Maltese court convicts dive buddy

[lermontov]

"The third and final event during the dive occurred at 77 minutes into the dive, when Ms Gauci ascended to the surface rapidly for the second time within the same dive. According to Mr. [Diving buddy], he looked up, saw her reach for the regulator of her Nitrox 50% deco cylinder, and never established eye contact or saw her again. He cites having a deco obligation and being light, hence the reason for not following her. This is disproven by his decompression computer – a 2 minute deco obligation at 5 minutes is never an impediment to seek a lost diving buddy."


I don't understand "a 2 minute deco obligation at 5 minutes", but it seems to me they are requiring one break a deco obligation to seek a lost buddy. It could be just a bad translation, but it seems a poor spot to have one.

without knowing their GF which could have been on the conservative side, missing a 2min stop would be a minimal risk in lieu of saving someone's life- a risk I would take in most circumstances -however if i saw someone go to the surface with full consciousness and the last thing i saw was them reaching for a 50% and knowing they were a diver instructor and presumably a certain degree of competency id let them take care of themselves - if it was some one who I didnt feel was competent id probably ascend and take the risk.

bearing on mind he was on a ccr so depending on his set point his 2 min of deco could have been 5-10 min for her - maybe more reason to have ascended to assist - hard to determine without more information


In retrospect if her cylinders were empty and they discovered a faulty LP hose then id guess she had been constantly venting her dry suit to stay neutral -maybe thats part of the answer

 

[SlugLife]

That what it sounds like, however it is a 5 page document translated from a 44 page document so there is a lot of room for something important in the decision to be overlooked.

I understand your point, that there might be an absolutely key detail the 6 articles I read, may have forgotten to mention, and that trials are very long.

However, I have gone through these articles line-by-line and responded to those articles in a somewhat line-by-line manner. Furthermore, one of the articles directly quotes the prosecutor after the trial, and presumably he brought up his strongest points. Everything he said was wrong. I mean, sure, I will always leave door at least 1% cracked open that there may be some important detail that could change my mind. However, so far I have zero such indications that such a thing is coming.

"They were using air from an unlicensed compressor!"
"Ok? Were there contaminants found in the gas? Did Castillo fill the tanks?"
"Stop asking questions!"

There are plenty of such similar points in the case which are obvious farces.

 

[admikar]

Manual inflation of a drysuit isn’t possible. Connecting the hose is taught, but who knows if she had a drysuit class. Disconnecting drysuit and wing inflation hoses has been part of every tech class I’ve taken.

She had it at least 2 weeks before the accident. There is a photo of her diving rebreather in dry suit. Granted, I don't know if the suit on the photo is the same as the one from her last dive. Just because military said she wasn't certified since they don't use drysuits means squat. I have really hard time to believe that she is tech diver, diving in Malta, with no drysuit training (cert is irelevant, I have drysuit training as part of my CMAS ** tranining, but no separate cert).
Edited to add: I had a good look at that photo I mentioned. To be honest, I can't be sure it really is her in that photo. @Searcaigh can probably say more.

without knowing their GF which could have been on the conservative side, missing a 2min stop would be a minimal risk in lieu of saving someone's life- a risk I would take in most circumstances -however if i saw someone go to the surface with full consciousness and the last thing i saw was them reaching for a 50% and knowing they were a diver instructor and presumably a certain degree of competency id let them take care of themselves - if it was some one who I didnt feel was competent id probably ascend and take the risk.

bearing on mind he was on a ccr so depending on his set point his 2 min of deco could have been 5-10 min for her - maybe more reason to have ascended to assist - hard to determine without more information


In retrospect if her cylinders were empty and they discovered a faulty LP hose then id guess she had been constantly venting her dry suit to stay neutral -maybe thats part of the answer

Quote is 2 min at 5 min. Even if it means 2 min at 5 meters, that's a bit odd. I have never heard of comp that gives 5 m stop and if you are flying ceiling deco, there ought to be other stops.
To me, this sounds a lot as a selective information sharing to make your point.

 

[Celt]

Irrespective of the law it was very poor form to go ashore without his friend who he knew was in trouble. ( twice he had to help, dumping air and handing over weights) They'd both have been better off diving solo.

 

[SlugLife]

Irrespective of the law it was very poor form to go ashore without his friend who he knew was in trouble. ( twice he had to help, dumping air and handing over weights) They'd both have been better off diving solo.

According to all of the articles I read, he thought his friend was at the shore already, seeing another diver in a similar looking dry-suit.

 

[clownfishsydney]

Bascially, what has happened here is almost the same as what happened to Gabe Watson in relation to the death of his wife Tina on the SS Yongala at Townsville. He was charged with murder and then pleaded guilty to manslaughter which I imagine is similar to what the person here was charged with. In my view, neither of them should have been charged at all.

 

[happy-diver]

Yeah the western system of choosing a defendant, concocting charges, and manipulating the evidence to fit
rather than using their brains and following any evidence to see if there is a defendant or if an offence exists

 

[scubayinzer412]

Accident Analysis: The Christine Gauci Fatality 2020

Accident Analysis: The Christine Gauci Fatality 2022 Assessing critical learning points from a fatal diving accident to help promote increased dive safety. by Andy Davis In January 2020, Christine Gauci, a 35-year old technical diver, freediver and Afghanistan veteran, tragically perished in a...

scubatechphilippines.com

 

[Celt]

According to all of the articles I read, he thought his friend was at the shore already, seeing another diver in a similar looking dry-suit.

When he left he couldn't have known that, he didn't follow her to the surface he just used the fact that he saw someone on the shore as a very bad excuse for cutting and running.

 

[Bob DBF]

According to all of the articles I read, he thought his friend was at the shore already, seeing another diver in a similar looking dry-suit.

When he left he couldn't have known that, he didn't follow her to the surface he just used the fact that he saw someone on the shore as a very bad excuse for cutting and running.

Perhaps that is the crux of the problem, he surfaced and assumed his buddy was OK instead of raising the alarm that his buddy was missing and needed to find her and insure her safety. If it was they did a bad job of explaining it.