Liveaboards vs day trip boats safety differences

[cerich]

I thought it meant that when there is a liveaboard accident, the outcome is more likely to be death than a lesser injury. It is confusing to me. I suppose I should read that entire bachelor's thesis before commenting here.

Fatal accidents are far, far more frequent on live aboard dive boats that solas certified vessels. Not from dive accidents either, so that is not why.

 

[ofg-1]

Coconuts?

It's fun to quote this, but it is not true. Not even close Look it up.

I stand corrected. You are more likely to die from a shark falling out of a tree?

Death by coconut - Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

simple.wikipedia.org

 

[Wookie]

far more frequent on live aboard dive boats that solas certified vessels.

This makes perfect sense.

SOLAS vessels require a crewmember to be a Medical Person in Charge. That position (Mel was mine) is equivalent of an EMT-Basic, although the class is tailored to being shipboard where you don't necessarily have a doctor available 24/7.

SOLAS vessels are required to have duplicate means of satellite communication 24/7

SOLAS vessels are required to have a system to keep the watchstander awake. And watchstanders are not night rovers, they are moving the ship from one place to another.

SOLAS vessels have a second watchstander awake.

SOLAS vessels are required to follow the ISM. This means a person ashore who is not drunk, not on vacation, and has the authority to spend the company's money if necessary.

As stated earlier, Nautilus Explorer is the only SOLAS liveaboard I've ever heard of.

 

[scubadada]

So, how hard are liveaboard accidents to find? I would say, quite difficult. Last November, I tried to find accidents in the Red Sea. I found 14 from between 2003 and 2023 with 7 deaths

Vessel - Indo Siren Fire?

Heard reports here in Indonesia that the Indo Siren had a major fire onboard. Searched news, but didn’t see anything. FB posts look like the vessel burned to the waterline. Hoping nobody was hurt, anyone have additional information? Lance We are booked on that vessel in early January 2024...

scubaboard.com

Now, the article cited by @cerich comes out. There were 15 accidents between 2006 and now. There were 4 accidents that I did not find in my search. I had found one accident not included in the current article. So now my list is 18 accidents between 2003 and now, with 9 fatalities.

Not so easy to find, I would imagine the list is still not complete. 2023 was a bad year.

 

[John the Pom]

Interpreting statistics is dangerous. Do you realise that 100% of people who mistake correlation for causation die?

 

[Vicko]

Again, I personally believe that a lot of passenger ships have completely inadequate safety procedures, especially diving orientated ones.
As someone who, from time to time, gets to drive a boat full of divers I know a part of why that is. Safety standards are expensive, and divers are cheap bastards who refuse to pay for stuff that does not pad their bottom time.

 

[Madacub]

FWIW, I just want to chime in to say that Vicko is absolutely right in what he is pointing out. When you are comparing rates or proportions, if the denominator is faulty, the conclusion is not supported by the data.

 

[Madacub]

Fatal accidents are far, far more frequent on live aboard dive boats that solas certified vessels. Not from dive accidents either, so that is not why.

Hi cerich, could you elaborate please? "Far more frequent" in absolute numbers? Or as a proportion of passenger miles? Or as a proportion of voyages? Or.....

 

[harvalen]

There is good data in the bachelor's thesis and it's useful to analyze the liveaboard accidents and see how accidents and deaths can be avoided in the future. A lot of the statistics isn't very useful though. Especially deaths per accident seems like nonsense. Would you rather dive with an operator that has had 378 accidents and 10 deaths than one with 1 accident that resulted in 2 deaths?

The 1 in 37.8 comes from page 15:

This shows that an average of 70 people per year died in shipping accidents in the years 2014 - 2022[51, p.
26]. With 2,647 accidents per year [51, p. 12], that is 1 death every 37.8 accidents.

For the same time period (2014-2022) in the cited liveaboard data there were a total of 17 accidents and 40 deaths, with 34 of those deaths on Conception. How does 630 deaths and almost 24000 accidents for the same time period compare? I don't know. Having accidents and fatalities per passenger, per passenger mile, per passenger week, or similar would be more useful, but I don't think that data is available.

 

[rmorgan]

Just and FYI, a liveaboard sunk here in Hurghada last week after a fire started in the galley. Reportedly one foreign female client died in the fire. All others were picked up by the Egyptian coast guard.

Boltsnap, are you referring to the Sea Legend, or another vessel? Reports indicate that there was no loss of life in the Sea Legend fire, but the articles are vague as to when it happened. Sinking Of Sea Legend In The Red Sea, All Aboard Rescued Safely? - DIVERS24.COM