Maltese court convicts dive buddy

[Wibble]

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.

Or, to put it another way, of the goodness knows how many times "we've" lost a buddy, how many times did they need rescuing? Loosing buddies is a fact of life, or at least the reality.

For someone with enough experience to dive CCR, etc., one would expect that person to be self-sufficient. Certainly self-sufficient enough to ask for or demand help.

 

[Bob DBF]

Or, to put it another way, of the goodness knows how many times "we've" lost a buddy, how many times did they need rescuing? Loosing buddies is a fact of life, or at least the reality.

OK.

I don't know about anyone else, but when buddy diving, and losing a buddy, my first order of business upon surfacing, is to locate my buddy. I normally solo dive, but I do take buddy diving seriously.

 

[Wibble]

The implications of mandating buddy diving is that it becomes work; your job is to look after this person. Some of us are OK with that, others just want to enjoy diving.

Bottom line: if this is Malta's reaction to an exceptional incident, then why bother going to Malta when there's plenty of other more grown-up places to dive?

Currently planning next years diving. Really would like to go to Malta, but if this nonsense is the reality then I will simply look elsewhere. Plenty more fish in the sea.

 

[boulderjohn]

I personally don't have dry-suit training or experience, but it would seem like something covered in those classes might be to disconnect the hose, or resort to manual inflation.

If she had understood during the dive that her drysuit inflator valve was not working properly and was inflating her suit continually, the proper thing to do what have been to end the dive. When ascending, the drysuit inflator hose should be disconnected. When you are ascending with a drysuit, there should be no reason to add any air to the suit. The only thing you do is dump air as it expands.

 

[boulderjohn]

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.

If I understand you correctly, we have differing memories of this event.

In my memory, he was initially charged with manslaughter in Australia under an unusual law, similar to what happened here, requiring him to provide a competent rescue attempt. He was guilty of not doing so, so he did plead guilty.

After that, an Alabama prosecutor charged him with murder, under the theory that his actions were intentional and not merely incompetent--a totally different theory. When it went to trial there, the prosecutor's case was so weak that the judge dismissed the case before the defense presented its case.

 

[SlugLife]

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.

That runs into hindsight bias, and the ability to examine a situation with more information than a person had at the time.

We know after the fact in hindsight that (a) his buddy had a severe problem and (b) was not the diver in a dry-suit on the shore-line.

1. With the information he had at the time, should he have chased her up to the surface?
2. With the information he had at the time, was it unreasonable for him to see a diver in a drysuit and mistakenly think it was her?

1) I don't think it was reasonable for him to chase after her:

• (1a) She had a full deco-bottle, and plenty of air
• (1b) she was a trained scuba-instructor, and presumably can take care of herself
• (1c) he had no information suggesting she needed IMMEDIATE rescue. He couldn't have known she was OOA on her main tank, and unable to switch to her FULL deco-tank.
• (1d) he could conclude she had a risk of being bent. However had he immediately surfaced, the EXACT same risk would apply to him.

2) I'm pretty certain every once of us has experienced many times, mistaking one diver for another when everyone is in full wet-or-dry suits. Unless you go out of our way to make your equipment distinct, you are another diver in a black wet/dry suit, with a black BCD, black fins, black hood, etc.

If you see your buddy climbing the ladder, do you scream out "help, my buddy is missing" or think to yourself "whew, they're ok!" In hindsight, or accident-analysis, yes, it may be good practice (and a lesson) to shout out your buddy's name to make sure the person in all-black is actually your buddy. But that's again in the realm of hindsight bias.

 

[Bob DBF]

That runs into hindsight bias, and the ability to examine a situation with more information than a person had at the time.

Nothing to do with hindsight, if he thought the diver he saw was his buddy, he should have checked for accuracy when out of the water, since it was a troubled dive with buddy separation. Hindsight implies there is no duty of buddy divers to take mutual responsibility for the safety of the buddy pair above and below the water.

 

[SlugLife]

Nothing to do with hindsight, if he thought the diver he saw was his buddy, he should have checked for accuracy when out of the water, since it was a troubled dive with buddy separation.

So Castillo swims to shore to check on the diver who he thinks is Gauci. The diver who visibly appears fine, and who not calling for help.

I'm not suggesting Castillo did the perfect thing, but rather his mistake is one many of us could have reasonably made. I'm also sure some percentage of us, without knowledge of this story, would have shouted her name from a distance to be sure. The question is whether a a) reasonable person could have made that mistake, and b) whether that had a causal factor in her death.

Hindsight implies there is no duty of buddy divers to take mutual responsibility for the safety of the buddy pair above and below the water.

I'm not sure I follow. How does hindsight imply no duty of [mutual responsibility]?

What I'm saying is to fairly judge a person's actions from a moral or legal perspective, one must remove the benefit of hindsight. That means we must only consider what they knew at the time, their condition, and the amount of time they had to make any decision(s). In other words, put yourself in their shoes and allow for the fact that we all make mistakes or imperfect decisions.

If you look up legal definitions of neglect, it tends to follow the same pattern or ideas. One of the articles quoted/translated Malta's definition of neglect, which closely aligns with the one in the US.

From an "Accident & Incident" perspective, I'm all for abusing hindsight in order to establish better standards, suggestions, recommendations, redundancies, etc in the pursuit of safety.

 

[Bob DBF]

So Castillo swims to shore to check on the diver who he thinks is Gauci. The diver who visibly appears fine, and who not calling for help.

He assumed that diver was his buddy but did not check to see if he was correct, all divers look similar at a distance, and he could be easily mistaken. It would take little effort, and no danger to his person, to check to insure he was correct.

This, I believe, is the reason he was convicted, and given probation instead of prison time. It's an easy mistake, but one that there is no reason to make. Too bad that only lip service is paid to it during training.

 

[Celt]

Or, to put it another way, of the goodness knows how many times "we've" lost a buddy, how many times did they need rescuing? Loosing buddies is a fact of life, or at least the reality.

Are you serious, that's how people drown. If you take on the job of stand-by or buddy the safety of the diver in the water or buddy is your responsibility. If you don't wish to do that dive solo and tell your mates you won't be there to help if they get in trouble.