Equipment If you can't drop your weights and you are sinking

[CT-Rich]

BSAC did similar work on their incident reports and found cases where the casualty had surfaced, but subsequently went back down again. When found they still had their weights attached. BSAC training was modified, in the 2000s, to include the surface jettisoning of weights, on all divers grade courses. Thereby reminding Sports Divers, Dive Leaders, Advanced Divers and 1st Class what they were learned in Ocean Diver.

This is what I was taught 45 years ago. Buoyant ascents were also taught back then, but I was taught this was absolute last choice. In the OP’s scenario, ditching the student’s weight would not have made the situation worse, since she died on the bottom. Her getting bent or an embolism would still be better than dead on the bottom, or she might have continued to the surface and walked away completely Scot-free.

Even if the rescuing diver that tried to bring her up had muscled her off the bottom, there would be no guarantee she might not have slipped from his grasp and sunk back to the bottom and once the surface, she would still need to get to the exit point massively overweighted.