Diver Dead in South Florida

[johndiver999]

This is the typical "farm animal stupid" behavior that is rampant in the dive boat industry. I have had "well respected" dive boats back over my buddies and I twice and had one take off on my at full throttle while on the dive platform.(each episode was the last time I used each of those operators) All because they (i) backed down on us (ii) failed to shut off the motors while divers were boarding.

Worse, a large majority of the diving community thinks this kind of behavior is normal. This is not rocket science, you dont back down on people in the water and you shut off the motors when people are boarding. But the freaking moronic excuses you get for why you cant do one or both would be funny if it wasn't so dangerous.

What percentage of boats shut down their engines when picking people up - in your opinion? I think that is relatively rare.

It is a lot of wear and tear starting up and shutting off the engines for every pickup.

And the comment about backing down and visibility which was made by someone else... I think for a lot of boats, that provides the absolutely best visibility. However, I don't like to back down on divers when driving a boat.

 

[Johnoly]

This is the typical "farm animal stupid" behavior .... But the freaking moronic excuses you get for why you cant do one or both would be funny if it wasn't so dangerous.

I dive the JUP/WPB area and it is a very different type of diving. I will agree that it is one of the most dangerous(yet exciting) places to dive and everything below the water is trying to bite me as a harvester, and huge boats on autopilot are trying to kill us topside.

Seriously I'm not looking for an argument/troll, and I promise not to inflame the question. I just want to demonstrate different safety "perspectives" .
When you are in your vehicle, waiting at a cross walk with pedestrians, Do you turn your engine off for safety, (why/why not?)

 

[txgoose]

When you are in your vehicle, waiting at a cross walk with pedestrians, Do you turn your engine off for safety, (why/why not?)

I do not. Because I'm not driving the equivalent of a fan boat. If I was, it would likely have a guard all the way around it or our crosswalk practices would be vastly different.

 

[tridacna]

This comment on FB is scary:

"Previous day on Saturday he did same thing to another female diver but hit her speargun instead".

 

[Leighen]

"Previous day on Saturday he did same thing to another female diver but hit her speargun instead".

I spoke to the diver who witnessed the speargun incident firsthand, we have both dived off that boat. But he said nothing about it being "the same thing" as the unfortunate fatality which is the subject of this thread. As I understood it, there was no diver involved on that one. Here's more speculation, this diver also told me that Dustin was having trouble keeping the boat in neutral.

so credibility is based on number of posts

To some extent, for sure. I wouldn't buy expensive gear from a SB member with a half dozen posts who just registered last week. But an active member with 1000 posts who has been around for 5 years is going to get my money. That much said, oftentimes it's a matter of quality vs quantity.

 

[Wookie]

I spoke to the diver who witnessed this firsthand, we have both dived off that boat. Here's more speculation, this diver also told me that Dustin was having trouble keeping the boat in neutral.

I had that problem once. I stopped dive operations and went to the engineroom and fixed it.

 

[The Chairman]

I don't share user info with anyone except LEO. I was once sued for $10,000,000.00 for just that and I fought it successfully.

 

[hroark2112]

I would have nothing nice to say about this captain if law enforcement contacted me.

As far as speculation or other discussion of the incident, if you don't like it, steer clear of the A&I forum. Much of the speculation and discussion about the incidents can be used as a learning tool to prevent future incidents.

 

[hroark2112]

I'm not trying to keep you from reading or posting anywhere, I'm merely saying that if you're expecting or even hoping for the findings from any of the deaths in the scuba world you'll be in for a huge let-down. While the final results of the investigations would be very helpful in training divers, we almost never get those results.

This forum exists to discuss the accidents and incidents. There is a separate forum to express condolences for those who have passed.

 

[BRT]

Hi all,
Horrible accident, my thoughts go out to all who knew her.

From where I'm sitting, many thousands of miles away, it seems the captain may have made a grievous mistake, but that's up to authorities, lawyers and insurance companies and not up to me or -to me- this forum.

As far as I'm concerned, any diver doing stuff like this should use smbs, because a captain (of this boat and all other boats in the vicinity) isn't omniscient. If deploying the smb fails, there is a lot of other stuff divers should do like vertical ascent, leaving bubbles, hovering 10-15' below the surface to make sure everything is safe, etc. The problem with that is the fact that things can -and will go wrong- equipment failure, panic, dumb mistake, etc. that may cause divers to act unexpectedly, like surfacing too near/under a boat, too fast, you get me. Any captain should always take that into account.

This is probably where the inherent risk of the trade comes in. Generally, I would advocate against operating the engine with divers being within 300' of a boat in any direction. Ever. But with dives in less than absolute perfect conditions, that may leave divers unable to reach the boat which is also quite an issue. In a perfect world I would advocate using non-lethal means of propulsion near divers but I know too little about boating to know if that is an option.

From this accident, my lesson learned is to be more cautious around boats with a running engine and to start to always take along an smb with every dive and practice using it more (I mostly do shore dives in a lake without any boats around, but not exclusively).

I'm curious how you all feel about the issue of operating a boat anywhere near people in the water.

All dive boats I have been on operate the engine with the boat within a few feet of divers in the water. I certainly don't want to swim 300' to the boat.