Scuba diver goes missing off Catalina Island

[Eric Sedletzky]

This really breaks my heart.
I knew Laurel, she came all the way up to one of my North Coast Parties once back in 2005 at Ocean Cove. I advertised it on SB and that's how she knew about it. Christina was there too that year. I remember Laurel brought her kids and they had a great time camping. Then after that throughout the years I'd run into her in Monterey at the breakwater. She would show up for North Coast Diver dives when we would schedule them in Monterey. She was living in King City then. Before that she was proud to be from Orange County and she'd let you know about it too.
What a great gal, even though it's been years since I've run into her, I'll miss her in my heart.

About the no BC diving, yeah she may have been doing that. A lot of Socal bug divers do that, they like the added speed of reduced drag and the ability to cover a lot of ground. She was pretty sporty that way and liked to chase bugs.
No BC diving isn't a big deal or a big evil dangerous/careless thing like so many people here on SB like to make it out to be. They just don't know how to do it and have all these nighmares about hitting the water and sinking in a runaway decent into the abyss, it's not like that. You weight yourself like a freediver and basically do all the freediver style moves except you have a tank on your back and you adjust your weights accordingly. The safety mechanism is to never get close to your NDL and don't go super deep so if you do get in trouble you just dump your weights and go up. If you finish your dive and come up and the boat's gone, you can still float but to make it more comfortable you can dump your weights and even get rid of your rig if you want to be totally buoyant...no stupid scuba gear is worth your life. but if there is no boat there's no boat, so in that case you'd be SOL anyway, I don't care what kind of gear you have, except for an EPIRB.
But bottom line, I don't think anybody ever plans to come up and realize they were left behind to become crab food.

If they left her out there to get swept away then that really pisses me off. "IF" that is the case then they need to be shut down for good and never be allowed to hold jobs where people's lives are on the line.
But I said "IF", so before flaming me let's see what comes out in the final report.

 

[Ken Kurtis]

I only feel that there is no evidence that she did not surface from her dive as previously reported. Sorry for the confusion.

Not to drag this out, but how exactly would you suggest someone prove something that didn't happen? How do you prove a negative?

In this instance, had the dive ended normally, she would have been on the surface, boat or no boat at the site. Her absence/disappearance, and the lack of any evidence that she ended up on land, would seem to leave something happening underwater (or even on the surface after she surfaced) as the only explanation and all of those point to "dive accident". Even you have said you don't feel this was staged (nor do I or anyone else that I know of), so what exactly are you expecting to see that will change your mind.

Do you also feel that TS&M's disappearance also is not a dive accident? What's the difference between the two?

- Ken

 

[dumpsterDiver]

Not to drag this out, but how exactly would you suggest someone prove something that didn't happen? How do you prove a negative?

In this instance, had the dive ended normally, she would have been on the surface, boat or no boat at the site. Her absence/disappearance, and the lack of any evidence that she ended up on land, would seem to leave something happening underwater (or even on the surface after she surfaced) as the only explanation and all of those point to "dive accident". Even you have said you don't feel this was staged (nor do I or anyone else that I know of), so what exactly are you expecting to see that will change your mind.

Do you also feel that TS&M's disappearance also is not a dive accident? What's the difference between the two?

- Ken

The difference is that one was left behind and the other was momentarily lost from visual contact and a surface search was initiated almost immediately??

 

[MaxBottomtime]

Lynne had electronics that would have made her visible to searchers if she had surfaced. If Laurel surfaced she may not have been able to swim all the way to the island, especially if there was a current. Since there was no boat in the area we will likely never know until she is found. I was simply bothered by the fact that she was reported to have never surfaced with no proof of that.

 

[Ken Kurtis]

I was simply bothered by the fact that she was reported to have never surfaced with no proof of that.

I'm really not trying to beat you up on this but what you makes absolutely no sense to me. Please help me understand your logic. How could anyone possibly prove that she never surfaced? (Absent locating her dive computer and downloading it.) In other words, how can you prove something never happened?

The parallel question might be that I've never been to your home. How can you prove I've never been there?

- Ken

 

[Ken Kurtis]

The difference is that one was left behind and the other was momentarily lost from visual contact and a surface search was initiated almost immediately??

Lynne wasn't "momentarily lost from visual contact". She was lost from visual contact . . . and never surfaced as her buddy did, which also was their separation plan. From that standpoint, these two cases are the same: There's nothing to indicate that either diver ever surfaced.

FYI, surface AND underwater searches were initiated in Laurel's case.

- Ken

 

[MaxBottomtime]

I'm really not trying to beat you up on this but what you makes absolutely no sense to me. Please help me understand your logic. How could anyone possibly prove that she never surfaced?

I wasn't asking for proof. It bothered me that the initial report was that Kyaa reported Laurel didn't surface from her dive, yet there was no way she could have known that since she left the area and didn't report her missing for two hours.

 

[Ken Kurtis]

I wasn't asking for proof.

Your information is NOT correct. Let me see if I can clarify the timeline for you. (And the caveat to add is that I am in no way saying it was OK for them have missed her on the roll call. By the same token, the boat left based on the DM reporting everyone back so it's not like they left knowing a diver was unaccounted for.) What follows is my understanding of the times.

They left Ship around 11:15AM. The site they went to was Yellowtail Point, about 3 miles and 10 minutes away. It was at that time they realized Laurel had not been accounted for and was not on board. (add in another 5 minutes to re-roll call.) Then then headed back to Ship Rock, so another 10 minutes, 25 minutes total. They searched the surface around Ship (which as you know is a very small area but another few minutes) and then they put divers in the water to look. Shortly after that (I don't know if it was 2 minutes or 10 minutes), they put out the radio call of a missing diver.

I think where you're getting confused is looking at that time, which was probably 11:45-Noon, and the time Laurel is reported to have gone in the water, 9:55AM, and coming up with 2 hours. Yes, that's a 2-hour time period from initial splash but that's NOT two hours that they thought she was missing and did nothing.

There also seems to be, I think, a misconception that Laurel could have surfaced during the time the boat was absent from Ship and had the boat been there, all would have been well. I don't think that works out time-wise and here's why. (And again, the caveat is that this is my understanding from the information I have at hand.)

I'm told Laurel submerged around 9:55AM. (Some have said she went down as early as 9:35 but you can use either time. She also dove solo which I personally feel was her choice so it's not something I would criticize her for doing or the boat for allowing. Diving solo, as many of you know, is extremely common in SoCal.) My understanding of her plan was that she was going to go down to about 80 feet or so, and do some stretches for a few minutes that helped relieve some of her chronic pain. Then she was going to hunt for lobster. I believe she was diving an HP 72cf tank but the key factor here is not the pressure but the volume of 72cf.

Let's look at deco time limitations. At 80 feet, deco tables give you about 35 minutes. If you go down to 100 feet you're in the 20-minute range. If you come up to 60 feet, you've probably got 50-55 minutes. So the point is that if you are diving at these depths, you're probably going to run out of no-deco time (assuming a multi-level dive) in 60 minutes or less. That would have meant, from a no-deco standpoint, she should have surfaced shortly before 11AM at the latest.

Let's look at air consumption limitations. Although I knew Laurel (she was on our Chamber Day Committee last year and this), I never dove with her. So I'm just going to use some general numbers.

An average diver in SoCal (cold-ish) waters has an average surface air consumption rate of 0.75cfm (cubic feet per minute). That number's based on some studies I've done over the years. A good diver who's not working hard might get that number down to 0.50cfm. For the sake of argument, let's use that lower figure.

At 66 feet (3atm), your effective rate would then be 1.5cfm. At 99 feet (4atm), your rate would be 2.0cfm. Let's split the difference and say then that the average rate for this dive at depth would have been 1.75cfm.

If you want to have 500psi left left in an HP 72cf tank which fills to 3500psi, that's 14% of your pressure left in reserve, so you can use 86% of the tank's volume of gas on your dive. 86% of 72cf is 62cf. Diving that by the presumed usage rate (1.75cfm) you come up with a dive time of 35 minutes (to be at 500psi). Even if you kept breathing on the tank and sucked it dry, you'd only extend that to 41 minutes.

So from an air consumption standpoint, and using 9:55AM as a start time, Laurel should have surfaced somewhere between 10:30 and 10:35. The boat was still at Ship Rock at that time.

From a no-deco standpoint, she could have stayed for maybe 60 minutes (and that would have far exceeded what I'm calculating her available air time at). That would have brought her up at 10:55. The boat was still at Ship Rock at that time.

So no matter how you cut this, from the information I have, if Laurel completed her dive normally, she would have surfaced while the boat was still at Ship Rock. If she had some sort of a problem - whether that was medical, mechanical, or animal - it would have happened even sooner in the dive while the boat was still at Ship Rock. The boat left 15-20 after what I'm calculating as the latest she should have surfaced so the boat's departure, I believe, didn't factor in to this and is a red herring.

Again, while I am in no way excusing anyone involved for not accounting for all divers to be on board and then leaving based on an incomplete roll call, to think that the roll call and the boat moving had anything do with this tragedy simply doesn't add up. Laurel should have surfaced under every scenario before the boat left and the fact is that no one reports seeing or hearing her during that time period. This all leads me to believe that she never made it back to the surface.

- Ken

 

[ChrisM]

Well, since we're assuming many many facts here one might also assume that the time between the boat leaving and returning (whatever that might be) might (MIGHT) have played a factor in her rescue or the search for her

All of this is speculation. Maybe she changed plans and did a 30 foot dive for an hour and a half. No one knows what happened, and it's getting more and more likely that no one will ever know what happened. You might very well be right. You might also very well be wrong.

So I think to categorically say that the boat leaving either did or did not play any role in what actually happened is improper. If we had a jury and we had to decide whether it was more probable than not that the boat leaving had something to do with it, we can make those arguments. But I think it could be reasonably argued that the sooner a search starts the more likely the victim will be found, and that anything that hampered the initiation of that search therefore contributed to the tragedy.

Just my .02 on the matter (although eta I actually agree with your conclusion that she didn't make it back to the surface)

 

[Ken Kurtis]

If we had a jury . . .

I didn't realize we were conducting a trial-by-ScubaBoard here.

. . . and we had to decide whether . . . the boat leaving had something to do with it, we can make those arguments.

Which is what I was doing, specifically responding to the allegation that two hours had passed from the time they knew she was missing until the time they radioed for help.

- Ken