Lessons to be learned-Death in Palau

[donacheson]

WreckWriter once bubbled...


These two statements are meant as jokes, right?

Actually, that was a joke because I know you were serious. I'm amazed but I know you were.

Tell me something, in all your hundreds of dives, have you ever done ONE which wasn't under someone else's guidance?

WW

Why be amazed. I've dived reefs in PNG where reef hooks were used regularly and I couldn't see any signs of damage to the coral. I've dived reefs in Palau and elswhere which never saw a reef hook, yet were devastated. Used carefully, reef hooks won't damage live coral, they just scratch dead coral.

It isn't that difficult to use a reef hook carefully and safely. In the case considered in this thread, I suspect that clipping the hook line to a BC played a significant role in the fatality; had the victim been holding on to a T-handle, I doubt it would have happened.

As for your last question, I fail to see the relevance. But taking it literally, I've done hundreds of dives without anyone's guidance beyond the pre-dive briefing. Likewise, I've done hundreds following a dive guide/divemaster. And your point is?

 

[MikeFerrara]

WreckWriter once bubbled...


Tell me something, in all your hundreds of dives, have you ever done ONE which wasn't under someone else's guidance?

WW

Now that was gentle:boom:

And people accuse me of being too direct.

Lets face it Diving, as most know it, isn't what some of us wish it was.

 

[MASS-Diver]

In almost all cases I tend to place blame on the diver that screwed up and not the DM or captain, BUT, in this case, regardless of what anyone says, this reef hookingt crap is over the top. This boat is going to get it's ass sued off and they deserve it. Clipping (and you just know it was a suicide clip or the like) on to the BCD of of a diver in a current is asking for trouble. Lines are scary, tearthing someone to the bottom in a strong current is the dumbest thing I've heard in a long time. And something tells me the deceased was not mistaken for an experinced tech diver.

I love to point out of the poor skills of vacation/tourist divers, but, in this case, this boat was really reckless......I was shocked to learn that someone could come up with such a stupid and dangerous idea.


BTW, I'm a strong swimmer, but, a 1 knot is the real deal in the ocean, never mind a 2 or 3, that's crazy.

 

[MikeFerrara]

snuggle once bubbled...
just got home and started to read other post on this thread and came to mike ferrara,s post and i do have to say that the post really bothered me when he said that we may never know what finished her off but she didnt do anything that she should of..no kidding mike..why would you say something like what finished her off..lets have some danm respect here for this lady who died..in that post i really didnt care for you imo..when you wrote about maybe she was just busy doing unproductive things out of panic andthe words what finished her off was distastefull to her and to her familly..i may get slammed for this post but right now i dont care if i do..a little respect for her please and remember her family in your prayers everyone..we werent there so we will never know what happened or why she did what she did...lets give this thread a rest please..

Hi Snuggle,

I don't think you should get slammed for your post. I didn't mean any disrespect and if you think my choice of words was poor I'll take your word for it. I may have done a poor job of saying what I intended to say. I meant to strongly draw attention to the fact that based on what I know she should not have had her weight belt off and should never have considered removing her scuba unit and that if what she wanted to do is ascend she should have simply cut the line and slowly and carefully ascended, mask or no mask and fin or no fin. You don't need either of those things to live. All you need is gas and she had that. It looks like pure panick to me. Why? Because of no having a mask? a fin? Should be no big deal. Even that though doesn't explain what caused her to lose conciousness. Is that better? Unless of course she was murdered? I do hope some one is asking questions. Looks funny to me.

I really don't think most divers are even prepared for a minor problem during a dive. Review some of my posts in this thread. I have witnessed divers hurting themselves by reacting out of blind panick and/or incomplete, inadequate or flat out incorrect training not to mention charters just droping them in the water so they don't have to pass up a fare. I very well may be preoccupied with wakeing people up that I don't watch how I word things.

There isn't anything we can do to help this person but there will be more. Except for the hart attacks they all avoidable. every single one. It all just seems so obvious to me that I can't understand why so many others don't get it.

Maybe we need to be less gentle with out language in order to wake people up and maybe prevent the next one. Instead we avoid placing blame out of respect for one we can no longer help.

 

[divegary]

IMHO, this is a tragic loss of life and the family has my sympathy. Responsibility for self needs to be part of every dive plan.

 

[The Chairman]

we are attributing the loss of gear to the conscious diver... and maybe that is assuming too much. When the lady hooked into the reef, there is a good possibility that the resultant tension on the line swung her head first into the reef dazing her or knocking her unconcious and her mask off. The continual pounding of her body and gear as she lay tethered to the reef might have caused releases to spring or give way. Once started to come undone, the pressure of the current would do all that it could to pull her from her BC, giving the illusion that she was trying to escape it. I can really see no way a paniced diver would drown with their reg still in their mouth... unless she literally died of fright (heart attack, etc). They usually drown because they lose their reg and simply can not find it in time.

As for the husband: friends, I am not sure it was humanly possible for a buddy team to stick together under those conditions. I would refrain from assigning ulterior motives to what happened or what will happen as he seeks his only recourse to "right" this wrong. Its really easy to condemn and judge actions of others from afar. It's far harder to put the magnifying glass on our lives and the way we dive and adjust those accordingly.

No, we will never know beyond a shadow of a doubt what happened and why. Most of what we have written is pure conjecture as we try to piece this accident together while missing way more than half of the facts. Hopefully, we have woken some sub-conscious demons that will cause the living divers to ponder the possible results of doing these "Trust Me" dives.

 

[99heritage]

I'm a new diver, and always reading accident reports to try and prepare for these situations.

I would love to invest in proper training....

What do you all consider "proper training" ???????

What classes can you recommend?????

 

[RICHinNC]

Jep to use your example....if i was in a car and i had hired the person to drive me...and he parked the car somewhere that put me in the danger of being hit by another car...it has no bearing whether or not i had my seatbelt on. And, I drive my car by myself every single day and no one gets upset i might get hurt or have a problem yet mention diving alone and the solo diving slams come out.

Diving is a dangerous business....although the agencies and most lds' never want to talk about that aspect. Talk to any Doctor on the board, if they are going to do even a simple operation procedure the waiver forms come out by the ream load....ever been on a dive boat you didnt sign a waiver...i havent....yet, ask any doctor what are the chances they will have legal action taken against them if something goes wrong on the operation....if it is their fault for negligence then they deserve the penalty...just as this dive operation does IMHO.....

and I still support your right to have a differing opinion regardless of how you present it

 

[annie]

I really agree strongly with what WJL posted about that poor woman not knowing everything she should have in advance. We don't know what she knew, but I think it raises a good point about many divers who get into situations thye're not able for.

>>But, I have serious doubts that she knew as much about what she was getting into as the operator did. You don't know what you don't know.<<

Also what Mike said about 'Trust me' dives. Certified divers should know all about personal responsibility etc but they don't all know that. They start off doing 'trust me' dives - trusting their lives to the instructor, and basically carry on that way for some time. Even if they know *in theory *about minding themselves and calling dives etc - not everybody really *gets it* at the same point, that they cannot rely on professionals, that they shouldn't do 'trust me' dives, that they really have to have it together themselves. Many divers do not think these things through cos they just don't know any better. It would never occur to them that the operator or DM might allow them into a dangerous situation.

 

[MikeFerrara]

NetDoc once bubbled...
we are attributing the loss of gear to the conscious diver... and maybe that is assuming too much.

Actually in two seperate posts I said I didn't think the loss of equipment explained the loss of conciousness.

When the lady hooked into the reef, there is a good possibility that the resultant tension on the line swung her head first into the reef dazing her or knocking her unconcious and her mask off. The continual pounding of her body and gear as she lay tethered to the reef might have caused releases to spring or give way. Once started to come undone, the pressure of the current would do all that it could to pull her from her BC, giving the illusion that she was trying to escape it. I can really see no way a paniced diver would drown with their reg still in their mouth... unless she literally died of fright (heart attack, etc). They usually drown because they lose their reg and simply can not find it in time.

Makes sense that she could habe been slammed into the reef.

As for the husband: friends, I am not sure it was humanly possible for a buddy team to stick together under those conditions. I would refrain from assigning ulterior motives to what happened or what will happen as he seeks his only recourse to "right" this wrong. Its really easy to condemn and judge actions of others from afar. It's far harder to put the magnifying glass on our lives and the way we dive and adjust those accordingly.

Lets assume it was not possible to stay together. Does anyone else have a problem with that? I'm afraid that paints a far worse picture of the dive plan than anything I was thinking. Divers do dive higher flow/current, they stay together and don't do STUPID things like tie themselves up on purpose.

Yes it is easy to comdemn and judge. Maybe I have been doing this too long because I see enough divers and enough classes that there just aren't any surprises here for me and I don't feel I need every little detail of the accident.
I don't care who disagrees or how but my opinion is that the poor woman was influenced by too many incompetants and never had time to wise up on her own.

No, we will never know beyond a shadow of a doubt what happened and why. Most of what we have written is pure conjecture as we try to piece this accident together while missing way more than half of the facts. Hopefully, we have woken some sub-conscious demons that will cause the living divers to ponder the possible results of doing these "Trust Me" dives.

Your right. Since nobody saw we will never know it all. Unfortunately I often hear that statement used to suggest that it may have been unavoidable, as if the cause was "bad luck". Those that use that argument are usually in faver of not changing anything. We hand divers a card if they can crawl through 4 dives and live. Then they head off to the seven seas jumping in where ever a DM leads or points. They dive deep, in overheads and current and after many dives they still look like students in the water. There are many screwed up dives and near misses that don't result in injury or death but anyone of them could and some do.

Read the DAN report. Buoyancy control problems were reported in like over 40% of the dives that resulted in injury. Just what the hell should that alone tell us? How many of you people read that report? How many of you instructors show it to your students?Now that still doesn't prove that was the cause but it does say that the divers who get hurt are the ones who don't have the basics squared away. And why is it again that someone should have a card without ever getting the basics squared away?