Out of 27 diving fatalties since 2010, 17 have been foreign tourists

[FinnMom]

There is nothing wrong with the tone of your text (says a native English speaker). The facts are a bit offensive but what can you do if those are the facts.

In Norway as anywhere, there does seem to be an assumption that zero deaths would be the norm, a realistic possibility. You note immediately that lots of the visiting divers are making advanced dives such as deep wrecks, wreck penetrations, under the ice and caves. Even kelp forests and open ocean at near-freezing temps aren't well suited for a basic diver unless they have some experience or coaching in the environment.

It would be interesting to see a better breakdown of where and how deaths have occurred. It would also be interesting to know do dive operators generally screen their clients (asking to see advanced certs for people going to a 35-60m wreck for example), or finding out whether people have experience in similar conditions. It would also be interesting to know if the problem is more with individuals (not teams or clubs) arriving to do rec dives but being rusty, or perhaps wholey unprepared for an unguided dive. I know Gulen has a home reef and an advertisement I once received offered unlimited shore diving (lots of nudis - not the swimming after sauna kind). Many recreational divers are not used to the idea of taking a buddy and planning an executing a dive entirely on their own, some might underestimate what a change that is, esp. in a whole new dive environment.

 

[vincent54]

With such a disproportionate number of deaths, could it help to make tourist divers do a mandatory check out dive with a DM? I had to do one in Bonaire, years ago, and they give you a fancy little disk to put on your kit indicating you were good to go. It would have to be for a fee of course, but I doubt it would negatively influence a diver from traveling and diving. !7 indicates a problem to me. Cheers

 

[Storker]

What is the country of origin breakdown of those 17. What sort of dives were they doing?

I can't tell you, since I don't have the raw data back to 2010.

However, I've been counting fatalities since 2012, and those numbers break down like this:
Total: 19
Norwegians: 8 (+ 1 German citizen living in Norway). Almost only rec. Often problems associated with ascent.
Danes: 3. All males in their 50s or 60s, deco depths.
Finns: 3. Two in Plura, the third amale in his sixties, apparently to rec depths, but way North in Finnmark county
Swedes: 2. One 20s female, one 70s male, no indication of deco diving. The male was solo
1 Brit, 1 US citizen. The Brit was doing deep deco diving, the American was the well-known NG photographer Cotton Coulson

---------- Post added October 3rd, 2015 at 06:24 PM ----------

With such a disproportionate number of deaths, could it help to make tourist divers do a mandatory check out dive with a DM?

That would probably put a strain on the infrastructure. DMs are usually only found assisting courses; if you book a trip with a dive center they provide a boat ride, a site briefing and and a boat tender/dive leader topside. They usually won't have a DM the same way you see it in warm water destinations.

It would also be a major shift in the underlying philosophy of how we do things here. If you're club diving, the club is supposed to have a set of safety rules to follow, a dive leader who keeps track of who's above and below the water, and an alarm plan. We don't rent those services from the op, we often just rent a boat, pay for airfills (unless we bring our own compressor) and get a few tips about good sites. Of course, diving that isn't done through a club is more anarchistic, often just a couple of mates going out and jumping in.

We have some of the same problem for topside activities. Tourists come over, venture into the mountains or out at sea (like the natives do) and get into trouble (more often than the natives do) because they aren't used to the conditions. In some of the more popular areas, the rescue personnel are getting a bit pi$$ed off from having to go in way too often to salvage people who obviously aren't equipped or prepared for the trip.

 

[clownfishsydney]

This surprises me as I would have thought that most (all?) divers who went to Norway to dive were very experienced. I went there in 2000 and dived for a week in the fjiords. For me as an Australian, the diving was a lot easier than diving in Sydney apart from the cold.

 

[boulderjohn]

I can't tell you, since I don't have the raw data back to 2010.

However, I've been counting fatalities since 2012, and those numbers break down like this:
Total: 19
Norwegians: 8 (+ 1 German citizen living in Norway). Almost only rec. Often problems associated with ascent.
Danes: 3. All males in their 50s or 60s, deco depths.
Finns: 3. Two in Plura, the third amale in his sixties, apparently to rec depths, but way North in Finnmark county
Swedes: 2. One 20s female, one 70s male, no indication of deco diving. The male was solo
1 Brit, 1 US citizen. The Brit was doing deep deco diving, the American was the well-known NG photographer Cotton Coulson.

Very interesting. It would be even more interesting to dig deeper into the statistics. I don't know much at all about the diving in that area, so some of my next reactions and questions may reflect that lack of knowledge.

Another way of looking at it is that the scuba fatalities in that part of Scandinavia are almost all Scandinavians, which would not be surprising at all. I have never been that far north in Europe, but I assume that travel from country to country is much like the rest of Europe, meaning it is about as easy as going from state to state in the USA. One thing to check out is the fatality percentages in those other countries. If people move easily from place to place in their diving, and if fatalities are distributed randomly, then it is possible and even likely that each of those countries would have a high percentage of foreigners in their fatalities as well.

Similarly, if one of those countries has more attractive dive locations than the others, it would be expected to have a higher percentage of foreigners than the others. As an example in the USA, I am sure that Florida has a higher percentage of fatalities from nearby states (Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina) than those states have from nearby states because Florida is a much more popular dive destination than they are.

Perhaps those statistics are not as surprising as they may appear.

 

[Storker]

Similarly, if one of those countries has more attractive dive locations than the others, it would be expected to have a higher percentage of foreigners than the others. As an example in the USA, I am sure that Florida has a higher percentage of fatalities from nearby states (Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina) than those states have from nearby states because Florida is a much more popular dive destination than they are.

Perhaps those statistics are not as surprising as they may appear.

I both agree and disagree on that last statement.

I'm not particularly motivated for traveling to Sweden or Finland (or even Denmark) to dive, or even bothering with bringing some gear to squeeze in a dive or two, so I agree on that part. There are places in Iceland and the UK on my bucket list, though.

However, the main point of this thread is that there's no way we have 10,0000-20,000 tourists coming here to dive, so tourists are grossly overrepresented among the diving fatalities. I don't know why, and that's probably also the main question here.

 

[KevinNM]

However, the main point of this thread is that there's no way we have 10,0000-20,000 tourists coming here to dive, so tourists are grossly overrepresented among the diving fatalities. I don't know why, and that's probably also the main question here.

To some extent, really interesting sites attract people from a long way away. Interesting dives that require a very high degree of skill to complete safely will also attract people from a long way away, some of whom might not actually have the skills they think they have or might not understand all the risks.

 

[Redshift]

Interesting.
Could there be less tech divers in Norway, as percentage of total, than in the foreigners going there to dive? All the Norwegian fatalities were rec... but more than 50% of foreigner deaths were in tech dives.
Still, I think one would expect that even a small tech community would have more dives during the year than those done by foreigners, no? There are great diving places in Norway (and I hope to go there), but it's not a mass tourism destination...

One other thing, Norway is freaking expensive. I think that people who have travelled and spent a lot of money are more willing to tolerate higher risk.

 

[Storker]

Interesting dives that require a very high degree of skill to complete safely will also attract people from a long way away, some of whom might not actually have the skills they think they have or might not understand all the risks.

(emphasis mine)

I think you're onto something here. And I believe that this point also was alluded to in the original article (but probably lost in Google translation).

 

[Ken Kurtis]

. . . as there are between 10,000 and 20,000 active divers in Norway.

I generally find that, especially when you start using metrics that involve dollars spent, avaerage divers on a dive trip, number of basic certs issued annually, and others numbers, that we tend to grossly over-estimate the number of active divers. And 10,000-20,000 is quite a swing, especially in a country with a population of a little over 5 million people. If you use the DEMA estimates (also wrong IMHO) of 2-2.5 million divers in a population of 321 million (US Census est - 2015) and apply that same ratio to Norway, you'd have closer to 40,000 active divers.

Any idea of where the 10,000-20,000 number came from or how it was derived? Just curious.

- Ken