Diver watched as friend became disoriented and descended to death on famous shipwreck

[PR_SMITH]

《Mod Edit》
Drinking then diving is just nuts.

 

[Bierstadt]

Hmm. Well, he definitely dived the Niagara, I'll give him that. Strange that he decided he was fine with only diving it once, but he made his choice.

I don't think scuba attracts significantly more people who think like this guy than any other serious sport, but the ocean is probably less forgiving on consequences.

 

[BoltSnap]

Allah/God may forgive sins but stupidity is eternal.

 

[Shasta_man]

Given the description of viz there, I'd guess that he couldn't see the wreck when they stopped and alcohol and narc combined to make a good idea to keep going to see it, and by then he was gone. Sad story about multiple mistakes coupled with obsession.

 

[MB NZ]

Although a lot of diving happens in NZ, there isn't a huge culture of "recreational" diving. It's more about gathering seafood. Nitrox isn't really mainstream, never mind trimix! Risk taking is common to all aspects of life here. The wreck is close to where I live, I've fished over the top of it, but have never considered diving it for obvious reasons. Even on the best day, there is zero chance that the divers would have been able to see the wreck from 50 metres.

 

[Scared Silly]

Pattinson’s death from drowning was ruled an accident by the coroner.

An accident is an unintended, normally unwanted event that was not directly caused by humans. The term accident implies that nobody should be blamed, but the event may have been caused by unrecognized or unaddressed risks.

This incident was not an accident.

 

[Tritip]

No one mentions the time. At 4PM visibility is affected by less light plus IF anything goes wrong rescue or salvage is difficult at night. Why did they not plan it to be in morning or noon latest

 

[SlugLife]

No one mentions the time. At 4PM visibility is affected by less light plus IF anything goes wrong rescue or salvage is difficult at night. Why did they not plan it to be in morning or noon latest

Persons who already demonstrate a good amount of risk-taking and lack of judgment, probably aren't the kind of people to think of something like that.

 

[boulderjohn]

No one mentions the time. At 4PM visibility is affected by less light plus IF anything goes wrong rescue or salvage is difficult at night. Why did they not plan it to be in morning or noon latest

Persons who already demonstrate a good amount of risk-taking and lack of judgment, probably aren't the kind of people to think of something like that.

I don't know anything about this incident that was not in this thread, but these last posts remind me of a similar story that might be instructive.

The incident occurred in the American south, in the Louisiana area. The quick and simple version of the story is that two guys were fishing from a boat all day, drinking beer as they did, and at the end of the day, they decided to go spearfishing. The donned AL 80 tanks and entered the water in late afternoon. One of them decided to drop down to 200 feet (quite dark there by then) where he would find the big groupers. He didn't make it.

The ScubaBoard thread began predictably, with many posts like the ones in this thread. But then everything changed. The thread became filled with posts by new members, divers from that area, divers who stoutly (and rudely and aggressively) defended those diving practices. I was a moderator then. The thread grew so contentious that it became one of only a couple I know of in ScubaBoard history that was totally deleted.

My point was that to most people, what those divers did was outrageously wrong, but to a segment of the population, it was business as usual, and no one else had the right to judge people who were just out doing a normal day of diving. Diving is dangerous, they said. Sometimes you die. So what?

So from what kind of community did these divers come? Were they part of a peer group for whom such practices were business as usual?

 

[clownfishsydney]

I think it is a New Zealand thing. The total population of New Zealand is only 5.1 million, less than the population of Sydney. As far as I can see from these forums, there were at least six scuba diving deaths there in the past 8 months or so. In Sydney, there may have been one (someone heard it mentioned on the radio news but nothing in press at all) over this same period.

I think a lot is related to the hunter/gatherer culture that we do not have (it is not legal to use scuba to collect anything here). It also seems that many may not be trained and even if they are, they take extreme risks to collect as many creatures as possible. Maybe this also applies to other diving.