Unknown Coasties searching for missing diver - Pompano Beach, Florida

[lowwall]

and multiple firsthand accounts of poor conditions, 6-7ft seas etc

That would make rescue and communication more difficult and may have affected predive safety checks, but wouldn't be a direct cause of the fatality.

Unless something went wrong during the entry that disabled the diver or his gear.

 

[TMurrr]

That would make rescue and communication more difficult and may have affected predive safety checks, but wouldn't be a direct cause of the fatality.

Unless something went wrong during the entry that disabled the diver or his gear.

True, but it helps frame that a lot of things potentially went wrong in sequence and the fatality may have been a combination of things, not one single obvious mistake in isolation.

 

[The Chairman]

6-7ft doesn't seem terribly 'bad'. At least not to me when I was just a few years younger. I've dove in 12 ft seas and while it wasn't fun on the boat, it was downright peaceful at depth.

 

[Pavao]

Was it really 6-7ft seas?
I was out that morning, in WPB, like pretty much all the operators out of WPB, it certainly wasn’t 6-7 up here and most of the time it’d be a foot less down by Broward-Palm Beach border where LadyGo operates from.
Seas were building up for the afternoon, but incident was on morning trip anyway.

 

[rx7diver]

I think people are confusing the term, this is a backroll…


Or maybe I’m the one not knowing the term well, I thought backroll was a term describing the technique above and nothing else. ...

[HIJACK]
We learned (1986, YMCA/NAUI university course) to do our surface entries before we were introduced to our BCD. So, we did NOT inflate or partially inflate our BCD before commencing the entry (obviously). So, wearing skin-diving gear (swimsuit, mask, fins, snorkel, and weight belt) and scuba (a single-hose regulator attached to a USD 72 mounted on a plastic backpack w/ harness), back roll (for example) into the water, and then, completely submerged and a bit below the surface, flip to a head-up orientation, look up, and slowly swim up to the surface while doing a 360 while looking up at the surface, being mindful of NOT crashing headfirst into your boat's hull (or having your boat's hull come crashing down on your head!!) and approaching boat traffic.

For my own recreational diving, I still prefer to do my entries this way--that is, without an inflated or partially-inflated BCD. When I introduced my then pre-teen daughters to scuba (sans BCD) a dozen or so years ago, I taught them this same approach.

Of course, this approach requires being "correctly" weighted.

rx7diver
[/HIJACK]

 

[Jollymon32]

Was it really 6-7ft seas?
I was out that morning, in WPB, like pretty much all the operators out of WPB, it certainly wasn’t 6-7 up here and most of the time it’d be a foot less down by Broward-Palm Beach border where LadyGo operates from.
Seas were building up for the afternoon, but incident was on morning trip anyway.

In the morning the winds were about 15 knots out of the west with seas running about 3 feet. The forecast called for a shift in the late morning early afternoon and it may have shifted earlier than forecasted resulting in crappy conditions.

Having said that, what I have noticed is how often people classify waves much bigger that what they actually are. 3 foot waves, at a short interval, are a dive stopper for me personally, but people are apt to call them 5 footers because how can you possibly not dive in 3 foot seas.

 

[MaxBottomtime]

We don't take our boat out if the seas are three feet with 15 knot winds. I've wasted far too many days of bad dives.

 

[BeerNye]

Things on a dive boat can get really hectic for the last 15 or 20 minutes before people are going to start stepping off the boat to dive. Everyone is trying to get their gear ready and on and there is hardly any space to move around on a full boat. The boat crew are trying keep things moving because nobody wants to lose dive time because someone in front of you trying to exit the boat is not ready or are having problems with something. Nobody wants to be that guy that delays everyone. In all the chaos, people can lose focus and forget the basics. I can totally see how it can happen to someone to enter the water without their valve on, but if you habitualize your prep routine, it helps.

This happened to me on my first dive in Pompano at the end of Feb. I lost track of timing and didn’t go through my normal pre-dive routine and panicked at the beginning of the dive, because I was trying to get comfortable and didn’t want to hold my buddies up. I immediately called the dive when I couldn’t get down (probably because I was hyperventilating/didn’t have my BCD fully empty.) Once I could clear my head, and did my normal pre-dive routine, everything was fine. Scary how quickly things can go south, and I’m feeling IMMENSELY grateful today after reading about this.

 

[Biotech Diver]

This happened to me on my first dive in Pompano at the end of Feb. I lost track of timing and didn’t go through my normal pre-dive routine and panicked at the beginning of the dive, because I was trying to get comfortable and didn’t want to hold my buddies up. I immediately called the dive when I couldn’t get down (probably because I was hyperventilating/didn’t have my BCD fully empty.) Once I could clear my head, and did my normal pre-dive routine, everything was fine. Scary how quickly things can go south, and I’m feeling IMMENSELY grateful today after reading about this.

I've called my second of a two dive trip several times. Once was because me and another person they paired me up with got blown off the reef by about a quarter to a third of a mile when diving off of Jupiter with Kyalami. Weather conditions (overcast with multiple thunderstorms in the distance and 3-4 foot swells) were not great that day and the current was ripp'n. I knew I was way off the reef because it was basically a sand desert with a bottom at between 80-100 feet. I signaled to the guy they partnered me with that I am going to deploy my SMB and go up. He shook his head, gave me the ok sign, turned around and kept going. I surfaced with about 2000 psi in my tank and the boat captain saw me and came and picked me up. They said they can drop me back on the reef to let me finish my dive but I declined and decided not to do the second dive. The other guy they partnered me up with was lucky we found him. He was the last one to get back on the boat. Me and the boat captain and one of the other boat crew were scanning the distance the whole time looking for him. I spotted him first and he was way out there. I'm bad at judging distance but he was a lot further out than where they picked me up. His SMB was barely visible, especially with the weather conditions of 3-4 feet swells and dark gray skies.

The second time I called the dive was when I dove off the Spiegel Grove. I was fine before and during the dive but when I got back onboard the boat after the first dive I had a massive headache. I might have had a slight DCS, I don't know, but I called the second dive anyway. I had no violations according to my dive computer, but it just wasn't my day.

There is no shame in calling off a dive for ANY reason. You have nothing to prove to anyone. The goals are to have a fun dive and get back home safe.

 

[VsubT]

In the morning the winds were about 15 knots out of the west with seas running about 3 feet. The forecast called for a shift in the late morning early afternoon and it may have shifted earlier than forecasted resulting in crappy conditions.

This is not accurate. Weather conditions reported from KPMP airport on 15 March were:

@Jollymon32, please stop posting inaccurate / misleading weather information for the incident date. The wind was from the SE, which tends to make seas rougher off Pompano Beach. Logged weather data from the KPMP station is available here.

Do you have a connection to the boat/shop involved?

Lance