Diver found missing in Laguna's Shaw's Cove

[Sam Miller III]

Since the introduction of the Aqua Lung in 1948 there was a concern in the sport about diver distraction and running out of air. The very first units to reach our shores came equipped with a J valve--a special valve that when activated released a predetermined amount of reserve air (300 to 700 PSI) However the double hose regulator's propensity for increased difficult in breathing when low on air, gave the diver a certain amount of warning and generally, but not always, allowed the diver to perform a normal ascent. If not it was "blow and go flair and you are there..."

With the introduction of the single hose regulator to the American market in 1954 (54 ?-Rose Pro) there has been increased concern since the single hose generally had better flat line breathing characteristics and did not present a warning of restricted or reduced breathing effort as the double hose.
This gave rise to the reintroduction of the long dormant seldom used SPG allowing the diver to monitor his air supply, rate of consumption and especially air remaining, which was initially and generally ignored.

The industry recognized the problem and developed a number of solutions, Heathways and SCUBA Pro developed regulators that would emit a audio alarm, Desco introduced a mask that had a ever so tiny light that warned the diver of low air, US Divers (aka Aqua Lung) created a special valve that struck the interior of the tank when air supply was low creating a very loud banging sound. All of those innovations were also ignored by the diver of the era and have also been discarded with the passage of time.

Now the diver has every instrument possible to monitor every conceivable function -- Yet the instruments are still ignored and divers are now distracted by their cameras while engaged in taking photographs. They buy the farm in 25 feet of water with never a thought of "ditch, blow and go flair and you are there."

This death reflects not only on the class instructor but also on the poor quality of diving instruction from the basic diver to the super duper poper instructor and any agency that allows any one with minimal water skills and the funds to advance through the ranks to wear the patch of a SCUBA Instructor.

SDM
NAUI Instructor number 27

Ken, Joe went out of business a few years ago, then reopened again with new partner and $$$ It is suggested that google :

Dive and Photo, Orange County's Scuba Dive Shop
*
About Dive and Photo, Orange County's Scuba Dive Shop - 14k - similar pages
Joe Liburdi's Dive and Photo is also the Orange County Scuba Store and Dive Shop featuring sales, service and Scuba Diving courses, certification and lessons .

Lets get together at the SCUBA Show-I have a few not so well known historical items I would like to pass on to you. I will be with Pat Smith
SDM

---------- Post added April 22nd, 2013 at 07:51 AM ----------

Has this thread run it's course?

No more comments?

Frankly I found it very interesting early morning reading..

SDM

 

[Hatul]

Here's more public info on this.

Diver Found Dead Taking SCUBA Class

The remarkable thing is there were two instructors and two students: Mark and his wife. That's one instructor per student. How they can lose him is beyond me.

 

[Ken Kurtis]

The remarkable thing is there were two instructors and two students: Mark and his wife. That's one instructor per student. How they can lose him is beyond me.

One thing we don't know is what the buddy pairing was. Was it Mark and his wife and the two instructors flanking/watching? Was it Mark with instructor 1 and wife with instructor 2? Or was it a case of "Let's all go diving and we'll all stick together" which means no one was watching anyone.

If it was the first scenario, I could certainly envision it being something where instructor 1 was leading and thought instructor 2 was watching, but instructor 2 thought instructor 1 was watching and neither noticed Mark missing until it was too late. If it's the second scenario where each diver had an instructor-buddy, yes, it's harder to fathom how he could get separated and not be noticed. Given that the article seems to imply the three surfaced together when they discovered Mark was not with them, I'm thinking the scenario was either the first or third version.

Also don't forget that with 10-foot or so of vis, it doesn't take much of a pause by one diver until the group has moved sufficiently ahead to be out of sight and very difficult to find. A momentary lapse in attentiveness - by anyone in the dive group - in 10-foot vis has much different ramifications than when the vis is 100-feet.

And finally, I take the term "instructor" with a bit of a grain of salt. They could have been Divemasters. The term "instructor" is loosely used to indicate anyone leading a dive in the same way, in this case, the word "class" has been thrown around and "student", even though we now know they were certified divers doing a guided tune-up dive.

- Ken

 

[Selchie in LB]

One thing we don't know is what the buddy pairing was. Was it Mark and his wife and the two instructors flanking/watching? Was it Mark with instructor 1 and wife with instructor 2? Or was it a case of "Let's all go diving and we'll all stick together" which means no one was watching anyone.

- Ken

SITUATIONAL AWARENESS & TEAM DIVING

Call it DIR, call tech diving, call it whatever you want, but none if the Open Water courses teach this unless the instructor is trained and uses the method.

Sent from my LG-P999 using Tapatalk 2

 

[Sam Miller III]

That settles it! The instructors and students were from Joe Liburdi's Dive and Photo .

Check the following thread;

"Dive and Photo, Orange County's Scuba Dive Shop
* About Dive and Photo, Orange County's Scuba Dive Shop - 14k - similar pages
Joe Liburdi's Dive and Photo is also the Orange County Scuba Store and Dive Shop featuring sales, service and Scuba Diving courses, certification and lessons".

I repeat--This death reflects not only on the class instructor but also on the poor quality of diving instruction from the basic diver to the super duper poper instructor and any agency that allows any one with minimal water skills and the funds to advance through the ranks to wear the patch of a SCUBA Instructor.

This tragic unnecessary death has all the ear marks of litigation against the shop and certainly against the instructors.

Not one of you were alive in the early 1960s when Laguna Beach attempted to establish a city ordnance to allow access to the city beaches to only Laguna Beach residences and to prohibit all forms of diving. It was called The Battle of Laguna beach...and resulted in the "Laguna Beach Diving ordinance."


During the past few years the ordinance although is on the books and still valid it has essentially been ignored by Laguna Beach city fathers, life guards and visiting divers. An event such as this one at he beginning of the dive season could have adverse effects on the diving community--time will tell.

SDM

 

[fisheater]

Here's the text of the main part of the Laguna Beach Ordinance, as it stands today:

It doesn't restrict use to residents (which would conflict with state law). It doesn't prohibit diving, except when the diver is a danger to him/herself or others, or when a designated official says it conditions are too poor for diving (though that can include you not have proper equipment [BCs appear to be required] or a buddy.)

18.21.030 Hazardous skin diving and scuba diving—Discontinuance orders authorized.
(a) Hazard to Others or Self. No person shall participate in any skin diving or scuba diving activity at any time in the Pacific Ocean within the city in a manner that constitutes a hazard to any other person or to themselves.
(b) Authorized Order to Discontinue Skin Diving or Scuba Diving. The city manager, marine safety chief, police chief or their authorized designees, or any officer or employee designated by the city manager to enforce surfing regulations and control skin diving and scuba diving activities, may prohibit skin diving and scuba diving at any time diving conditions become hazardous as a result of storm, congestion of persons, lack of proper equipment (such equipment to include mask, fins, snorkel, buoyancy compensator and diving partner) or other conditions which cause a present danger to the persons skin diving or scuba diving or to others. No person shall fail, refuse or neglect to stop skin diving or scuba diving activities or to leave the water when ordered to do so by any such employee of the city. (Ord. 1369 § 7, 2000; Ord. 1157 § 1, 1988; Ord. 506 (part), 1962).


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

 

[freewillie]

That settles it! The instructors and students were from Joe Liburdi's Dive and Photo .

Check the following thread;

"Dive and Photo, Orange County's Scuba Dive Shop
* About Dive and Photo, Orange County's Scuba Dive Shop - 14k - similar pages
Joe Liburdi's Dive and Photo is also the Orange County Scuba Store and Dive Shop featuring sales, service and Scuba Diving courses, certification and lessons".

I repeat--This death reflects not only on the class instructor but also on the poor quality of diving instruction from the basic diver to the super duper poper instructor and any agency that allows any one with minimal water skills and the funds to advance through the ranks to wear the patch of a SCUBA Instructor.

This tragic unnecessary death has all the ear marks of litigation against the shop and certainly against the instructors.

Not one of you were alive in the early 1960s when Laguna Beach attempted to establish a city ordnance to allow access to the city beaches to only Laguna Beach residences and to prohibit all forms of diving. It was called The Battle of Laguna beach...and resulted in the "Laguna Beach Diving ordinance."


During the past few years the ordinance although is on the books and still valid it has essentially been ignored by Laguna Beach city fathers, life guards and visiting divers. An event such as this one at he beginning of the dive season could have adverse effects on the diving community--time will tell.

SDM

Do you actually know that the shop has poor quality dive instruction or are you making a judgement based on the fact one of the shop's instructors had a fatatlity?

Full disclosure, Dive and Photo happens to be my LDS of choice. I obtained my certification for OW and AOW through their store both when Joe still owned the shop and after he sold the business. One instructor there has been my instructor of choice and I will still have had him train my daughter for AOW training this summer. I felt like I received quality dive education and instruction and would not hesitate to recommend him as an instructor to friends and family.

I do not know who the exact instructor was that was involved with the accident. I will say that the two owners are both passionate about the sport of diving and are not just simply running a business for profit. They truley care about diving and enjoy sharing that passion with their customers.

They on occasion will dive and invite customers to dive with them like a dive club. The latter may be a possibility as well. If the students trained at their store (they were supposed to have had OW certification) asked to come along more as a social "we'd like to dive with other more experienced divers" and no formal arrangement were made for actual instruction then it would have been more like any other dive club outing. We just don't know all of the factors and the situation for the day so I would be careful about assigning blame without all the facts.

 

[Ken Kurtis]

I repeat--This death reflects not only on the class instructor but also on the poor quality of diving instruction from the basic diver to the super duper poper instructor and any agency that allows any one with minimal water skills and the funds to advance through the ranks to wear the patch of a SCUBA Instructor.

Sam, much as I respect your opinion and historical knowledge of our sport, I think you're making WAAAY too many leaps here and unfairly castigating these specific instructors (if they were even instructors as opposed to DMs). While I agree with you that on a very broad basis, the overall quality of dive instruction today is not the same as it was "back in the goold old days" (or even just ten years ago), by the same token, if it's as bad as we all claim it is, shouldn't we also be seeing a dramatic rise in the number of fatalities each year? And the reality is that the raw number has actually declined. (I'm not getting into a statistics battle here so don't start arguing over ratios and numbers of diver-dives and stuff like that. Just making a broad point.)

This tragic unnecessary death has all the ear marks of litigation against the shop and certainly against the instructors.

Again, an unfair leap to find fault I think. We don't know what the buddy pairing was. For all we know, Gibbs deliberately swam off in a different direction despite the best efforts of those leading the dive. I'm not saying he did, I'm simply pointing out that we don't really know WHAT casued the separation, or how far into the dive it occurred or how quickly after the separation the other three surfaced. From a guiding/leading/teaching standpoint, you can do everything "right" &/or by-the-book and things can still go south.

I'm consulting on two cases right now where the essential plaintiff's position is "He's dead and it happened on the dive so it must be your fault." There will be plenty of opportunity for baseless accusations down the road. I don't think we need to fuel those flames here.

- Ken

 

[merxlin]

The fact is if you dive you might die. Statistics prove that most times it will be because of an error in judgement and bad decision making. A buddy is not a guarantee of safety, only an added cushion of safety.

I'll be the first to raise the question about why the diver did not dump his weights when he surfaced and yelled for help. Even with no air in his BC, he should have been buoyant with no weights and perhaps might have been able to have received help from shore.

 

[Rainer]

Not being familiar with this site, are there areas where, if you ended up surfacing there, you could NOT stay safely on the surface? I know, for example, that at Whaler's Cove in Monterey, if you surface in the rocks at the entry to the cove, you could end up in significant danger of injury from waves knocking you into the rocks. If where he surfaced wasn't like that, I suppose it's possible that he surfaced out of gas, and did not remember to drop weights or orally inflate. Stories involving that are common, and are why we now have our OW students don weight belts for their pool sessions, and drop them the first time they surface. We want to burn that possibility into their minds as much as possible.

The trenches/tunnels/crevasses/caverns at Shaw's Cove can certainly get dangerous on a rough day. In fact, I'd say they're really only safely dived on the calmest of Laguna days. You can see some of the water movement through one such early passage in the following video. It's from a pretty calm / decent visibility day last year, but still rough enough that we turned back after only a few minutes and probably less than 100' of progress. The entire area is rather shallow, with some decent depth changes due to the local contour, which given the already shallow depth means buoyancy swings are decent (e.g. going from 20' to 8' then back down to 15' as you pass along the reef).

On a rough day, the area above the reef can be especially dangerous. I would not want to ascend where the waves are crashing over the exposed rocks. I wouldn't say it's as bad as the area out of Whaler's Cove, but I've seen it look downright nasty on occasion. I *definitely* would not want to be exploring the Shaw's caverns on such a day underwater either. The outside edge of the reef is usually fine, even when visibility is low due to wave/swell action (though on such days going for breakfast instead still seems like the better option).

[video=vimeo;35307378]https://vimeo.com/35307378[/video]