue scenario. She has now demonstrated she cannot handle the job, and furthermore, when she got to the surface she did not function in an acceptable, professional manner. Time to hang up the DM cap.