Belize Nekton Pilot: Crewmember lost

[ILDiver]

How so?? Can you say for certain a dive buddy might not have saved Cory's life.

Of course I can't say that. But I do know that a safe dive starts before you leave the boat and you are responsible for yourself even with a buddy. When I dive with a buddy, I check my gear as if I were alone, I enter the water with the idea that if I have a problem I am the one to take care of it. I'm not to the point where I won't ask for help, but I have to be prepared in case something unexpected happens.

If he had known equipment issues, he started behind the curve. If he had nitrogen in his system, he started behind. If he was complacent, he was behind. If he had other things on his mind, he was behind the curve. Then you have the possibility that it was a medical issue. When you prepare for a dive you should be trying to get ahead of the curve and be prepared, physically and mentally.

Your theory of a double death is abstract. How many times has a buddy been lost or something happened where a buddy died and the other lived unharmed?

It's kind of like flying. The NTSB most times finds pilot error to be the cause. Does that mean the pilot was a bad pilot? No. It is usually that the pilot missed something that triggered another event. Now his situation is compounded. Something else happens and soon he is overwhelmed. Sometimes the pilot recovers, other times it leads to something beyond their control. Would a co-pilot have helped? Maybe, or you could have lost two people instead.

 

[deepstops]

Your theory of a double death is abstract. How many times has a buddy been lost or something happened where a buddy died and the other lived unharmed?

I agree with most everything you said about staying ahead of the curve, but.....

Why is that theory abstract?? DAN says 6 out 7 (85%) of the in-water fatalities involve buddy separation or solo diving. It's just common sense to me having a good buddy helps keep me ahead of the curve. While self-rescue is a solid tool to have, it has limitations.

 

[fireflock]

I agree with most everything you said about staying ahead of the curve, but.....

Why is that theory abstract?? DAN says 6 out 7 (85%) of the in-water fatalities involve buddy separation or solo diving. It just seems to me having a good buddy helps keep me ahead of the curve. While self-rescue is a solid tool to have, it has limitations.

It's a logical fallacy to read that statistic and make the leap to '6 of 7 in-water fatalities could have been prevented by a good buddy'.

That's all people are saying. It might be true, it might not...but the statistic you cite does not speak to the issue (if a good buddy could have helped).

Rich

 

[ILDiver]

I guess my point was, a debate on solo vs buddy diving is not discussing the incident. Could a buddy have saved him? Very likely yes. Could he have survived this solo dive? Probably so. Choices made were his to make. The preperation for the dive was his to do. Maybe he lost his light with no backup. Too many if's to know for sure.

edit: The abstact was the double death. Double death is rare, the one of two is not as rare. And a key word in the stat, INVOLVE. Usually one of several factors. Saying a person should not solo dive is a broad statement. Some people can handle it and respect the danger. Others think they can.

 

[Darnold9999]

perhaps you should get a copy of the annual BSAC or DAN accident reports before writing off someone's statements as "ridiculous".

The part of your comment that was ridiculous was the part I quoted:

How so?? Can you say for certain a dive buddy might not have saved Cory's life.

and it remains so. Of course no-one can say this and, as someone pointed out, nobody did.

To use it as an arguement to point to solo diving as the cause of the fatality is a logical fallacy - as is your use of DAN's statistics covering ALL divers (the vast majority of whom are casual divers) to suggest that the statistics apply to an experienced working diver when diving solo. They don't, you would need a deeper analysis of the data to draw that conclusion, and I don't believe that the data in fact would support such a conclusion. However the data does not exist as far as I know. An analysis of accidents alone is not sufficient, you also need the number of accident free dives with and without a "good" buddy.

Buddy diving is probably significantly safer for inexperienced divers and a "good" buddy even safer yet. I would not suggest even for a moment that solo diving is a practice that everyone should adopt. Buddy diving is also probably safer for experienced divers, however I suspect that the risk reduction is a marginal one. Complacency and diving beyond your skill and experience level is far more likely to be the cause of an accident than the fact that you are alone in the water.

Not suggesting you or anyone should dive solo, however the boogyman of solo diving is just that, a boogyman. Take the required precautions and there is at least an arguement to be made that it is safer than diving with a buddy - particularly one that is not "good" as you define it.

What is more likely is that a complacent attitude to diving and its risks allowed this individual to push the envelope in a number of ways and he got caught on the wrong side of the envelope. Diving solo was just one aspect of the envelope, I suspect that there were others. To suggest that if he had just been with a buddy all would have been OK is IMHO simplistic.

 

[Gale68]

Finally got a look at the stats....

Divers Alert Network : DAN Medical Center : Annual Diving Report

DAN 2006 report, page 59:

20% of fatalities occurred on solo dives. Of the remaining 80%, 53% had become separated from their buddy or group during the dive (this works out to 42.4% of the total). We really don't have the numbers that would tell us what this means regarding the =relative= risk of diving solo vs. with a buddy. If we just went by what percentage of fatalities occur on solo dives, it would appear getting separated from your buddy is twice as risky as diving solo, and indeed that diving solo is almost twice as safe as diving with a buddy who DOES stay with you. Obviously it wouldn't be any more appropriate to draw those conclusions than than the earlier post which lumped together solo divers and divers who got separated from their buddies as a single high-risk category.

To evaluate the relative risk of solo diving, we'd need to know what percentage of solo dives result in death, rather than what percentage of fatal dives were solo, and compare that to the rates for buddy/group dives.

There are thousands of ways to spin statistics to make them appear to support a desired conclusion. 70-80% of deaths were in people over 40. OMG! It's not safe to dive if you're over 40!! 78% of deaths occurred when the diver was on OC scuba breathing air. Is this proof that diving on air is more dangerous than nitrox, trimix or rebreather? Only to someone who wants so badly to make that argument they're willing to misinterpret the facts.

I'd love some analysis of more detailed numbers by someone with some professional actuarial skills, but I don't know whether the relevant data even exist.

 

[deepstops]

Finally got a look at the stats....

Divers Alert Network : DAN Medical Center : Annual Diving Report

DAN 2006 report, page 59:

20% of fatalities occurred on solo dives. Of the remaining 80%, 53% had become separated from their buddy or group during the dive (this works out to 42.4% of the total).

Looking back, wouldn't you add the 42% who became separated to the 20% that started solo?

Looking at the same page, do you read the statement to say that buddy teams were in use in 64% of the dives (45% + 19%)??

The more I read their stats, it fuzzier it becomes.

 

[Gale68]

Looking back, wouldn't you add the 42% who became separated to the 20% that started solo?

Er... No. If I embark on a dive solo, I approach it with the knowledge that I am on my own, and plan my dive accordingly. I'll stay shallower and navigate more carefully, for example. I might just decide to sit out a high-current or low vis dive if I don't have an experienced partner. A diver who goes into the water with the intention of diving solo is in a very different situation than one whose buddy disappears on them in the middle of a dive.

To draw a comparison in the situation of overhead dives, would you consider it appropriate to lump together the accident rate for planned wreck penetrations and the rate for dives where the decision to enter the wreck was made spur-of-the-moment, with no pre-dive planning?

Looking at the same page, do you read the statement to say that buddy teams were in use in 64% of the dives (45% + 19%)?? The more I read their stats, it fuzzier it becomes.

Yah, it does seem a little fuzzy. If 20% were solo, and 64% were in teams of two or more, then who are the other 16%? Which reinforces the importance of refraining from drawing conclusions on the meaning of these numbers, in the absence of more detailed data.

 

[b1gcountry]

This is sad but does not suprise me in the least.

On my trip with Nekton - it was common practice for the off duty crew to solo dive.

This was originally posted by DeputyDan

My condolences first and foremost.

Second, there was a lot in the description of the dive and equipment that made me nervous, and the most worrying to me was not the fact that it was done solo. Being alone might have played a factor, or it might not have; we will never know...but please lets not turn this into an argument about the merits of solo diving.

Tom

 

[UnderwaterBumbleBee]

Solo Divers seem to get really defensive about other people's views towards solo diving. The debate of Solo Diving was not what this post is about. I don't believe anyone in here has called a solo diver an idiot. Personally I wouldn't dive alone and I doubt I'd ever be certified to dive alone. One, I live in Colorado and prefer to stay out of the water here so less temptations to go dive whenever and I always have a buddy on a vacation. Two, It's my personal belief that I would feel safer with a buddy. Can they cause accidents, I know I've read about them in DAN but I'd still personally rather have one. It's obvious that you are aware of the risks you take by diving in general and the however added risk that's added by being alone. Having a buddy won't prevent deaths all the time but again at least you would know where the body was or what happened. My biggest concern about solo diving is for newbie divers that think it's no big deal when they haven't even been diving for a year. Then again, I thought I read somewhere in DAN that many accidents occur to experienced divers because the can get lax on their safety or overconfident.

I think it's impossible to say if a buddy could have saved Cory because we HAVE NO IDEA what really happened to him. Might a buddy have been able to at least tell us where he is or what occurred? Probably. He took a whole lot of risks when he got into the water that night. Most important was his lack of functioning or non-existent equipment which I think largely played a role in what happened to him. Maybe he ran out of air, didn't know how deep he was... Who knows. He definitly could have been narked. I don't know his dive history immediately before but we did almost every dive that week and didn't see him that often. He got in the water enough times to film a trip video but I have no idea how recent (if it was that week or prior) he had gone below 130.

As for the other death on the Pilot (the only other one I know of on that boat) it was a diver that had cardiac arrest. A lot of people die from that on land let alone underwater. Just because he had a buddy that did everything right didn't guarantee his survival at all. I don't see how that can really be related to solo diving vs. buddy diving since anyone could die instantly from this.