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

[mdb]

We continue to question Marcia, and try to learn.

She is dead.

All our comments make little difference now.

RIP Marcia.

 

[DiverGirl1972]

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.

I agree. I think bragging about the size of one's wing or SAC or amount of lead one requires is just silly.

That said, I love using my tropical bc when I’m diving warm water with my 3mm wetsuit and it is perfectly safe and adequate for those conditions. I also clip on a 50lb lift bag as my dsmb, so I have a redundant source of lift if needed. When I’m in the quarry, wearing my 7/8mm wetsuit or even my drysuit, I use my Mares Kaila, which has nearly 40 lbs of lift. Again, perfectly safe and adequate for those conditions.

The obvious lesson as it pertains to the wing is to ensure you are using the appropriate wing for the conditions you will be diving in and the exposure protection you’re using. The lesson is NOT that using a "tiny" wing will get you killed.

 

[gypsyjim]

In regards to all the discussion about the amount of air Marci had in her suit, yes.

I don't know what the current materials say, but when I saw the PADI materials / video, it said to use the suit as your primary buoyancy control.

Ergo, Marci had a lot of air in her suit because she was using it for buoyancy control.

In the pic from her second dive, first one posted today by R, she is using the suit for buoyancy, but in the last pic from her last dive it now shows that air in her wing, and not the suit.

When diving a single tank, I will frequently have almost no air in the wing and enough air in the dry suit to keep me warm. If I am properly weighted, that is all I need for buoyancy. That means I really do use the suit primarily for buoyancy. It will not look like that first picture, though. You will barely tell there is a bubble in the suit. If I am tech diving and have no choice but to be overweighted in the early parts of the dive, then the dry suit will still just be inflated enough to keep me warm, and the extra air needed for buoyancy will be in the wing. Again, it will not look like the one in the picture. There is a lot of bubble going on there.

Again, yes, there is a lot of bubble in the dry suit in the first pic, and nearly none in the wing, but in the latter image the large bubble is now located in her wing.

This worries me, because Kurnel is NOT a deep site at all, and that much bubble in either the dry suit, or in the wing seems like quite a bit too much inflation for such a shallow depth. To me that would indicate that the diver is carrying too much extra lead.

The second part of this observation is that with that large a bubble in the wing at such a shallow depth, how much more lift can the diver expect to get from the BCD at all, if/when she needs it? It would seem to me that once Quero reached the surface she was going to need more than that wing to provide the extra buoyancy she would need to stay afloat. If for any reason she could not, or did not use the dry suit for extra buoyancy, that BCD might not have had sufficient lift remaining for her, that steel tank, and the extra lead (plus of course the camera)

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.

Diving with buddies the last few minutes of her life, and we might be enjoying her pictures of weedy sea dragons, instead of discussing WHY this turned out the way it did.

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..

As I read her last few posts, Marcia was struggling to find a way to stay warm by experimenting with layering different types of undergarments, while also learning/trying maintain good buoyancy. To me it seems that she was adding more weight than she really needed, in order to try to regain trim in the new dry suit, which is not terribly unusual when attempting to learn to dive dry.

A lot of air in both scenarios. Just placed differently

In the end, it still boils down to her own decision to not rejoin the group for the swim back to the exit, that led to her being without a buddy to assist her when she most needed one. No matter what caused the final failure, or cascade of failures, it was choosing to go it alone to the exit that cost her everything.

 

[AfterDark]

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.

Sadly a wing that was not up to task.

 

[DandyDon]

We continue to question Marcia, and try to learn.

She is dead.

All our comments make little difference now.

RIP Marcia.

We do that here, because if we were not allowed to discuss these here for some reason - then it'd happen elsewhere. Here is more reasonable.

You can unsubscribe from the thread. Condolences are more appropriate in the Passings forum.

 

[gypsyjim]

Our comments here will make no difference at all to Marcia.

The discussion is for those who would like to:

Understand what happened

Learn how to avoid such tragedies in the future

 

[clownfishsydney]

I was the one who posted that she had 26 lbs of weight. This is what I was told by the person who brought her to the surface and then to the shore. However, I have now been told that this was a guess and may not have been correct. What is not deniable was that whatever weight she had, the persons concerned thought that it was excessive. The photo of Marcia taking the photo of the sea dragon (the last photo above), would be taken at 10 to 12 metres I suspect.

 

[Jax]

Thanks, Michael, for all your efforts.

 

[Peter69_56]

That's easier said than done. One of the things that I think might have played a role in the accident is that since Marcia was such an experienced diver the others didn't concern themselves too much with her gear config, even though it was new to her. There was an inherent trust (and not completely unfounded) that she knew what she was doing. The day before the dive she was tweaking the configuration and even consulted someone from a shop about it. To all involved it looked like she had things under control and nobody had any inclination that they were "placing her" into any kind of "situation".

Hindsight is always 20/20 and it's easy to say after the fact that they should have looked at her config. If they had known then what they know now then they would have.... but suggesting that they "allowed" her to put herself in danger suggests that it was a conscious decision, which it was not. There was an assumption made about her knowledge of the configuration. It's not like they knew it was dangerous and say, "whatever".

The obvious lesson to take from this is to be aware that when someone is making major changes to a configuration that as a buddy it's wise to get involved in that process. It wasn't done in this case but it could have made a difference.

R..

There is a fine line between being a helpful diver with good intent, and a nosy know all ******* who annoys everyone. We are all very much aware of this and tend to NOT comment perhaps when we should for fear of offending someone we know or respect. In hindsight not a good thing but very understandable.

I have a philosophy at work (in the electricity industry which is highly dangerous). "Better to tell me and for you and I to know I am a fool than for me to stuff up and let the whole world know I am a fool". I expect people around me to make respectful comment, if I think they are wrong I respectfully explain my thoughts and why. If I am wrong, I thank them and make the changes.

Perhaps there should be more of this in diving rather than the; arrogance, don't tell me I am an expert, or I know everything and need to tell everyone attitude one sometimes sees.

---------- Post added October 14th, 2013 at 01:41 PM ----------

They hang from the shoulders like suspenders, but you can ditch weight like any other quick release system.

This is the harness style I have and am trying. Made by Northern Divers.

 

[almitywife]

^^ From speaking to the diver that did more than one dive with Quero, there were a number of suggestions made (weight configeration/ankle weights, different fins etc) and they felt that their suggestions were dismissed/pushed back.

I have also been contacted by another diver, someone who I have met so not just a faceless online person, who had dived with Quero within the past 6mths and this other diver felt a similar way.