night dive drowning

[ponjo]

While doing a night dive for my AOW certification a diver got separated from the group, surfaced and signaled the boat with his light then became unresponsive. The boat captain moved the boat to pick him up; he was floating face down.

No one from the group was aware that the diver was missing, not even his buddy. The group was under at least 40 minutes before surfacing. When i surfaced i saw the coast guard vessel but no coast guard personnel on our boat.

It took me about 4-5 minutes to swim and get on the boat.
I don't know why the coast guard took so long to transport the unresponsive diver. When i got on board i saw one of our divers performing chest compressions. After another 4-5 minutes coast guard finally transported the unsconscience diver.

Autopsy revealed that the diver had drowned.
What troubles me is that the safety issue was not stressed enough. We all knew to keep an eye on your buddy, but that was it. The instructor should have taken a head count once everyone had descended.

On our way back to the dock, the divemaster fell overboard.
Captain shut engines and picked up the dive master, but the boat would not start. Captain did some tweaking with the engine and we where finally on our way.
What a night, one i won't forget!

 

[ScubaFreak]

woah! real sorry to hear that happened when you were around!

Sounds like safety wasn't that operations main concern.:icon4:

Sad! What did the buddy have to say?

SF

 

[Former FLL Now MSP Diver]

Did this happen locally? Recently? I haven't seen any news reports, but then again Frances has tended to hog the headlines lately.

Marc

 

[Wendy]

This is why buddy awareness and communication is so important.

 

[Patch]

I wonder why the particular dive boat/operator was not mentioned. Wouldn't you want to know this before heading out ??? Seems pretty shoddy operation to me.

We are new at this, and info like this seems signifigant.

Maybe a liability thing ...

John

 

[crpntr133]

The thing that strikes me as strange is that he surfaced and signaled the boat. So one minute he is alive and the other he has drowned. I guess one of those freak things.

 

[Wildcard]

Thats sad. Where was this at?...Sounds like and AGE followed by drowning.

 

[scubasean]

The thing that strikes me as strange is that he surfaced and signaled the boat. So one minute he is alive and the other he has drowned. I guess one of those freak things.

I see no indication as to how long it was between the signaling and the drowning...Perhaps folks were moving at "normal" speed because they didn't know of any urgency necessitating otherwise.

For all we know so far, it may have taken five or ten minutes to move the boat.

When the dive master fell overboard and the engine was shut off, the engine didn't start right away...Maybe the engine also didn't start right away when it was needed earlier...