Please tell me Who was at fault?

[Trimixgrog]

wow...

It is obvious you are showing (lack of) your professionalism by your comment... I would only hope that you would grow up too, and realize that information is put here to benefit others. To mock, and jeer, a comment shows your immaturity... If you are truly an instructor you are not acting like one...

 

[Surface Interval]

I would like to know if after the fact it was able to be determined why your buddy swam away without regard and what was so fascinating the girls didn't notice you and the flag were missing for over 7 minutes....

 

[mbrentbarnett@comcast]

I have been diving for over 20 years, if you are more than 20 yards apart then you are not truely being a diving buddy to your partner.

 

[AggieDiver]

If you are so far from your buddy given the conditions you are diving in that you cannot effectively communicate something as simple as "slow down" or "stop", then you don't have a buddy...you simply have somebody sharing the ocean with you.

In terms of root cause analysis, I see 3 root cause mistakes. The rest of the mistakes are part of the cascade that followed from these 3 mistakes. The first root cause mistake here was not having a clear dive plan on how the dive would proceed and how the divers would respond to a separation. The second root cause mistake was the 3 divers not staying close to their flag man. The third root cause mistake was the flagman and his buddy not staying close enough for effective communication. Those 3 mistakes caused the separation, caused the flagman to have to try to choose whether to leave his buddy or not, cause the flaw in the "lost buddy" responses to occur, etc.

Everybody involved made mistakes, so "assigning blame" is not really productive. It is more important to look at root causes and lessons learned. With the right attitude, everybody involved can learn lessons from this dive, even from the errors that were not their own.

 

[carrielsal]

Best analysis so far! Thanks Val. We gotta dive together sometime. Now I'm just going out on a limb here but I'm guessing you are a younger couple. As such you may not know that you are in the wrong. Always. If something f's up you did it. You are sorry. She is always correct and you are scum. Now get down on both knees beg her forgiveness for your pigheadedness and promise her that from now on she can lead every dive and you will keep up with her and not lose sight of her. And buy her something shiny. They like that, kinda like crows.

Would that something shiny be a new set of regulators?

 

[JohnB47]

Twelve feet is a nice depth for snorkeling. If you were snorkeling, everyone could meet on the surface every couple of minutes, and stay together that way.

Forgetting about depth, it is not easy to keep a team of more than three divers together. In over 40 years of diving, I have only been a part of a team of more than three divers on three occasions: the first two were on a "resort SCUBA course," the first day I ever used SCUBA, and the group was led by the instructor. On the other occasion, I dove with a couple and another guy who was a friend of the husband. As soon as we got underwater, the woman had some trouble clearing her ears, and the husband and his friend swam off for parts unknown. I had a nice dive with the woman, who just needed a couple of minutes to get her eustachian tubes to work. Fortunately, we were in a quarry where no flag was required.

My recommendation would be to buy another flag, and dive as two buddy teams. Then none of these issues will come up.

If you MUST dive as a team of four, then the flagman is the leader, and should either swim backwards or turn around frequently to look at the rest of the team, so that he can maintain a pace that everyone can keep up with. Everyone else must follow the flagman wherever he goes. The team must all stay together, and if anyone gets separated, they must all surface - because, if anyone is separated, there is at least one who does not have a flag. And if a flag were not necessary, you would not have had a flagman in the first place.

 

[ktomlinson]

If someone said this and I missed it sorry... In addition to talking about lost buddy procedures before the dive I would leave more than 1500psi for the swim back in, it's much easier to come back underwater than on the surface ooa.

 

[rk288]

I'm not going to read all the comments on this one, so if someone else has said this...sorry.

The diver carrying the flag should not be leading the dive. You can't navigate and pull a flag through the water at the same time. So, in my opinion, one of the divers should have been the navigator --who is the team leader. Someone else should handle the flag.

If one person from each dive pair had one of those responsibilities (flag and navigation) then it would have been easier for the greater team to stick together.

In the scenario you mention, anyone not with the guy with the flag is lost. Every diver should have made it a point to stick with the flagman --if that was their plan. If you are pulling a flag along, you really can't be hearding everyone else along.

To answer your question, the three not with the flagman were all at fault.

Jeff

Well said! One flag says it all and I have a real hard time navigating and towing a float and flag...

 

[tracydr]

You guys have it all wrong. Don't you know yet- we women are always right!!

 

[vshearer]

One of the women should have had the flag, and the men should have been responsible for keeping up with them. That is how it works when you go shopping.