Divers dying every lobster opening. This has to stop!

[vincent54]

Well...by definition..when you ask "What can we do, as a community, to stop this?".....an educated and responsible solution would REQUIRE.....and accident analysis......IJS

Agreed

 

[drrich2]

Ken Kurtis:

Your points are well taken, but historically we've been prone to consider the more direct effects on bystanders when it comes to the doctrine of 'Your rights end where my nose begins,' otherwise we'd have no individual rights. After all, if I die, somebody has to haul my body off if it's in the way, right?

Normally we don't consider the potential grief of loved ones as sufficient reason to curtail the rights of an individual. The issue of insurance costs is brought up at times, such as the hypothetical case of a cyclist becoming a quadriplegic due to not wearing a helmet (although I've heard a nickname for the ones who do is 'organ donors'), but we as a society do not have to grant insurance coverage or disability benefits to people who become severely crippled through acts of willful and knowing stupidity. We do choose to provide such, but we could 'just let them die.'

I am sympathetic to rescue workers and body recovery agency personnel, but I don't think concern about the impact on them is going to be widely seen as a sufficient justification to curtail rights.

After all, wouldn't it make cops' lives easier if all alcohol were stricken from the U.S.? Rates of car wrecks, domestic violence, bar fights...

Richard.

 

[raftingtigger]

A speculation on what goes through the mind of a lobster diver that is not in physical shape to do the dive by looking at what went through my husband's mind on a recent backpacking trip.

He is very experienced in backpacking and has for years been able to "just go backpacking" without much preparation. He has also been able to carry a lot heavier gear than is needed (or desired). However he is now 65 and hasn't been doing any exercise for the last few years. We went on a simple, but steep, 3 mile trek with his Boy Scout troop 2 weeks ago. About 1/2 mile into the trek he started to have trouble and got very fatigued. He was trail sweep and I was in the middle of the pack, but decided to wait for him at the first trail junction. After waiting what seemed like forever I dropped my pack and went back down the trail to find him sitting in the middle of the trail looking "like crap" to the point of temporary incapacitation. I started to get really concerned when he let me take some of his load, and even more so when he let another leader take the remainder of his pack. I'll tell you hiking up a trail while considering how long you can do CPR - or more importantly how long should (neither of us wants to live as a vegetable) do CPR is no fun. Had this happened diving there is a very good chance I would now be a widow.

We talked about it later and it was a real eye-opener for my husband. He could do it before, so he should be able to do it now. Doesn't matter he is 40 years older and bit fatter. He doesn't even look out of shape. It took an almost disaster, and embarrassment in front of the other scout leaders for him to see reality. He did go see the doctor, is starting a little exercise, and I've put his backpack on a strict diet. It wasn't that he didn't have enough clues - some pointed from me - before hand. He just wasn't willing to see them before.

 

[drrich2]

The hiking example by Raftingtigger got me thinking. In some activities, you often get some 'educational feedback' if you do it wrong or push too hard. Exercise too hard, fatigue, pain, sore muscles. That sort of thing. Stay out unprotected in the sun too long, sun burn.

Scuba lends itself to being fairly easy until a problem hits. Such as OOA. Then, all of a sudden, you've got a big problem. If you didn't see it coming and don't respond correctly in a rational, informed manner, it can quickly become a fatal problem. And you don't have a lot of time to stop and think through what to do. Now throw fear and potential panic into the mix.

With all the threads criticizing how task focused & oblivious some photographers can be, and advising newbies not too take a camera diving until they're quite comfortable/seasoned in the water, a one trip/year diver excitedly pursuing a goal-directed hunt for elusive and resisting live prey at depth sounds like the death reports perhaps shouldn't be such a shock.

Richard.

 

[red_instead]

SCUBA is also one of those activities where you tend to have some people whose experience lends them to be somewhat reckless. A lot of intermediate level divers hit a point where they stop doing their checklists, or push limits that they shouldn't, precisely because their prior easy experience has made them feel safe and overly confident while breathing compressed air under 80 fsw. And that's when problems happen.

 

[Ken Kurtis]

In some activities, you often get some 'educational feedback' if you do it wrong or push too hard.

This is an excellent point but I'd argue that you DO get this feedback in scuba, although it comes in different forms. Perhaps you're the guy (the generic "you" not the Richard "you") who always comes back with 200psi in your tank. Not a problem until the day your gauge is off or you stay ten minutes longer. Or you're the guy who can never seem to make it back to the boat and always surfaces 30 yards away. Not a problem until there's a strong current and you surface 230 yards away and can't make it back.

The feedback we get from our dives, unlike Raftingtigger's excellent example, isn't always physical. And if the only way you judge your dives is by the I'm-fine-and-not-tired metric, you may be cruisin' for a brusin'.

Scuba lends itself to being fairly easy until a problem hits. Such as OOA. Then, all of a sudden, you've got a big problem.

I'd quibble with "all of a sudden." Yes, you went from no problems to major problems in a blink of an eye. But it didn't happen "all of a sudden." You were setting up the problem for quite some time and then hit a tipping point. No one runs out of air "all of a sudden". It usually takes anywhere from 30-60 minutes depending on depth. You know those divers who look scared to death and dive with their pressure guage or computer in their hands and obsessively check it every minute? Ever hear of any of THEM running out of air?

With all the threads criticizing how task focused & oblivious some photographers can be, and advising newbies not too take a camera diving until they're quite comfortable/seasoned in the water, a one trip/year diver excitedly pursuing a goal-directed hunt for elusive and resisting live prey at depth sounds like the death reports perhaps shouldn't be such a shock.

Agreed. And while many of us preach some warm-up dives before the season starts, take it easy on your first dives, keep your dives short, keep them shallow, etc., etc., the people who hear our message are the ones who probably don't need it and the ones who need it the most either never hear it or don't think it applies to them. Very sad.

- Ken

---------- Post added October 7th, 2014 at 06:35 PM ----------

. . . their prior easy experience has made them feel safe and overly confident while breathing compressed air under 80 fsw. And that's when problems happen.

Bingo. Past is not prologue. Just because nothing bad happened before doesn't mean it was a good plan.

- Ken

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

Some people will go to extraordinary lenghts to capture lobsters. I'm sure people have heard about the 15' hookah line used as a primary. Bug divers will take off their pack, set it by the entrance to a cave or crack, maybe an overhang that has only enough room for a body without a tank, and they go in on hookah grabbing bugs, many times at night and solo. All that would have to happen is they lose the 2nd stage, or silt it out so bad they cant see a thing (thrashing lobsters), or maybe get bit by a moray as they are reaching back into the deepest crack after a bug. I always saw this practice as the pinnacle of crazy behavior.
I've heard of freedivers going back into these cracks too, at night with a little light.
That's one thing I promised myself, that my air would stay on my back. That's a line I am not comfortable crossing.
Opening day on many things always causes manic behavior. I know for ab season up here we get all sorts of people from many states away that come here. There are a lot of campgrounds in this area and that's where you'll see hordes of divers. Then there's typical camping, away from everything, hanging out with buddies, lots of beer/ booze, lot's of good fattening food, staying up late around a fire only to dive compromised the next day. Combine this with being out of shape, overweight, hungover and tired, big ocean/swell conditions, strong rip currents, lack of experience, limited vacation time, and you have a perfect storm of problems.
The rescues are no easy task either, It usually requires someone to rappel down a cliff to attach a harness, then a chopper to yank them out. Sometimes if the diver is already dead and washing around in the rocks they will drop a rescuer down a line from the chopper (tea bag) and try to pluck them out. If the conditions deteriorate too far they will leave them until a recovery is safe to do.
So yeah, there are a lot more people involved and exposed to danger when one guy decides to be stupid.
Down in LA where lobster accidents happen the rescues might not be as gnarly but there are more people involved and the costs are higher.

What do they do about it? Nothing, there isn't anything they can do. Even if a group of idiots decides they want to go out on a nasty day and a park ranger or other authority is right there they can't stop them. Other than strongly advising them and talking to them they can't physically stand in their way. They don't officially close beaches up here for conditions, only sharks.

 

[drrich2]

No one runs out of air "all of a sudden".

I see your point. What I was thinking of here was the diver who's not adequately monitoring his gas consumption, who notices one or two breaths are harder than they should be, then can't draw a breath, then realizes his tank is empty. The tank didn't run out of air all of a sudden, very true, but he became aware of it that way.

Richard.

 

[Ken Kurtis]

From the Orange County Register;
DEADLY WEEK IN DIVING
Sept. 27: A diver complained of health issues while diving near Catalina Island, and U.S. Coast Guard officers pulled him from the water and handed him to a private emergency medical service ambulance, Petty Officer Andrea Anderson said. The diver died on his way to the hospital. There's no other information on the diver at this time, Anderson said.

This one's not correct. It was one that neither the Chamber nor the Coroner was aware of so we did some follow-up with PO Anderson. It seems the Register got it wrong and combined two accidents to create a third that doesn't exist.

There was a fatality on Santa Cruz on 9/27, where they attempted to contact a private air ambulance service who could not do a pickup. USCG was in the area and came over to assist but it was too rough for them to directly intervene and the dive boat had the situation in hand. Due to water conditions, the dive boat made the crossing back to the mainland to offload the victim, who had been declared dead by that point.

The Catalina fatality ocurred the evening of 9/29 and the body was not recovered until 10/2.

So the total (still too many) is 5 as MaxBottomtime listed in post #85, not 6 as I had thought, the difference being the first one in Max's post was actually at Anacapa on 9/27, not Catalina, the Coast Guard was on-scene but did not get directly involved due to water conditions, the victim surfaced unconscious rather than complained of feeling unwell, and was pronounced on the boat, not on the way to the hospital.

The other four that Max lists are, sadly, correct.

- Ken

 

[Zeagle Eagle]

Oh oh, I know! Don’t sell dead divers fishing licenses. Now if we could only make them stop voting.

---------- Post added October 3rd, 2014 at 03:45 PM ----------



So true. A Scuba diver forgetting to drop their weight belt is like a sky diver forgetting open their parachute.

A sky diver opens his chute on every single flight. A scuba diver can go an entire career and never dump his weights. A pilot, every two years, must take a proficiency check or biannual review to prove you still "have it". Perhaps we need that in the dive community. I agree 5 deaths in one lobster season is way too many. I read a lot, I haunt the forums, I practice my skills, sharing air, dropping weights, shooting my SMB etc; but, most people never do.