Missing Diver Off Vandenberg?

[Angelo Farina]

I worked as a professional instructor just for 5 years (1985-1989). Doing 150-200 dives per year. So a total of something like 750-1000 dives.
I did always keep constant care of not loosing any customer under my responsibility, but in summer 1987 I had one case of a diver suddenly missing from the group. One moment he was there, calm and relaxed, a few seconds later he was missing. He was scared by something and he headed to the surface very quickly, without signalling this to his buddy or to me. We were at the end of the dive, at 42m depth, and already beyond NDL.
I did carry the rest of the group up, and I finally calmed down seeing his tank hanging below the boat. He was aboard, but slightly bent, so we had to carry him to the deco chamber with a rescue helicopter of the Navy.
Lesson learned; whatever care you take, it is impossible to prevent such kind of accident. Luckily enough, this is a very rare case, it does not occur often. In my case, one dive ever 1000.

 

[Centrals]

I am NOT a diving professional. But I do believe that:
Dive guide/instructor should be first in and last out of the water.
There have been so many incidents that divers got into trouble in the beginning or at the end of the dive. The dive is completed when everyone is back on the boat.

 

[Kay Dee]

...........Lesson learned; whatever care you take, it is impossible to prevent such kind of accident....................................

Exactly, impossible to prevent, so all you can do is take as good of care as humanely possible (as it seems you did).

And in what happened with you 'lies the rub' as they say. Even if you had seen him bolt, what were you to do, leave your other divers and chase after him, or................?

All well and good in good visibility, but as we know good visibility ain't always the case.

A related anecdote; I once went to a meeting of of dive shop owners and / or instructors with Workplace Health and Safety inspectors in Brisbane, Qld, Australia, where one of the WH&S inspectors asked this very question (i.e. what would you do if a diver in your group bolts or gets 'lost'?). The got numerous answers, and when no one else spoke up he said, or words to this effect as it is now almost 30 years ago; "No matter what you do, if it becomes an accident / injury / medical involvement and we get involved - which they always did / do - whatever you did is wrong. We will take you and your shop / boat skipper to court for 1) your 'part' in the accident and / or 2) for leaving the group of divers unattended" . Needless to say, with that bizarre answer, half the group, simply got up and walked out. (But I might add he / WH&S kept their word on doing just that!) And that was just concerning recreational diving, so one needn't ever wonder why technical diving took off, well crawled off at a turtles pace, so slowly in Qld. I could write a book on that! As you can just imagine from the above what WH&S had to say about tech diving. And rebreathers, well don't get me started. Needless to say I was a thorn in their side for quite some years , until the regulations they gradually / incrementally introduced basically became the tipping point that made me decide to give up teaching and............. just go divin'!

 

[Angelo Farina]

I can add that, after the accident I reported, the tour operator for which I was working (Club Vacanze) modified, on my suggestion, the safety rules. For such dives beyond 30m and beyond NDL it was made mandatory to always employ two divemasters, one leading the group and one closing it.
In case one customer did bolt up, the second dive master had to follow him, whilst the first had to bring up slowly the remaining group.
After the new policy was applied, there were not any further accident during the following two years. I did typically dive with my wife (she also is an instructor, we were hired together at Club Vacanze).
We did swap our roles, albeit my wife did usually prefer to be at the end of the group.
In one case at Maldives she had to catch a diver who was plumbing down along a vertical wall, she catched him well below 50m, and he was already almost out of air, so she gave him her third long-hose reg while dragging him to the deco bar (where additional tanks were available).

 

[Open Ocean Diver]

Actually it's quite simple. Every few minutes roll over on your back, look behind you and check your group. Real Instructors and DM's do it all over the world.
How many classes have you taught? How many groups have you led? I've had ZERO accidents in 27 years as an instructor. Over 20,000 dives lifetime in 39 years as a diver. That's NOT 'Luck", it's "skill". How about you?

That’s what my instructor does, with a group of four he never loses sight and expects us all to stay together in a group.

 

[Snoweman]

I did the the Vandenburg as part of my AOW course with three buddies. I probably had about 25 dives, or less at the time. We all dove AL 80's for the dive and probably did about ten minutes of bottom time. I don't remember our max depth, but we made it to the deck, where someone had placed photos on the side of the ship. We did a pretty open swim-through, but it still made me a little nervous. I don't remember a whole lot of current, but we did hold on to the mooring line to descend/ascend. I wish I had rented a pair of gloves for that dive.

I have a hard enough time keeping track of my dive buddy, never mind three or four other people. What's the field of view of a mask? 10 – 12 degrees? That's a whole lot of looking with an X, Y and Z axis. I can keep track of him if he stays below me. But on a drift dive like Cozumel, that means I will most likely have to dip below and hide from the current to let him catch up to me. I've been impressed with the DM's that can keep track of folks (and fixed my tank when it was slipping from the band), but I know for a fact that one didn't know where I was for 20 or so minutes when I elected to stay shallow at Palancar (Horseshoe, I think). X-ray vision or not, that would be too much rock to see through.

For someone to say they are at the top of their game is hubris I have not seen since I was helping build what was to be the new Enron headquarters. It may just be me, but I think that can only be seen in hindsight. There's a lot of skill of never losing a diver over a career, but I've got to think there's a fair amount of luck, too.

 

[BRT]

I'm reminded of being at Sund Rock, watching a DM candidate take a couple of "just divers" in for a dive. Viz about 10'. The "divers" plan was to go down a ways and then for one to go left and one to go right. Any DM that never loses sight of their charges has really well trained charges.

 

[Dody]

That’s what my instructor does, with a group of four he never loses sight and expects us all to stay together in a group.

He does lose sight like any other instructor.

 

[Biotech Diver]

When someone claims they don't lose sight of their students, I don't believe they mean it in a strict literal sense as if their eyes are glued on a student(s) every single microsecond. This "gotcha" game of saying "see, you just admitted you look back every few minutes, so that means you are a f'ing liar" people are playing and thumping their chests is childish. All it does is turn people off and not want to ever bother posting anything, or maybe just stop visiting the site all together.

 

[Snoweman]

When someone claims they don't lose sight of their students, I don't believe they mean it in a strict literal sense as if their eyes are glued on a student(s) every single microsecond. This "gotcha" game of saying "see, you just admitted you look back every few minutes, so that means you are a f'ing liar" people are playing and thumping their chests is childish. All it does is turn people off and not want to ever bother posting anything, or maybe just stop visiting the site all together.

Ok. But by the same token, please don't claim it's 100% skill that one of your students didn't cough out his regulator, panicked and drowned in the two or three minutes since you last turned around.