Diver lost from liveaboard off Saba

[rmorgan]

On November 18th:

The Daily Herald reports that a diver has gone missing off the coast of Saba since Monday, November 15. It concerns a 70-year-old woman from the United States who was visiting Saba as a tourist.

The Police Force Caribbean Netherlands KPCN received notice of a missing diver on Monday. “At Fort Bay we were informed that a group of divers and a divemaster went diving at 11:05 am and returned at 12:00 pm. When they returned, they realized that they were missing a diver,” said KPCN communication advisor Miluska Hansen on Wednesday, November 17.

The police searched the area where the woman went missing by air and boat. Several vessels in the vicinity also helped with the search. Later, members of the Dutch Caribbean Coast Guard substation in St. Maarten took over the search.

The search and investigation are still ongoing, the police said.

Sea Saba, which is the larger of what may now be two dive operations on the island, (and an exceptionally-good one in our experience) clarified that the diver had not been out with any of the land-based operators, so apparently she was on a liveaboard rather than "visiting Saba as a tourist." Today, the Daily Herald republished the same report, saying that there was no additional information. Thus, today is the 10th day since the diver did not return to the vessel. The only information I've been able to find is the Daily Herald report, which was also posted on Facebook.

Saba is a beautiful place to dive. Tent Bay is the port, so that gives no clue where the dive group was. 10 divers seems like a heavy load for one divemaster. A main attraction is a sea mount where the dive effectively begins at about 100', and there can be significant current. The pinnacles are quite narrow and so I'd think it's pretty much impossible to see everyone at once.

It may never be known what happened to this diver, but I've been surprised to find no mention of it anywhere but the threadbare report above, now repeated for lack of any further information. Perhaps someone here knows more. 10 days lost.

 

[drrich2]

10 divers seems like a heavy load for one divemaster.

If everyone's certified and he's just acting as a guide, perhaps not. Some live-aboard let buddy pairs go off on their own (and some in the Bahamas or California don't routinely provide free guide service), so it's not an obligatory function (again, assuming no one was in the student role, taking a class).

I mention this because non-divers with an interest in the case may run across this thread and think the operator was somehow negligent.

 

[rmorgan]

Indeed. There's no basis to draw any conclusions--just my thought.

 

[dlofting]

I can't find the reference to 10 divers, but I am a bit sight impaired.

 

[rmorgan]

DLofting, you're right. I can't find it either--I must've conflated the 11:05. Regrets.

 

[Steelyeyes]

My wife and I spent three weeks on Saba in September. We did 25 dives in that time and some of them were near the one and only liveaboard at that time that visited the island. While the two dive operations were good about keeping groups out of each other's way weather did put us together a couple of times.

One of those times their group kind of intersected and mingled with ours. They did have a pretty large group but I didn't study them for diver to dive master ratio.

Many of the sites are in or very close to deep water. Current can kick up quickly as well. Getting lost in the blue or swept away are both possible. Two dives in particular come to mind. It went from nearly dead calm to a spanking current in about 10 minutes. We terminated the dive a bit early and were huffing to get back to the boat on one of the Ladder Bay sites and making little headway but we all did it...but we were mostly in decent physical shape. I also remember coming up off of a pinnacle doing deep stops and safety stops on the buoy line hanging on like a flag in the breeze. The boat crew added a current line from the buoy to the aft end of the boat in addition to the trailing line off of the stern.

The ocean can be a harsh mistress.

 

[rmorgan]

We had a similar experience at (maybe) Tent Reef—we got pushed through the dive site and had to work pretty hard to get back to the boat. The pinnacles weren’t as rough for us as you, but still challenging. Perhaps there will be no record of what happened to this diver, but the event puts a fine point on the recent discussion about PLBs.