Scuba diver dies after being found floating at Kurnell, NSW, Australia

[Jax]

sorta .. she may have been using suit for buoyancy control, and she may have had a lot of air in suit .. but I do not see a connection to PADI training in this case here

(I was trained by a PADI instructor)

Her website says she is PADI. I surmise she would follow the PADI materials.

AFAIR, you had a rather extraordinary drysuit instruction. Certainly to uphold, "It's not the agency, it's the instructor" meme.

 

[Crass3000]

Obvious lessons learned.... Don't dive with a tiny wing. It obviously didn't support her rig and would not have supported a buddy at the same time if she needed to help someone. The whole small wing you hear people bragging about is pretty dumb because they aren't taking into account what could be needed to surface another diver in trouble.

Ditch your weights. I like those DUI harnesses even with a recreational BCD. You can take weights out a little at a time or pull the whole side if needed. Haven't been diving with it lately with my BP/W.

Hope more lessons come out of this besides buddy separation. I don't think this was a huge contributor if you consider the two statements above. Diving with buddies actually is more of a pain for me. I don't like to babysit.

 

[D_B]

thank you Jax
.... PADI teaches to use drysuit as buoyancy control is true (at the time I was trained) but that is only part of it .. there are other things that was taught to me in class and that I have mentioned in my report (one of which was not to use a small/tropical wing in cold water) ... she did say she had read my report of my class
I dont see a connection to this accident in that training

 

[tracydr]

PADI's current dry suit course teaches that what you do for buoyancy depends upon the situation and type of suit. Sometimes it can be done with just the suit for buoyancy, and sometimes you will use both the wing and the suit.

The book Dry Suit Diving: A Guide to Diving Dry by Barsky, Long, and Stinton advises new divers to use the suit for buoyancy as well. It says that with more experience, divers will use a combination. (The authors of this book are from DUI.)

What was taught 4-6 years ago? When I took my drysuit class my instructor taught me to use both. But, he also said that he was taught to only use his drysuit. He had adapted through the years because of experience.
I have a PDF of his Instructor Manual and it does teach that the drysuit is used for as your primary means of controlling neutral and that the BC is used primarily on the surface. I don't know the date of this Manual and it doesn't include any of the PADI updates so this could be a very old manual. Is it possible that she was using her old instructor manual to teach herself or for review? I can't remember when Marcia's class was. It may have been as long as 10 years ago because I noted she had a post from 2006 (I believe) stating that she had dived N.CA and that was when she got her cert.

---------- Post added October 13th, 2013 at 01:48 PM ----------

Changing weights is usually done one or maybe two weights at a time. Moving from being able to float your rig comfortably to being completely unable to float it in one step would indicate a drastic increase in weight for this dive. Again a bizarre action for highly experienced diver.

Unless she was planning to use her drysuit as a secondary flotation device to "get by" for the trip and was well aware that her wing had become inadequate. Since she was making ongoing changes and away from home she may have decided to limp along with the wing she had and planned on purchasing or otherwise obtaining another when she got home.

 

[boulderjohn]

What was taught 4-6 years ago?

4-6 years ago it was different. It did say to use the suit as the primary means of buoyancy control. We had a thread about it back several years ago, and we found just about every major agency taught the same thing. As I mentioned earlier, so did DUI.

As several of us have said, the course that has been out for the last few years says "it depends." If there is any doubt, I can quote the knowledge review questions and answers for you. (I do teach the course.)

 

[dumpsterDiver]

Obvious lessons learned.... Don't dive with a tiny wing. It obviously didn't support her rig and would not have supported a buddy at the same time if she needed to help someone. The whole small wing you hear people bragging about is pretty dumb because they aren't taking into account what could be needed to surface another diver in trouble.

Ditch your weights. I like those DUI harnesses even with a recreational BCD. You can take weights out a little at a time or pull the whole side if needed. Haven't been diving with it lately with my BP/W.

Hope more lessons come out of this besides buddy separation. I don't think this was a huge contributor if you consider the two statements above. Diving with buddies actually is more of a pain for me. I don't like to babysit.

I agree with this. How many times do we read posts where people seem to be bragging about how small their wing is, how streamlined it is.. etc. etc. I always felt the discussions were ridiculous. I much prefer to have some excess capacity to help another diver (or even to bring a weight belt up I find). Using EXCESSIVELY large capacity is a problem because the bubble can shift to one side and there is a distinct danger associated with a stuck inflator being worse if you have a really large wing...

My kid started using a BP/w and it has maybe 45 lbs of lift (Dive Right Venture Wing) and he does warm water diving with an aluminum tank, 3 mm suit, and 8 lbs of lead and aluminum plate. I know he will probably NOT need that much buoyancy, but I would rather see him use that than some 18-20 lb wing. I just don't see this excess wing capacity as a problem to be avoided.

Too many people on this board seem to make it a contest about how LITTLE of a wing they need, how LOW their SAC rate is and how little lead they use and will argue forever that they will never be confronted with a situation where they may need to dump a weight belt at depth. Then at the same time, they will argue that if you use a pony bottle, it MUST be a huge one.


Sounds like a bigger wing and/or a pony bottle and/or the capability and willingness to ditch lead... might each, independently have averted a death.

 

[tracydr]

John- I remember that thread very well. I read it as I was taking my class.
I believe you. What I'm wondering is what did Marcia learn and what recent references ( if any) was she going by to review,since she took the course so long ago? Were her materials outdated?

 

[down4fun]

I agree with this. How many times do we read posts where people seem to be bragging about how small their wing is, how streamlined it is.. etc. etc. I always felt the discussions were ridiculous. I much prefer to have some excess capacity to help another diver (or even to bring a weight belt up I find). Using EXCESSIVELY large capacity is a problem because the bubble can shift to one side and there is a distinct danger associated with a stuck inflator being worse if you have a really large wing...

My kid started using a BP/w and it has maybe 45 lbs of lift (Dive Right Venture Wing) and he does warm water diving with an aluminum tank, 3 mm suit, and 8 lbs of lead and aluminum plate. I know he will probably NOT need that much buoyancy, but I would rather see him use that than some 18-20 lb wing. I just don't see this excess wing capacity as a problem to be avoided.

Too many people on this board seem to make it a contest about how LITTLE of a wing they need, how LOW their SAC rate is and how little lead they use and will argue forever that they will never be confronted with a situation where they may need to dump a weight belt at depth. Then at the same time, they will argue that if you use a pony bottle, it MUST be a huge one.


Sounds like a bigger wing and/or a pony bottle and/or the capability and willingness to ditch lead... might each, independently have averted a death.

It seems to be a perverse trait among divers, humans for that matter, to compare things that ultimately could harm them. How much they can drink, how fast they can drive, for divers how small a wing they use, how little air and thus no need for a redundant air source, tech divers comparing how fast they got out of the water. Really? Who cares if I hang an extra ten minutes if I come out clean?? Or if my wing has a little extra lift that could aid myself and someone else?

 

[Diver0001]

John- I remember that thread very well. I read it as I was taking my class.
I believe you. What I'm wondering is what did Marcia learn and what recent references ( if any) was she going by to review,since she took the course so long ago? Were her materials outdated?

So the question is whether or not it was a training issue?

I think in the series of pictures I posted you can see from the first one and the last one that over the span of three dives she was moving the bubble around from the suit to the wing. I think that's proof enough that she was at least aware of the options and not blindly following a particular training mantra.

Where I think it could potentially have been a training issue is with respect to balancing the rig. She may or may not have been fully aware of the risk she was running in *needing* both the suit and the wing to establish positive buoyancy.

R..

 

[tracydr]

So the question is whether or not it was a training issue?

I think in the series of pictures I posted you can see from the first one and the last one that over the span of three dives she was moving the bubble around from the suit to the wing. I think that's proof enough that she was at least aware of the options and not blindly following a particular training mantra.

Where I think it could potentially have been a training issue is with respect to balancing the rig. She may or may not have been fully aware of the risk she was running in *needing* both the suit and the wing to establish positive buoyancy.

R..

True and I was just thinking about this. She obviously moved from using the suit for buoyancy to using the wing for buoyancy for that last dive. So, doesn't really make any difference. Sorry. JAX brought it up.
Good point on the training issue regarding balancing the rig.