Student lost - Seattle, Washington

[wetb4igetinthewater]

I find it HORRIBLY distasteful to use the loss of a student in your own dive community to further your opinions on the toxic agency infighting we have in the scuba community at large.
If you do have any factual information about what happened that night, I'm sure we would all appreciate it, as I'm not yet going to attribute blame to even the instructor until I have factual evidence to believe the instructor was at fault.

According to your signature, you are an assistant instructor trainer for SSI, which last I checked is WRSTC.
I really hope you are using your position as someone who is mentoring and bringing up WRSTC instructors to improve the quality of divers in our area.

I find it horribly distasteful that the system isn't reformed to provide more safety. My focus is on 7:2 ratio as reported as fact. That is permitted in standards. It shouldn't be. There will always be risk of death from medical emergencies. The loss of students should be exceedingly rare.

 

[rjack321]

Why it took overnight to find her is baffling to me.

In 35ft for water at Cove2, with current visibility, at night, you could pretty easily see the glow of a dive light from the surface.

 

[OrcasC205]

Why it took overnight to find her is baffling to me.

In 35ft for water at Cove2, with current visibility, at night, you could pretty easily see the glow of a dive light from the surface.

I agree. It would be interesting to know what type of light(s) she was using or had mounted to her kit and whether she had a backup light. It would be really sad if a light failure turned fatal on an open water dive.

Edited to add: On the web page of the shop that I believe was hosting the class, there is a note that divers must supply their own dive light and tank light for the night and deep dives. No mention of a requirement for a backup light.

 

[Stratum0]

Why it took overnight to find her is baffling to me.

In 35ft for water at Cove2, with current visibility, at night, you could pretty easily see the glow of a dive light from the surface.

This is one of the things Id be interested to hear.
According to PADI standards for the night dive, each diver must have a light.
Loosing the diver + not being able to see her light from the surface would easily be explained by a violation of this standard.

As to why it took authorities so long to find her, they were searching the northwest side of the site near the pier, which is far away from the honeybear as you can see in the image from the original article.

I wish we had better photos near the honeybear to see if a light was visible.

 

[rjack321]

This is one of the things Id be interested to hear.
According to PADI standards for the night dive, each diver must have a light.
Loosing the diver + not being able to see her light from the surface would easily be explained by a violation of this standard.

As to why it took authorities so long to find her, they were searching the northwest side of the site near the pier, which is far away from the honeybear as you can see in the image from the original article.

I wish we had better photos near the honeybear to see if a light was visible.

Honeybear should be around the green dot in the upper right.

 

[lamont]

If that's a snap from the dive operation the next day and roughly where she was found then that is maybe 200 feet from the honeybear and pretty straight out from where the ladder truck was. It is also right along the typical route that divers travel to get to the honeybear using the rope trail. Maybe one of the divers who found her will clarify where she was, but if its anywhere near there, that's more than a bit questionable as to how they could search for hours and miss her.

And FWIW I've been in Cove 2 with inexperienced divers a lot and wouldn't do it with less than a 1:2 ratio of experienced:inexperienced. Unless you're doing some kind of "drop straight down in 20 feet of water and hang onto a line" OW1 first dive that doesn't require any swimming around at all. Two people trying to corral 7 students while they're swimming around, and one of them is probably leading the dive and needs eyes in the back of their head is going to lead to separation. They didn't even do that for our graduation dive in Cove 2 for my OW1 course where they split the class into 2s and we did the dive while one of them watched over us (and that was a $99 two-weekend-wonder course from UW sports).

 

[stuartv]

I'm confused. Some of you are posting as if this was an OW class. Others, as if it was a class for Night/Limited Viz/AOW.

If it was an OW class, why were they diving at night? (I think it was not an OW class)

If it was not an OW class, then everyone was a certified diver. In which case, 7 students and 2 instructors does not seem like an unreasonable ratio.

 

[lamont]

That's because some of us think AOWs are a bit of a joke and the whole series of courses should be in the OW course, like it used to be.

And I'm basing that on the inexperienced divers that I've taken out at cove 2 with less than ~50 dives or so, and I don't think anyone should be doing that with less than a 2:1 ratio of inexperienced/student to experienced/instructor ratio.

Just because someone has an OW card doesn't mean they're really capable of safely diving without supervision, it just gives the training agency a liability defense.

 

[DAJ]

Why it took overnight to find her is baffling to me.

Not the ideal subject to make my first post here; however, I will see if I can add some info on this scenario. Many dive recovery units have a set policy to not do any type of recovery dives at night. I was a LE recovery diver for 30 years and know of several agencies that have this policy. While it might seem odd, the individual you are looking for in this case is not going anywhere and there is no reason to put team members at greater risk by doing night recoveries. While there may have been teams at the scene to secure it, they may not be diving until morning. The only time I have been involved in night recoveries is when the dive centered on time sensitive evidence or the political climate surrounding the recovery dictated the use of the dive unit.

 

[rjack321]

I'm confused. Some of you are posting as if this was an OW class. Others, as if it was a class for Night/Limited Viz/AOW.

If it was an OW class, why were they diving at night? (I think it was not an OW class)

If it was not an OW class, then everyone was a certified diver. In which case, 7 students and 2 instructors does not seem like an unreasonable ratio.

It was a night course not OW

I am still struggling why her light was not visible on the surface. Even if it were comparatively weak this is not deep at all. And lights are easily seen here even in poor vis from much deeper than the honeybear. If her light failed and that triggered some sort of panic that is obviously a different story