Bahamas: Missing Female Diver

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A dive master retained by the diver/husband attempted to stop her descent at approximately 100', and was seen pushing the DM away and continuing her descent.What ever happened to grabbing on and making diver or elf positive and ascending? may not have needed to come up very far in order to regain being alert.

This was thoroughly discussed in the previous 949 posts. Scroll back through the last hundred or so and you will get a good idea of where the discussion is now.
 
A dive master retained by the diver/husband attempted to stop her descent at approximately 100', and was seen pushing the DM away and continuing her descent.What ever happened to grabbing on and making diver or elf positive and ascending? may not have needed to come up very far in order to regain being alert.

Who can say the deceased was not alert?
 
Perhaps I wasn't clear on what I "meant" to say. I agree completly with what I put in red. A DM should have the training to recognize and react to problems.

What I was trying to get at was that if the DM recognized that there was a problem when it would have put her life at risk, I don't blame her for not risking her life in an attemt to save Ms. Woods.

AM,

I appreciate your clarification and hope you understand the point of my position; whatever the license/certification, if you get it, you are held to a higher standard. I always tell that to friends who want to get their captain's license; once you have it you will ALWAYS be held to a higher standard, no matter what. If you don't like it, don't do it.

However, I do blame the DM. Why? Because she should have been next to this apparently suicidal, old, stroked out, narc'd, batty, inexperienced, combative, insert whatever Oliver Stone theory everyone else has come up with diver, and taken steps to prevent this from happening WAY BEFORE it got to the point it did.

You actually hit the nail on the head, this DM sure did recognize a problem that would have put her life at risk, and the reason why it would have put her life at risk is because SHE WASN'T PAYING ATTENTION IN THE FIRST PLACE!! I sure hope (and believe) that the majority of DM's are trained well enough and/or have enough pride in their profession to recognize problems before they get out of hand. This DM didn't, and I hope she thinks long and hard before holding herself out again as a 'professional.'
 
I don't know. It looks to me like Mrs. Woods was trying to create separation.

Sorry, John, but there's a big difference between trying to create separation and being significantly negative so that you drop to 300+ feet and out of site with great rapidity. What I said that it didn't appear she was in any great hurry to create separation. If this happened over the course of a half minute or less, then the DM would have had to react quickly to recognize the situation and act. If it happened over 2-3 minutes of contact or more, there was a lot of opportunity for the light to go on and to initiate a rescue.

One clue is that the victim was "swimming" away. With suicidal intent, wouldn't you think the diver would enter the water a few pounds negative and use that to help with the descent? Down 100', the wetsuit should have lost some lift creating more negativity, but still she was swimming deeper. I don't know how many seconds or minutes this whole event took to go from 80' to 140'+, but it didn't sound like it was all that fast. In fact, the faster the victim was trying to escape into the deep, the more of a red flag it should have been for the DM/buddy that some action needed to be taken. It sounded more like a leisurely and deliberate descent that would elicit an attempt to communicate rather than a full-out rescue effort.
 
I have never suggested suicidal intent. In fact, my comments have been quite the opposite. I do believe, however, that the diver was trying to gain separation from the DM, which is what the eye witness describes. As I have said several times, I think there is good evidence that she was unhappy about being forced to dive with a DM and may have been trying to elude those limitations. After that, who knows?

Sorry, John, but there's a big difference between trying to create separation and being significantly negative so that you drop to 300+ feet and out of site with great rapidity. What I said that it didn't appear she was in any great hurry to create separation. If this happened over the course of a half minute or less, then the DM would have had to react quickly to recognize the situation and act. If it happened over 2-3 minutes of contact or more, there was a lot of opportunity for the light to go on and to initiate a rescue.

One clue is that the victim was "swimming" away. With suicidal intent, wouldn't you think the diver would enter the water a few pounds negative and use that to help with the descent? Down 100', the wetsuit should have lost some lift creating more negativity, but still she was swimming deeper. I don't know how many seconds or minutes this whole event took to go from 80' to 140'+, but it didn't sound like it was all that fast. In fact, the faster the victim was trying to escape into the deep, the more of a red flag it should have been for the DM/buddy that some action needed to be taken. It sounded more like a leisurely and deliberate descent that would elicit an attempt to communicate rather than a full-out rescue effort.
 
I have never suggested suicidal intent. In fact, my comments have been quite the opposite. I do believe, however, that the diver was trying to gain separation from the DM, which is what the eye witness describes. As I have said several times, I think there is good evidence that she was unhappy about being forced to dive with a DM and may have been trying to elude those limitations. After that, who knows?

I never suggested that she wasn't trying to gain separation, but your initial quote of my comment made it seem that was what you were attributing to me. All I said was that the account did not indicate that she was trying to gain separation with great rapidity. It sounded more like she was just going about her business and ignoring the DM. My point was that she wasn't attempting to flee at a rate that would preclude contact and action.
 
Well I managed to read about 600 posts before I got bored. And now I've read maybe the last 20 or so. So I admit I skipped over 300+ posts. But it seems like we've been successfull at eliminating the condolences (a good thing) but out of 900+ plus posts there's maybe only 30 that have real information, facts, updates, etc. and maybe 60 posts with some worthwhile speculation, analysis, recounting of similar experiences, etc. Then we have 400+ plus posts of someone repeating the same speculation that has been discussed ad nauseum, and another 400+ posts of people trying to prove they know more about diving than others. Man it's going to be really hard to read this section and ever really learn what happened.
 
My first thought, suicide or some reason in her mind to get away from DM. Who can say, we'lll never know. My thoughts and prayers to family, divers and recurers involved, and others.
 
:hijack:
Well I managed to read about 600 posts before I got bored. And now I've read maybe the last 20 or so. So I admit I skipped over 300+ posts. But it seems like we've been successfull at eliminating the condolences (a good thing) but out of 900+ plus posts there's maybe only 30 that have real information, facts, updates, etc. and maybe 60 posts with some worthwhile speculation, analysis, recounting of similar experiences, etc. Then we have 400+ plus posts of someone repeating the same speculation that has been discussed ad nauseum, and another 400+ posts of people trying to prove they know more about diving than others. Man it's going to be really hard to read this section and ever really learn what happened.
Yeah, well, I decided to leave this thread alone to act as a repository for rhetoric, ramblings, red herrings & regurgitations... sort of an attractive trash can to help keep the rest of the forum picked up a bit.
If anything definitive about the mishap surfaces it'll be a small miracle.
:D
Rick
end :hijack:
 
Sure would be nice to eventually hear about the findings from the investigation. If not released, perhaps one of the divers involved who contributed to the investigation would have access and share with the rest of us. I don't expect much, but it would be a reasonable end to the story, much better than where it stands now.

Good diving, Craig
 

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