Local diver fatality - Dumaguete City, Philippines

[BoltSnap]

He dived to make a living for years, but needs to rent dive gear. Thats odd

He was spearfishing while free diving. I believe that he rented scuba equipment to be able to go diving deeper than he could free diving to find more fish.

 

[Raphus]

Could be, but he also worked for a dive center before. Very strange he had no own equipment.

I think its possible he might not had the equipment or training. But we dont know.

Reminds me of the documentation: fluch der langustentaucher.
Translated: curse of the lobsterdiver.
Dont know if there exists a english version. The german one is in youtube. I can recommend it.

 

[Dan]

This looks to be the same tragedy discussed in a thread a couple of weeks ago Local diver fatality - Dumaguete City, Philippines

A truly awful story for the diver and the family left behind. It really highlights the consequences of inequality and disparate access to healthcare.

Sorry about that. Glad to see both threads have been merged.

 

[Centrals]

From what I know of the local economy there I doubt he could afford DAN anyway.

Not a chance.
Pretty sad but it is what it is in Philippines!

DAN DAN World : Membership and Insurance for Scuba Divers

 

[Rickk]

DAN is definitely available in the Asia-Pacific. To me it's affordable. To a Dumaguete local wondering where his family's next meal is coming from it may not be.

I am Canadian living in Philippines. DAN Asia is available here, roughly the same cost as 10 dives. ( $AUS260 or so in total). Locals cannot afford that in many cases.

I am in Moalboal, Cebu now and have dived in Dumaguete. There can be some strong currents there but nothing exceptionally hard to manage. My guess is that even if he had some classes or training it was inadequate. He was away from working in the dive shop for a while so would not have recreational dives in that time. Whatever skills he had would have deteriorated in that time.

Depending on what he did in the dive shop he would have had limited experience. Usually before they train a worker to dive they have to pay their dues and prove themselves by doing a lot of dog work around the shop, filling tanks, lugging cylinders, boat handler, sweeping the floors and scrubbing toilets. Once they prove reliability and good customer interactions they will get slotted on OW, AOW Rescue and eventually DM courses as time and space allow. Several years can pass before they actually get DM courses and allowed to go with clients.

 

[StefinSB]

From what I know of the local economy there I doubt he could afford DAN anyway.

^ this

 

[jborg]

I was not aware that DAN cares whether you are diving for work or pleasure.

Insurance generally does. In the DAN-AP policy (http://www.danap.org/_pdf/osinsurancedoc.pdf):

CLASSIFICATION OF ELIGIBLE PERSONS

All dues-paying Members in good standing of DAN – AP and their eligible dependents, who are 12 years of age or older, a resident of an eligible Home Country, and not a Commercial Diver are eligible.

DEFINITIONS

Commercial Diver means any diver who undertakes diving for payment or reward other than divemasters or scuba instructors supervising recreational diving activities, underwater photographers, or diving while performing research [etc]​

(my bolding) So regardless of whether DAN was affordable or not to this person to begin with, I don't think it would cover his activities.

 

[Blackcrusader]

I am in Moalboal, Cebu now and have dived in Dumaguete. There can be some strong currents there but nothing exceptionally hard to manage. .

Since 2014 I've done several hundred dives in Moalboal. Dive centers have the tide charts.. Got into a ripping current at Pescadore Island on a night dive but at least I was familiar with Pescadore. So were my two dive buddies and the guide really would have had serious problems if had had gotten separated or into difficulties.

One one dive at Pescadore we had one current taking a diver down and I signaled to the DM I would go get her. I caught her deeper than 35m and she really had no idea the current was taking her down she was just enjoying the dive. She wanted to swim back into the current to the wall but I took her away from the wall in the opposite direction so we could get out of the down current. She was a Japanese lass AOW who calmly followed my instructions. We finally got out of the down current and were around 100m away from the wall and got back to around 15m and finally caught up with our DM who was with other divers not far from where the boats are waiting to pick up divers at the end of the dive. Didn't exceed NDL which was good. Another instructor on the same dive got taken to the surface with his two students. It was a a weird current that day. We were there around 8:30am. I've only had a few dives there where the currents were really ripping. I never struggle against a current I just go with it and get the boat to come pick me up.

A tired diver who was also perhaps already ill from the previous dive and on a third dive who got into a current could easily become anxious and panic shoot to the surface and even have an embolism as well as DCS. Very tragic.