billmcentee
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Hi,
My wife and I just returned from a dive trip in Fiji and I wanted to let you all know about a life threatening dive experience that we encountered on our first day of diving there.
Let me state at the beginning that my wife and I are long time divers. I've been diving for almost 20 years and my wife has been diving for about 12 years and I've logged close to 600 dives and we have never experienced anything like what we encountered.
We left from Boston on a Friday and 32 hours of traveling we arrived at the Matava Resort on the Kadavu Island. Other than long travel time, our dive vacation was going splendid. Now, we chose this rustic dive resort because it was very close to the reefs (only 15 minutes out by boat). After a pleasant dinner and a good night of sleep, we were ready for our first day of diving.
Well, a storm has just come by the day before and the water was a bit rough and the dive master and boat captain decided that that main reefs were too rough to dive, so they decided that the best thing to do was to go to the end of the island about 50 minutes from the resort and dive near some tiny very remote islands instead.
It was just going to be my wife, myself and a Australian man, Paul who was there to primary fish the entire stay and who decided that he would do just one day of diving. He mentioned that he hadn't dove in over a year and only dives every few years . he let us know that he wasn't a great diver. No big deal as we are used to diving with people of all experiences and we had been new divers at one point.
So we get to the site and do our first dive, which went fine. It was a short drift dive where we did a nice shallow slow dive. The dive was only 40 minutes tops because Paul blew through his air quickly. My wife and I both came up with about 2000 PSI left. We did our 50 minute surface wait on a little island and then left for our next dive. This is where things went horribly wrong.
The dive master gives a brief statement that we were going to do a 30 minute 'superman' drift dive. I was a bit miffed that we traveling 32 hours the day before to only be doing very short dives, but I kept it to myself as I figured it was because Paul was a relatively inexperienced diver. Little did I know, that the dive would last over 5 hours.
So we get to the new site and the dive master jumps in the water and swims around for 10 minutes or so trying to determine where the currents at the site were. It appears that the ocean currents at this area were a bit confused. He comes up and says let dive.
We all jump into the water and head down. I knew things were going to be a bit dicey, because the visibility was only about 10 to 20 feet. I guess the goal was to head in one direction and then pick up a strong current at the other end of a point. Unfortunately, it appears the dive master miscalculated the dive as we immediately began to swim into a very strong current. At one point, I was swimming as hard as I could just to remain at the same spot. My poor wife was trying to stay low next to the reef and at one point she was trying to pull herself forward by grabbing onto the reef, so that we could keep up with the dive master. About 10 minutes into the dive, we lose site of the dive master as he swims away with Paul. Never once did he bother to look back to see if we were with him or if there were any issues. As my wife is burning through here air, we made a decision to abandon the dive and head to the boat. We did a slow ascent with a safety stop and the current pulled us right back to the start of the dive. We lucked out in that we came up within 20 feet of the dive boat. Or so we thought.
We yelled out to the boat captain that we were there next to boat and come get us. He appeared to not notice us. We started to wave and blow our dive whistle. Still he was ignoring us. At that point we realized he had earbuds in and was listening to his music. So I started to swim to the boat to knock on the side of the boat to let him know we were there. Unfortunately, the boat captain had other ideas. He reeves up the motor and leaves. Rather than drift along with the divers and follow their bubbles like I'm used to during drift dives, he just sat at the start of the dive and then decides that we would come up about 3/4 of mile from where we started near a sand bar marker. So my wife and are a bit miffed as we see the dive boat leave. No worries. We figure he will come back for us after he picks up the dive master and Paul. Later, I learned from Paul that they never did get to a current where they could dive along with and that they instead headed into a strong current the entire time and the dive only lasted about 20 minutes.
My wife and I watched the boat pick up Paul and the dive master about 10 minutes after we surfaced. We still weren't worried that even though we were in seas that had 1 to 2 foot waves they would still come back for us. However, we watched that boat start to move further and further away, despite our yelling and waving. I learned later that the dive master assumed we caught the current and went past him. As the boat slowly began to move further and further away from us, we were slowly being pulled in opposite direction. Eventually the boat goes over the horizon and we lose sit of it.
So after an hour and half of threading water, I turned to my wife and said that I don't think they were coming back and if they do, there was little chance they would see us as the ocean was getting rougher. We looked around and about three quarters of a mile away from where we were there was a little remote island. We decided that was our best bet. It took us about an hour and half to swim to it. Luckily, there was only a minor current that was running parallel to the island that we could swim though and it wasn't strong enough instead to pull us by the island and out into open waters.
We found a small beach to get onto. The good thing was there was coconuts on the island so we knew we won't die of thirst or hunger if we were stranded there for a couple of days until someone found us as were in very remote waters without any sign of people around. After about a half hour of contemplating that we may be stranded for a while, we heard the engine of a small boat. We grabbed our flippers and started waving and yelling in the water as a small fishing boat with a family went by and we were able to get their attention. They swung around and picked us up and we told them we from a dive boat. So they took us in the direction of where we last saw our boat and about 20 minutes later we caught up to it. At this point the boat was about 5 miles away. Never once did the boat circle back to check where we first went in.
Once on board, the dive master was very apologetic, he told me that they always find their divers in the end and he kept saying they would take us to a special dive the next day. I pretty much told him and the boat captain where they could go. First off, they didn't find us, we found them and second it was scary to hear that is was normal for them to say that always find their divers when they lose them. I think I mentioned to my wife at the time, that since they 'almost got us killed' today, that they would take us to the 'special dive' the next day so that they could finish the job.
Back to the resort, I told the hotel manager that we wanted off the resort and they we were not diving with this group anymore because we had zero trust in them.
The thing that concerned me the most is that when we were threading water at the time waiting to be picked up, that the current could have changed and start pushing out to see in which case we would have died. I'm still trying to determine if we did anything wrong. My wife and I stayed together the entire time and we went back to the boat when an issue came up. Neither of us panicked and we knew to get to land was our best solution once we realized we were on our own.
It was a perfect storm of issues that came up. Rough seas that prevented us from doing the reef dives near the resort, having an inexperienced diver with us who took up most of the dive masters time, having a dive master that misjudged the dive and didn't abort it in the beginning, having a dive master that could not handle three divers in the water and keep track of them and finally having a boat captain who is you last safety line not pay attention because he is wearing earbuds in the boat.
At first, I thought that both the dive master and boat captain where just kids that they hired from the village or were from the cookie cutter places where you can take a three week dive course and get your dive master license from Honduras or the Philippines. I was mistaken. Apparently, they had been working at the resort for years and due to indifference, over confidence, boredom or a desire to just get the dives over with so that we could be back to the resort in time for lunch, lead to a very dangerous situation. We later told by the resort owner that boat captain would be 'severely reprimanded' for wearing earbuds on the boat. My wife thinks that we should report them to PADI. I don't know what good it will do. I pretty sure that the dive master and boat caption will be extra vigilant going forward at least for a while. At least I hope so.
Bill
My wife and I just returned from a dive trip in Fiji and I wanted to let you all know about a life threatening dive experience that we encountered on our first day of diving there.
Let me state at the beginning that my wife and I are long time divers. I've been diving for almost 20 years and my wife has been diving for about 12 years and I've logged close to 600 dives and we have never experienced anything like what we encountered.
We left from Boston on a Friday and 32 hours of traveling we arrived at the Matava Resort on the Kadavu Island. Other than long travel time, our dive vacation was going splendid. Now, we chose this rustic dive resort because it was very close to the reefs (only 15 minutes out by boat). After a pleasant dinner and a good night of sleep, we were ready for our first day of diving.
Well, a storm has just come by the day before and the water was a bit rough and the dive master and boat captain decided that that main reefs were too rough to dive, so they decided that the best thing to do was to go to the end of the island about 50 minutes from the resort and dive near some tiny very remote islands instead.
It was just going to be my wife, myself and a Australian man, Paul who was there to primary fish the entire stay and who decided that he would do just one day of diving. He mentioned that he hadn't dove in over a year and only dives every few years . he let us know that he wasn't a great diver. No big deal as we are used to diving with people of all experiences and we had been new divers at one point.
So we get to the site and do our first dive, which went fine. It was a short drift dive where we did a nice shallow slow dive. The dive was only 40 minutes tops because Paul blew through his air quickly. My wife and I both came up with about 2000 PSI left. We did our 50 minute surface wait on a little island and then left for our next dive. This is where things went horribly wrong.
The dive master gives a brief statement that we were going to do a 30 minute 'superman' drift dive. I was a bit miffed that we traveling 32 hours the day before to only be doing very short dives, but I kept it to myself as I figured it was because Paul was a relatively inexperienced diver. Little did I know, that the dive would last over 5 hours.
So we get to the new site and the dive master jumps in the water and swims around for 10 minutes or so trying to determine where the currents at the site were. It appears that the ocean currents at this area were a bit confused. He comes up and says let dive.
We all jump into the water and head down. I knew things were going to be a bit dicey, because the visibility was only about 10 to 20 feet. I guess the goal was to head in one direction and then pick up a strong current at the other end of a point. Unfortunately, it appears the dive master miscalculated the dive as we immediately began to swim into a very strong current. At one point, I was swimming as hard as I could just to remain at the same spot. My poor wife was trying to stay low next to the reef and at one point she was trying to pull herself forward by grabbing onto the reef, so that we could keep up with the dive master. About 10 minutes into the dive, we lose site of the dive master as he swims away with Paul. Never once did he bother to look back to see if we were with him or if there were any issues. As my wife is burning through here air, we made a decision to abandon the dive and head to the boat. We did a slow ascent with a safety stop and the current pulled us right back to the start of the dive. We lucked out in that we came up within 20 feet of the dive boat. Or so we thought.
We yelled out to the boat captain that we were there next to boat and come get us. He appeared to not notice us. We started to wave and blow our dive whistle. Still he was ignoring us. At that point we realized he had earbuds in and was listening to his music. So I started to swim to the boat to knock on the side of the boat to let him know we were there. Unfortunately, the boat captain had other ideas. He reeves up the motor and leaves. Rather than drift along with the divers and follow their bubbles like I'm used to during drift dives, he just sat at the start of the dive and then decides that we would come up about 3/4 of mile from where we started near a sand bar marker. So my wife and are a bit miffed as we see the dive boat leave. No worries. We figure he will come back for us after he picks up the dive master and Paul. Later, I learned from Paul that they never did get to a current where they could dive along with and that they instead headed into a strong current the entire time and the dive only lasted about 20 minutes.
My wife and I watched the boat pick up Paul and the dive master about 10 minutes after we surfaced. We still weren't worried that even though we were in seas that had 1 to 2 foot waves they would still come back for us. However, we watched that boat start to move further and further away, despite our yelling and waving. I learned later that the dive master assumed we caught the current and went past him. As the boat slowly began to move further and further away from us, we were slowly being pulled in opposite direction. Eventually the boat goes over the horizon and we lose sit of it.
So after an hour and half of threading water, I turned to my wife and said that I don't think they were coming back and if they do, there was little chance they would see us as the ocean was getting rougher. We looked around and about three quarters of a mile away from where we were there was a little remote island. We decided that was our best bet. It took us about an hour and half to swim to it. Luckily, there was only a minor current that was running parallel to the island that we could swim though and it wasn't strong enough instead to pull us by the island and out into open waters.
We found a small beach to get onto. The good thing was there was coconuts on the island so we knew we won't die of thirst or hunger if we were stranded there for a couple of days until someone found us as were in very remote waters without any sign of people around. After about a half hour of contemplating that we may be stranded for a while, we heard the engine of a small boat. We grabbed our flippers and started waving and yelling in the water as a small fishing boat with a family went by and we were able to get their attention. They swung around and picked us up and we told them we from a dive boat. So they took us in the direction of where we last saw our boat and about 20 minutes later we caught up to it. At this point the boat was about 5 miles away. Never once did the boat circle back to check where we first went in.
Once on board, the dive master was very apologetic, he told me that they always find their divers in the end and he kept saying they would take us to a special dive the next day. I pretty much told him and the boat captain where they could go. First off, they didn't find us, we found them and second it was scary to hear that is was normal for them to say that always find their divers when they lose them. I think I mentioned to my wife at the time, that since they 'almost got us killed' today, that they would take us to the 'special dive' the next day so that they could finish the job.
Back to the resort, I told the hotel manager that we wanted off the resort and they we were not diving with this group anymore because we had zero trust in them.
The thing that concerned me the most is that when we were threading water at the time waiting to be picked up, that the current could have changed and start pushing out to see in which case we would have died. I'm still trying to determine if we did anything wrong. My wife and I stayed together the entire time and we went back to the boat when an issue came up. Neither of us panicked and we knew to get to land was our best solution once we realized we were on our own.
It was a perfect storm of issues that came up. Rough seas that prevented us from doing the reef dives near the resort, having an inexperienced diver with us who took up most of the dive masters time, having a dive master that misjudged the dive and didn't abort it in the beginning, having a dive master that could not handle three divers in the water and keep track of them and finally having a boat captain who is you last safety line not pay attention because he is wearing earbuds in the boat.
At first, I thought that both the dive master and boat captain where just kids that they hired from the village or were from the cookie cutter places where you can take a three week dive course and get your dive master license from Honduras or the Philippines. I was mistaken. Apparently, they had been working at the resort for years and due to indifference, over confidence, boredom or a desire to just get the dives over with so that we could be back to the resort in time for lunch, lead to a very dangerous situation. We later told by the resort owner that boat captain would be 'severely reprimanded' for wearing earbuds on the boat. My wife thinks that we should report them to PADI. I don't know what good it will do. I pretty sure that the dive master and boat caption will be extra vigilant going forward at least for a while. At least I hope so.
Bill
