Captain of boat carrying Japanese in Bali diving accident goes on trial

[DandyDon]

Accident previously discussed here on SB at: http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/ac...9-7-divers-missing-off-indonesian-island.html

Captain of boat carrying Japanese in Bali diving accident goes on trial | The Japan Times

JAKARTA – The trial of the captain of a boat carrying seven Japanese women during a scuba diving accident in mid-February began Tuesday in Bali, during which the defendant was indicted for negligence.
The accident left two of the seven divers dead. The five others only suffered light injuries.
During a hearing session at a district court in the Bali provincial capital of Denpasar, government prosecutor Ni Nyoman Martini alleged that the captain, Agustinus Brata Kusuma, 30, changed his boat’s location without waiting for the divers to surface.
Based on the accounts of the five survivors, Martini said, the group surfaced after a 40-minute dive off the island of Nusa Lembongan, a tiny island near Bali, late in the afternoon of Feb. 14, but the boat was nowhere to be found.
“The defendant committed negligence, claiming someone else’s lives … and also causing others to be injured,” she said.
Unable to afford a lawyer, Agustinus appeared alone in court.
When the presiding judge asked if he had understood the content of the indictment, he only said: “I didn’t leave them while they were diving. I lost their traces, then tried to search for them, but I couldn’t find them.”
The captain earlier told police investigators that after the divers entered the water, the sky turned cloudy, so he tried to locate them by following the air bubbles produced on the water’s surface, but heavy rain fell and obscured the bubbles.
He faces up to five years’ imprisonment if convicted of negligence.
The trial was adjourned until next Tuesday, when the court will hear the testimony of Saori Furukawa, 38, one of two locally based Japanese dive instructors who were leading the group of divers. The other one, 35-year-old Shoko Takahashi, was among the dead.
Furukawa said after she was rescued that the divers were caught in foul weather and swept away by strong currents while on their third dive.

 

[clownfishsydney]

It will be very interesting to see what happens. If he left after searching for a short time because he was low on fuel, he is in big trouble. Otherwise, it was probably the elements that were at fault.

 

[iamrushman]

interesting...keep us informed.

 

[Adventure-Ocean]

It doen't makes sense that he went looking so far from the original dive site the divers could not see the boat after surfacing. If after looking the weather changed and he could not see their bubbles he should have returned to the original site. Why he wasn't anchored to the bottom is another interesting question. Regardless of what the weather does on the surface, the anchor line remains available for the divers to come up on. If it were a planned drift dive, they clearly didn't plan it well. I think the captain will lose this case and go to prison. He has to be liable for the mistakes he made. Adventure-Ocean

 

[sebach]

It will be very interesting to see what happens. If he left after searching for a short time because he was low on fuel, he is in big trouble. Otherwise, it was probably the elements that were at fault.

From what I read you're probably right, provided he also didn't go away during the time they where diving. I don't know in the Indonesian system how the responsibilities are shared between a captain and a DM/instructor. But in a drift dive, especially with bad weather conditions, only the people in the water have the capability of letting know where they are, with various devices (ranging from SMB to radio, smoke, etc...). I've done dives where I was dragging a smb on the surface for survey purpose while diving at about 55m depth. Not the funniest thing to do. Quite possible nonetheless. Safest that just launching an smb from depth at the end of the dive. Much safest that doing so only near the surface or not having an SMB at all.

 

[kumimonster]

here's an update

Jail sought for Indonesian skipper in Japanese diver deaths

Indonesian prosecutors Tuesday sought a jail term of three years and six months for a boat skipper who lost track of seven Japanese women during a diving trip that left two of them dead.

DENPASAR, Indonesia: Indonesian prosecutors Tuesday sought a jail term of three years and six months for a boat skipper who lost track of seven Japanese women during a diving trip that left two of them dead.

Agustinus Brata Kusuma lost sight of the women near the resort island of Bali on February 14 when a storm hit suddenly.
Five of them were saved after clinging onto coral reefs for three days some 20 kilometres from their take-off point.
Kusuma, who is accused of negligence causing death and injury, admitted at a recent hearing that after searching for around an hour for the women, he left the location to get more fuel.
"The captain of the boat should have been paying attention to the safety of the Japanese divers. But he didn't do that as he left them to buy fuel, so when they came to the surface the boat wasn't there," prosecutor Ni Nyoman Martini told the Denpasar District Court.
"As a result, the Japanese divers were floating in the sea and were wounded in the waves, while two of them were killed."
Kusuma worked for dive company Yellow Scuba in Bali, which organised the trip for the women around the neighbouring islands of Nusa Penida and Nusa Lembongan.
A Japanese instructor with Yellow Scuba, Saori Furukawa, was among the women saved. She told the court how she fired a flare gun to get the skipper's attention to no avail.
Furukawa told reporters after the incident that the weather suddenly turned bad and the sea spun "like a washing machine". She described being swept apart from the other divers by a strong current.
The body of Shoko Takahashi, who ran Yellow Scuba with her husband, was found around a month after the incident.
Diver Ritsuko Miyata was also killed.


- AFP/ir

 

[DandyDon]

He got 3 years jail time: Skipper jailed for death of Japanese divers - Story - World - 3 News

 

[Shasta_man]

Were you really up at 3 AM sending this, Don?

 

[DandyDon]

Were you really up at 3 AM sending this, Don?

Yeah, was trying to adjust my sleeping so I can run a tractor late into the night tonight.

 

[boulderjohn]

It doen't makes sense that he went looking so far from the original dive site the divers could not see the boat after surfacing.

I missed this thread originally, but I thought I would respond to this.

A couple of years ago I was doing a drift dive in south Florida, which requires the use of a dive flag on the surface as you drift. We were told to surface after a 45-50 minute dive. My buddy and I surfaced after 50 minutes to find that the weather had kicked up. There were fairly large waves, although nothing like what was reported in this story. We had to wait until a wave pitched us up high to get a look, but when we did look, there was no boat in sight. We inflated a big SMB to add to our visibility, but we were not remotely concerned, since we were not far off from a condominium-filled shoreline. We were on the surface for well over 15 minutes before we saw our boat coming toward us. They could see we were not stressed, so there was a lot of good-natured joking about the situation.

Here's what had happened. They were trailing all the dive flags, as normal, when the wind and waves picked up significantly. All of the flags, including ours, were relatively close together. At the 45 minute mark, all the dive groups except ours popped to the surface. The boat hurried from one group to the other to pick them up while my buddy and I continued our dive. They watched us as well as they could, but with the waves rising, we were harder and harder to spot. Once we surfaced, we drifted rapidly in the surface current and wind while the boat finished picking up the others. By the time they got the others picked up, we were well out of sight in the waves. All this happened in a relative few minutes. They were not concerned, though. Our path was entirely predictable, and they knew exactly which way to go to see us.

In this case, the seas picked up with large waves, and the water was swirling "like a washing machine." Their movements were therefore not predictable. For that reason, I can completely understand the difficulty the captain may have had in locating them initially. I can understand why he would have trouble spotting them, even if he was not that far away. That is not, as I understand it, why he was prosecuted. A captain in that situation should have more than enough fuel to conduct an effective search without having to leave the area. A captain in such a situation should also radio for help as soon as it becomes apparent that a serious problem has arisen.

Interestingly enough, about the same time that this thread was started, I was not far away, diving the Great Barrier Reef from a Liveaboard. Every one of the divers was required to carry a Nautilus Lifeline with which we could not only signal the crew, we could talk to them. It would give our location so that the boat could come get us. I am guessing that the cost to the operator to supply those to the divers--or at least to the DM employee leading the group--would have been a lot less than the gas that was burned during the fruitless search.