Diver lost 15 Jan 2013 Cozumel

[alibi 2]

This is such a tragic event, my thoughts and prayers to out to everyone involved. Reading these comments some are good and informative, some are hurtful and judgemental with out any knowledge of anyone involved...I really wish that we could learn from these situations without being sunday morning quarterbacks.

I won't comment on what happened last week because I was not there. I will say that a diver we trained in Dec. was there in the same group with the lost diver. It sounds like a sudden strong current hit them. She watched her depth, remained calm and swam back to the reef and ascend to 60' and located the group. She wrote to thank us for the training we gave her. All are greatly affected by this event. Like I said in the beginning our thoughts and prayers go out to all, and we will leave the investigation up to the officials and those involved, however we need to remember that this is a high risk sport and we all agree to take the risk everytime we enter the water, if we were not willing to take the risk then there would be no sport of scuba because the cost would be too high for the dive operators to take that responsiblity on themselves...They are responsible for actions they take that causes a death or injury, but most the time its just an accident and part of the risk we are agreed to take..

 

[dumpsterDiver]

Yes you might have I do actually brief divers not to hold on to the buoy, but not all comply with that. In the same briefing I tell the others to stay with me especially once the buoy is up because the current will take me quicker and I can't stay with them. In this case a couple of them paid attention to what I said, but a couple of them did not. So now I have an inexperienced diver hanging in the current on my buoy and a couple of people "hanging in the back" that didn't see this because they were to far back. Yes I can let go of my buoy, and loose two inexperienced divers with my buoy, or I stay with the inexperienced divers and loose the "experienced divers" (who a lot of times don't have a buoy, and experienced is sometimes also a debatable point).
I tried to keep the group together until the line broke. Any better solution would be appreciated.

That is a retarded situation.... You let the float go, the boat will find them and you send up another back up smb when you do ascend a few minutes later.... Seriously, you are a professional and this doesn't come immediately to mind?

 

[robbcayman]

Let me say up front, I am not a big fan of swim-throughs. But I am disappointed that a dive op would recognize a diver with limited skills and still lead the group through such features if that is what in fact occurred.

I don't do overhead environments. Strike that, I used to do the swim-throughs in Cozumel but I decided against it on my last trip. If someone panicked in a tight spot, if ripping current swept through etc.. it might not be ideal. The only interesting thing I ever remember seeing was some big crabs. I tell the DM ahead of time I will stay on the top and follow the bubbles. That's what I mean, though. If you are a diver and don't want to do something, feel uncomfortable with it etc.. say so. Don't feel like you're forced into doing something you don't want to, or that goes beyond your training. My primary goal is to return to the surface unharmed.

 

[redacted]

I don't do overhead environments. Strike that, I used to do the swim-throughs in Cozumel but I decided against it on my last trip. If someone panicked in a tight spot, if ripping current swept through etc.. it might not be ideal. The only interesting thing I ever remember seeing was some big crabs. I tell the DM ahead of time I will stay on the top and follow the bubbles. That's what I mean, though. If you are a diver and don't want to do something, feel uncomfortable with it etc.. say so. Don't feel like you're forced into doing something you don't want to, or that goes beyond your training. My primary goal is to return to the surface unharmed.

But that comes with experience. And you have to learn to follow the bubbles (not as easy as it sounds) and sort out 2 sets of bubbles when groups cross in the swim throughs. You need to note the fin colors and gear configurations of divers in your group (and in the other group(s)..

For inexperience divers, they may decide. last minute, that they don't like what they are getting into but the guide went in that hole and other divers and your buddy are following. Pretty hard to back out at that point especially after the guide emphasized in the briefing to follow him. I can see where that may put some divers between a rock and a hard place. and once they enter the hole, it is single file with the diver in front of you maybe never looking back. A potentially very stressful situation for an inexperience diver or even an experienced diver with confidence issues.

 

[Quero]

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A ScubaBoard Staff Message...

Thread reopened for posting. I have opened a parallel thread in Basic Scuba containing the multi-faceted discussion surrounding how to assess divers' preparedness for diving certain sites and how to safeguard less experienced divers. That new thread is here:
Check dives, private DMs, and local/shop policies

The moderation involved in sorting out the posts for both threads was extensive, and for this reason it is impossible to individually notify each member whose posts were relocated, edited or removed. However, I can say that I removed a number of posts related to three side topics rather than starting new threads with them: One was the whole blamestorming tangent with the associated rebuttals; one was the dead-horse tangent lamenting reductions in training standards, the naming of cert levels, etc.; the third was the blatant ethnocentric attack on another culture, which was not only off topic, but reprehensible. In addition, purely chatty posts were removed if they were not directly tied to either the incident nor to policies aimed at diver safety.

From this point forward, please try to stay focused in this thread here in A&I thread.

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[Divedaily]

Divedaily, I have seen no evidence anywhere of number of dives logged by the deceased, so let's not start that rumor here. I think it's been established that she was trained AOW in stateside freshwater but had never dived the ocean before that week. Whether she had more than a dozen dives or not no one here knows, or how long since the last one - altho it has been suggested that it had been considerable time.

This rumor is interesting tho...

It might not have been clear from my post that this was HEARSAY, so I will point that out once again. I find it remarkable that you tell me in the same post that you don't like me starting rumors, and then find the next rumor (from the same source, with the same appendix "HEARSAY") "very interesting".....

Forumrules state that HEARSAY must be recognizable as such. I'm pretty sure it was clear to most people that read it that my story was based on such. Very hard for me to decide what Dandydon likes to hear and what not though

Which doesn't mean it is correct btw., as as I might have mentioned, it was hearsay. When someone has better info from a source close to the incident I would like to hear. But up to now most info seems to be coming from the local newspaper, enough has been said about the trustworthyness of that.

 

[fred3798]

Has the diver been found?

 

[Divedaily]

I still have two inexperienced divers doing their safetystop in strong current on a buoy-line with my reel on the other side, floating about and probably getting caught on some reef (the reel that is) and pulling the buoy down.
But I'll leave the professionalism to you, thx for that tip though. I guess you have a stack of smb's plus line and reel btw.

 

[MMM]

Thank you Quero for the clean-up. It was badly needed.

In the time that the thread was closed, I got to thinking about what MIGHT be helpful to prevent a similar tragedy in the future, although its practicality has some limits. If one or more of the earlier posts is correct, the deceased had trouble around the entrance to the swim through. We don't know if she ever even made it in. Then her brothers were said to have gone a different direction in the swim through. The DM leading this dive would have not had any idea that either of these situations had occurred until well after the fact. On SOME dives I have been on (some in Coz and some elsewhere), there is a DM at the front and another at the rear of the group. (The latter might be a DM trainee...not sure) It strikes me that a DM at the rear would notice whether or not a diver has NOT entered the swim through (and perhaps accompany them along or beside the reef), and also be more likely to notice other divers who zigged when they were supposed to zag inside the swim through.

Yes, I know the buddy system is supposed to mitigate this from happening. And yes, I know it would add to the cost of the dive for the operator, even if the 2nd DM is a trainee because that is one less paying spot on the boat. But where you have a large group of fairly inexperienced and/or rusty divers and you know you will be doing swimthroughs where you know you will lose sight of your divers, it strikes me as one POSSIBLE way to better manage these situations. Right now, the default is largely that more experienced divers are toward the back of the group, the last to enter and the ones who may notice, if they are watching the whole group. As I said at the outset, this is not entirely practical, but COULD be one accident prevention option.

 

[Divedaily]

Right now, the default is largely that more experienced divers are toward the back of the group, the last to enter and the ones who may notice, if they are watching the whole group. As I said at the outset, this is not entirely practical, but COULD be one accident prevention option.

True. This is also the reason that in my opinion the 100/150 dives that I heard the victim had makes more sense in the story. Swimming at the back through swimthroughs, normally the divers in the back are not the divers with 10/15 dives (not with me anyway). Unless of course both her brothers had 100/150 dives, then I might have put her on the back with her two experienced brothers and take the other inexperienced closer.

As an aside, all divers (as far as I know) are being told they and their buddy are of course free to swim over swimthroughs and just follow the bubbles of the other divers