Divers dying every lobster opening. This has to stop!

[Scubatude]

I work in an emergency room, and I will tell you that there is nothing you can do that will eliminate deaths and accidents due to carelessness, bravado, or people overestimating their capacities.

Educational programs do work to an extent -- people whose only fault is ignorance can be warned. But people whose fault is arrogance will still go on to do what they do.

We as a community allow them to "do what they do". We even encourage it. We have specials for lobster opening boats and everyone is welcome.

How about we start by speaking up? "Divers don't let friends dive stupid" (or outside their ability)

 

[MaxBottomtime]

I have seen first hand what normally intelligent divers will do during a lobster dive. With barely enough air left to surface they will spot a large bug in a hole and go for that one last meal. Once the blinders are on the spg becomes invisible. The lucky ones pop to the surface gasping for air with enough brain power left to manually inflate their BCD. Some don't make it that far.
Opening Day of lobster season has become a mania. Dive shops offer specials on bags and lights. Magazines feature cover stories about it. Online bulletin boards are filled with posters excited about the upcoming prospects. It's all some divers seem to think about. It's like Black Friday for divers. The lobsters will still be there next week, yet everyone rushes to get in the water Saturday night, ready or not.

 

[fnfalman]

We as a community allow them to "do what they do". We even encourage it. We have specials for lobster opening boats and everyone is welcome.

How about we start by speaking up? "Divers don't let friends dive stupid" (or outside their ability)

And what exactly are you going to do? Pull their C-cards? Check their log book?

People do what they do and they pay the ultimate consequences.

I don't like to see people dying for stupid reasons, but hey, it's their lives and they know the risks. Oh, they know the risks, but they elect to ignore the hazards.

 

[Akimbo]

Same problem during Abalone season up here... come to think of it, we have the same problem with non-diving tourists getting swept off rocks or back up too close to the cliff for a snapshot. Of course all that pales in comparison to California Freeways.

 

[Dr. Lecter]

Why does it have to stop? You makes your choices and you takes your chances. We're all going sometime, and while it's great to tell someone something that might save them from an unnecessary early ending, there's no way we're getting to zero accidental deaths without putting everyone in a bubble. On an individual basis you want to avoid death, but statistically speaking zero isn't a realistic or even desirable goal.

 

[Rich Keller]

The diving deaths in our community are senseless and needless. Something needs to be done. I have some of my own thoughts, but want to hear yours. What can we do, as a community, to stop this?

Teach them to drop their weights in an emergency not just when they are on the surface as training agencies teach now. I have not read any of the reports about these deaths but I am sure most if not all were found dead wearing their weights. If you are found dead wearing your weights it is because you were a fracking MORON and that cost you your life. How fracking stupid do you have to be to die like that? Change that and a lot more divers will be saved worldwide not just in So Cal or Florida at the start of lobster season.

 

[Akimbo]

And what exactly are you going to do? Pull their C-cards? Check their log book?....

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 ----------

…If you are found dead wearing your weights it is because you were a fracking MORON and that cost you your life. How fracking stupid do you have to be to die like that?...

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

 

[mselenaous]

Truly a sad and preventable tragedy. Sadly the dive community doesnt seem to learn from these and continues to perpetuate this right of passage and lobster mania. When I worked in SoCal my shop's dive club had a death during its lobster opener event. It happens every year here in the Florida Keys.

 

[dytis-sm]

Teach them to drop their weights in an emergency not just when they are on the surface as training agencies teach now. I have not read any of the reports about these deaths but I am sure most if not all were found dead wearing their weights. If you are found dead wearing your weights it is because you were a fracking MORON and that cost you your life. How fracking stupid do you have to be to die like that? Change that and a lot more divers will be saved worldwide not just in So Cal or Florida at the start of lobster season.

Talking about ditching weights, here is an additional parameter that changes around lobster season: the size of tanks. All my friends including me use the largest tanks we have to maximize our bottom time. That means heavier steel (usually) tanks that if worn with a back-plate, need hardly any weight in your belt. In an emergency, just dropping your weight belt may not be sufficient. Now add heavy lights, a diving bag with some lobsters, and varying conditions, and you can understand why things can be differ... People need more understanding of weight and emergencies to properly handle what some assume is solved by ditching a weight belt.

The biggest problem is what Dr. Bill has been preaching. Lack of diving prior to the opening and unfamiliarity with the diving area. I met people on lobster boats that drive from Nevada and Arizona to dive on opening day after being on a diving hibernation since the closing of the last season. That should explain why it all happens on lobster season opening day. It is not the lobsters, it is just the return to the water for many divers. In none of those cases mentioned there is a slight indication that a victim run out of air chasing one more lobster...

 

[drrich2]

Divers dying every lobster opening. This has to stop!

The diving deaths in our community are senseless and needless. Something needs to be done.

We as a community allow them to "do what they do".

Allow?

It's been a long time in America since I often heard people say 'It's a free country.' And the trend keeps getting worse...

If you, or anyone, wishes liberty as an adult, to live your life as you see fit in as much as you don't infringe the rights of others, then you must accept that liberty as a right of other adults, who will live their lives as they see fit and make some decisions you consider foolish and dangerous. Some of those decisions will end badly.

That is sad, but 'our' (what a laugh that is) government is continually morphing into the sort of thing our founding fathers declared our independence from and rose up to fight, till liberty or quite possibly death.

Promoting public education to encourage better decision making is something I suspect we can all get behind. Anymore than that, and I think you're likely going to far.

Of course some of the deaths seem senseless. I don't dive for lobster or abalone, and whenever I hear of someone dieing while doing so, I think of the animal in question and mentally ask 'And you died over that? Seriously?' But the more 'challenging' rock climbing and skiing expeditions, or climbing Everest for that matter, look nuts to me, too. But I'm not out to block anybody from doing them. And I am wary of the mindset that we are 'allowing' people to do these activities.

Richard.