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

[razorbackdiver]

DumpsterDiver,

I only mention the issue of reserves as I have not seen it mentioned prevouisly. There seems to be a number of issues with her dive. Remove any single issue and perhaps there is a different outcome. Personally, I believe the issue of a decent reserve was the proverbail straw in this case. As to your question as to how much reserve was needed to for Quero to safely execute a dive of 10 ft. I do not know how to phrase my answer respectfully, but given the outcome I think the answer is known.

 

[dumpsterDiver]

DumpsterDiver,

I only mention the issue of reserves as I have not seen it mentioned prevouisly. There seems to be a number of issues with her dive. Remove any single issue and perhaps there is a different outcome. Personally, I believe the issue of a decent reserve was the proverbail straw in this case. As to your question as to how much reserve was needed to for Quero to safely execute a dive of 10 ft. I do not know how to phrase my answer respectfully, but given the outcome I think the answer is known.

You don't need ANY reserve, if you are willing and capable of dropping lead at a depth of 10 feet! Divers should ASSUME and expect that their air will stop working at any moment in a dive. they should NOT be dependent on watching a gauge. You seem to feel that not running out of air and keeping a reserve is the solution. It is NOT. The solution is to be able to survive, if and WHEN the bubbles just stop flowing. This can happen due to a an equipment failure, a bad guage, a bad O-ring, and explode hose.. Anything.

If that means go to a redundant system, swim up, drop lead and float, beg a buddy for help... whatever.. but running out of air should not kill you, especially at 10 feet with no entanglements... (if that is what happened in this case).

 

[Dive Bug Bit Me]

Accidents tend to comprise of a "chain" of errors, leading to that "terrible outcome". The length of that 'chain' is really determined by how forgiving the specific dive is. Recreational diving tends to be very 'forgiving'. More extreme, technical or overhead environments are increasingly less 'forgiving'.

The 'accident chain' often starts long before the diver enters the water. It could start with their mindset, attitude, knowledge, health, underlying stressors etc. It continues with pre-dive planning, buddy checks, adherence to agree or standardized protocols on the dive itself. Equipment issues form varied links in that chain; maintenance, servicing, appropriateness for the dive, diver familiarity etc. Lastly, diver competency and experience with emergency procedures and responses.

Andy, you've hit the nail on the head with what's been bothering me. By all accounts this should have been a straight forward dive and exit. A very forgiving environment.

The chain of errors is long and some have been belaboured in this thread.

Quero was experienced at diving albeit warm water diving. She must have felt things slowly accumulating to a bad dive as time progressed. She must have known that it had been a poor dive leading up to that point. She must have been uncomfortable with her weighting. She must have known her air supply was low and consumption was higher than it would be in warm water. She must have known this was an environment that was foreign to her previous experiences. As the chain of fateful errors accumulated she didn't call the dive, instead she re-submerged solo which pushed the cumulative errors over the tipping point.

 

[Mike]

From what I have read here, it seems it boils down to the buddy system. We are all taught to dive with a buddy. It is the most important rule, other than do not hold your breath, about diving. I would be willing to bet that no one begins diving solo. It is something that you progress into for various reasons. However, the simple fact remains, having that other person during an episode 10 ft, 20 ft, 30 ft, to 150 ft and beyond under the surface would almost certainly increase your odds of survival at minimal 50percent. If this woman had all the problems with her equipment that some are suggesting, and all the factors came into play and she found herself at the bottom unable to rise and OOA, had someone else been there, at this depth, there are so many things that could have been done to save her life. It seems they found her after she died. Absolutely no blame to the buddy from the sound of things on this forum. The buddy system- or the idea that it does not apply to you, ULTIMATELY killed this woman. And if you are a solo diver, you have this incident to reflect upon the next time you go under on your own because you absolutely cannot account for every single thing that could happen and if you are rendered unconscious you cannot help yourself. Having a buddy can. It is not a guarantee, but diving is designed to have this back-up system in place. If you choose to break this rule, you must absolutely understand the risk. I believe that is the lesson learned here. One of the most very basic fundamentals of diving that TOO MANY people choose to ignore. This is not an urban legend. It happens and it CAN HAPPEN TO YOU.

If people focused 10 percent of the energy they do on so much extraneous stuff in diving just on good buddy protocol there would be a lot less dead scuba divers and if nothing else a whole lot less mysteriously dead or disappeared divers. If I dive witnessing 100 different dive pairs over a period of tropical recreational dives there will be probably 15 pairs that I'd qualify as actually are good safe buddies. I've counted on one hand the amount of times I watched insta buddies actually construct a dive plan with each other, go over signals, air planning, missing diver, when they will call it etc...

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

That she was a member of SB and respected by and helped moderators, owned her own dive shop in Thailand, etc is a reason to not speculate and discuss this tragedy is offensive to me. Every single incident discussed on this forum is no different from hers. If you have a personal emotional connection to her and do not wish to participate than you should no do so but to suggest that anyone else refrain from the same because of who she was, is offensive to anyone else disucssed in this forum that someone else knew personally, and respected, etc. I say it is because of those factors that it is all the more important to discuss it.

From what I have read here, it seems it boils down to the buddy system. We are all taught to dive with a buddy. It is the most important rule, other than do not hold your breath, about diving. I would be willing to bet that no one begins diving solo. It is something that you progress into for various reasons. However, the simple fact remains, having that other person during an episode 10 ft, 20 ft, 30 ft, to 150 ft and beyond under the surface would almost certainly increase your odds of survival at minimal 50percent. If this woman had all the problems with her equipment that some are suggesting, and all the factors came into play and she found herself at the bottom unable to rise and OOA, had someone else been there, at this depth, there are so many things that could have been done to save her life. It seems they found her after she died. Absolutely no blame to the buddy from the sound of things on this forum. The buddy system- or the idea that it does not apply to you, ULTIMATELY killed this woman. And if you are a solo diver, you have this incident to reflect upon the next time you go under on your own because you absolutely cannot account for every single thing that could happen and if you are rendered unconscious you cannot help yourself. Having a buddy can. It is not a guarantee, but diving is designed to have this back-up system in place. If you choose to break this rule, you must absolutely understand the risk. I believe that is the lesson learned here. One of the most very basic fundamentals of diving that TOO MANY people choose to ignore. This is not an urban legend. It happens and it CAN HAPPEN TO YOU.

Perhaps that's a good take-away for someone with 0-24 dives ... but I'm afraid any meaningful analysis is going to be a bit more nuanced than that.

Given what we know about her situation, nobody can really say what ULTIMATELY killed her ... but I guarantee that it involved far more than simply her choice to go haring off on her own.

There were many choices that might have helped prevent this accident from happening ... some involving equipment and others involving her mental approach to the dive. But it's unclear whether having a buddy would've prevented the accident, or instead would've only complicated the outcome by endangering another diver ... we simply don't have enough hard facts to make that determination.

The buddy system works well ... IF ... both divers are appropriately trained and mentally prepared to be good buddies. But you need to know how to maintain contact with, communicate with, plan with, and dive with that other person ... and that involves techniques that are woefully absent from most OW training. You also need to buy into a commitment to being a dive buddy. Marcia was someone who trained scuba divers ... and from what I have heard, she was damn good at it. And yet, based on comments from people she was diving with at the time, she was not mentally committed to being a dive buddy. So it's doubtful that being part of a buddy team would've been much help to her ... it's not a one-way situation, both divers have to have that commitment or the system simply doesn't work.

There's way more to being a dive buddy than just swimming in the proximity of another diver ... it involves a mental commitment that starts with thinking in terms of "our" dive, rather than "my" dive.

As for solo diving ... it's not something that a new diver should even contemplate. But for a suitably experienced, properly equipped, and mentally competent diver it is no more or less dangerous than diving with a buddy ... you just have different risks to mitigate. My standard response to a new diver telling me or any other experienced diver that we shouldn't solo dive is to tell them to go log a few hundred dives ... then come back and we'll talk about it. Until you develop some context, anything I have to say on the subject wouldn't mean much to you ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[razorbackdiver]

You don't need ANY reserve, if you are willing and capable of dropping lead at a depth of 10 feet! Divers should ASSUME and expect that their air will stop working at any moment in a dive. they should NOT be dependent on watching a gauge. You seem to feel that not running out of air and keeping a reserve is the solution. It is NOT. The solution is to be able to survive, if and WHEN the bubbles just stop flowing. This can happen due to a an equipment failure, a bad guage, a bad O-ring, and explode hose.. Anything.

If that means go to a redundant system, swim up, drop lead and float, beg a buddy for help... whatever.. but running out of air should not kill you, especially at 10 feet with no entanglements... (if that is what happened in this case).

You have a lot more experience than I, just as Quero did. I have to wonder if she shared your philosophyon gas management and reserves?

 

[dumpsterDiver]

You have a lot more experience than I, just as Quero did. I have to wonder if she shared your philosophyon gas management and reserves?

Apparently not, because I pretty much always dive with a pony bottle. The point is that you need to have a set of options for survival that is more robust than being dependent on a single hose or O-ring or guage. I am willing to bet my life on not having two independent failures on one dive, but I want to have a plan for survival of all accidents that involve a single failure.

 

[MB2013]

I cant see how a diver with Marcia experience in 10ft of water, where the diving conditions weren't extremely difficult. Wouldn't have been able to get to the surface unless she had a medical problem. If she had run out of air and this had come suddenly. Marcia would have still had 30 seconds to try an emergency assent. In that time she would have started to free herself from her diving gear or dumped some of her weights. This would have been noticed by the rescue diver.

 

[drrich2]

Marcia wasn't doing a planned & equipped solo dive, so her dive wasn't very comparable to what many of us think of as solo diving.

That said, there've been stories of buddy pairs both dying in situations where it's thought 1 buddy got in distress, and the other buddy tried to help and also died.

So yes, buddy diving can save your life. Then again, it can in rare instances get you killed. One of the topics in a Rescue diver course is dealing with panicked divers in distress, and that they are dangerous.

Richard.

 

[ScubaPink]

I cant see how a diver with Marcia experience in 10ft of water, where the diving conditions weren't extremely difficult. Wouldn't have been able to get to the surface unless she had a medical problem. If she had run out of air and this had come suddenly. Marcia would have still had 30 seconds to try an emergency assent. In that time she would have started to free herself from her diving gear or dumped some of her weights. This would have been noticed by the rescue diver.

And if she had a buddy at her fin, no doubt, at that depth, that buddy would be able to:
a- get her physically to the surface herself OR
b- bolt to the surface and ask the other two divers for assistance

The outcome would likely have been different and better in this instance.

---------- Post added October 16th, 2013 at 04:24 PM ----------

Perhaps that's a good take-away for someone with 0-24 dives ... but I'm afraid any meaningful analysis is going to be a bit more nuanced than that.

I disagree. I think over analyzing the other factors that played into this, although helpful, did not result in her death. I still believe that, if she had a buddy at her fin, no matter what else happened, in 10 feet of water, she would likely have been able to live to tell about it. No, a buddy is not a guarantee of a safe dive. But for this scenario, I believe it would have saved her- notwithstanding any other facts.