Try Scuba Accident..what happens next?

[divinh]

If you had discussed/planned your dive with your buddy before hand and inquired with the guide/dm/instructor if the protocol was to follow them, and your insta-buddy swam off in another direction and you felt it was unsafe to follow them, then certainly you would be correct to NOT follow the insta-buddy, and explaining that situation should/would suffice.

I have been in situations where I have terminated dives and the person I was diving with wanted to continue, I either ascended towards the surface in safe manner or swam to the exit point attaining increasingly shallower depth. The one dive partner that decided to argue about this is no longer a dive partner of mine and I am just chuffed about that. Had this been an insta-buddy the decision would have been even easier. Your first duty is to keep yourself safe....every dive brief, for recreational diving, should include a statement that "anyone can abort the dive for any reason".​

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If my dive buddy wanted to abort a dive 10 minutes into a dive. I would follow my dive buddy to the boat unless instructed otherwise by the guide. I have no issues with cutting my dive short to ensure that my buddy makes it back to the boat.

The "anyone can abort the dive for any reason" doesn't force the buddy or group to follow along. If an accident, especially a fatality, were to occur, everyone would be questioned and second guessed for leaving that diver alone. This very much happens here.

 

[oncor23]

Do you think if there was a fatality with the instabuddy that I could say, "Well, he/she swam off. It's not on me." Would that suffice? Or would I be questioned for "abandoning" my buddy? When something goes wrong, everyone is going to be questioned for their decision making, especially by those who paint the situation as someone else's fault, not the victim, as that's victim blaming.

If my instabuddy swam off after agreeing to follow the guide, I would confront him/her and indicate that I was going to follow the guide...and then head towards the guide. If the instabuddy didn't follow, I'd notify the guide that my buddy had swam off. Let the guide decide whether to track down the instabuddy, end the dive, or keep going. I'm not obligated to follow an instabuddy. Sometimes the victim is responsible for their predicament.

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All these things you suggested could have happened. Testimony from the other divers on the boat would have revealed these details. The instructor said he only looked away for a few seconds to get his bearings and neither he nor the other two divers with him knew what happened to Rocio.

Yes, the instructor did write that he only looked away for a few seconds and the victim was gone. I'm having a hard time believing that.

 

[divinh]

OK lets take your example as best case...now lets discount the strong possibility that when the instructor had discussed with Rocio on the surface that she could laugh with her regulator in her mouth that she used some of that are to inflate her BC. Also now lets take into consideration that they had dived to 4meters (1.4 ATA)....that would give 28.57 Bar for the end of the dive...now Rocio was found at 6m (1.6 ATA)...that would be 25 bar to end the dive with...that would be 6.4 minutes of air had her breathing rate remained 3.9 bar/min. Again, the fact that she was found unconscious with her regulator in her mouth at 6m is a strong indication of the possibility that she ran out of air and drowned.

The typical protocol for dive centers to brief is that divers should arrive at the surface with 50 bar in their tank. Your example has them 10 bar into that reserve, that is bad gas management. The fact that the instructor lost track of his DSD client in the first place is what makes him culpable....unless he was fending off a shark or attending to another emergency, which he wasn't by his own statements, he should not have lost his client. This was not a "student" in a training course...this was a DSD client. Students do work in confined water and typically have more than 40 minutes of instruction prior to entering open water for their "check out" dives. Rocio was not diving in the context of a prepared student and it was the instructors mistake to not be more mindful of that.

That's not my "best case scenario". It's just playing with the way you're calculating air consumption rate, which you're assuming is constant throughout a dive. That doesn't happen. If you're taking the information from the instructor's account, then all of his charges were consuming air at the same rate. They all would have run out of air given some of the scenarios you've speculated, but obviously they didn't, so how could that have happened? It's just physics, as you say. They defied physics?

They didn't surface to discuss the laughing fit, so no BC usage. Further, when he checked all the divers /later/, they all had 110 bar. She still had her mask on but the regulator was out of her mouth when found. I'm not clear that you've read posts #18 and #19 in detail.

He's definitely responsible for his DSD divers. Where did he or I say he wasn't? As for doing exercises in confined water, please read up on what the definition is. It's not just a pool.

 

[divinh]

Yes, the instructor did write that he only looked away for a few seconds and the victim was gone. I'm having a hard time believing that.

It's also hard to believe that the two other divers hadn't noticed that she was gone either, unless they were completely focused on the instructor. It would be good to see their statements, along with the other divers in the area.

I'm not a parent, but many are surprised how quickly kids can get into trouble when they just look away for a "few seconds".

 

[JackD342]

Since folks are doing math that includes BCD inflation, a 30lb lift BCD fully inflated at the surface requires just under 1/2 cubic foot of air. So... measurable but not major use of cylinder pressure. And if someone was fully inflating underwater requiring a greater portion of the cylinder pressure, we would be discussing weighting and/or runaway ascents rather than rate of air consumption.

 

[oncor23]

It's also hard to believe that the two other divers hadn't noticed that she was gone either, unless they were completely focused on the instructor. It would be good to see their statements, along with the other divers in the area.

I'm not a parent, but many are surprised how quickly kids can get into trouble when they just look away for a "few seconds".

It's much easier for me to believe the other divers didn't notice where the victim went. Particularly the other DSD diver would have been concentrating on the Instructor and not the other divers. Who knows what the OW diver felt responsible for?

As for kids...yes, many parents may claim they looked away for only a "few seconds", but that is very likely an exaggeration and if actually timed...it would be much more than a few seconds.

 

[Zef]

If my dive buddy wanted to abort a dive 10 minutes into a dive. I would follow my dive buddy to the boat unless instructed otherwise by the guide. I have no issues with cutting my dive short to ensure that my buddy makes it back to the boat.

The "anyone can abort the dive for any reason" doesn't force the buddy or group to follow along. If an accident, especially a fatality, were to occur, everyone would be questioned and second guessed for leaving that diver alone. This very much happens here.

That is exactly my point. I was not implying an insta-buddy choosing to abort the dive, I was implying an insta-buddy who chooses not to follow the agreed upon plan and dives in a direction I don't expect and endangering myself and him from becoming separated from the dive group or not aborting when termination of the dive is called.

-Z

 

[Zef]

That's not my "best case scenario". It's just playing with the way you're calculating air consumption rate, which you're assuming is constant throughout a dive. That doesn't happen. If you're taking the information from the instructor's account, then all of his charges were consuming air at the same rate. They all would have run out of air given some of the scenarios you've speculated, but obviously they didn't, so how could that have happened? It's just physics, as you say. They defied physics?

Per the statements in post 18 one can infer they didn't surface to discuss the laughing fit, so no BC usage. Further, when he checked all the divers /later/, they all had 110 bar. She still had her mask on but the regulator was out of her mouth when found. I'm not clear that you've read posts #18 and #19 in detail.

He's definitely responsible for his DSD divers. Where did he or I say he wasn't? As for doing exercises in confined water, please read up on what the definition is. It's not just a pool.

Per the statements by the instructor in post 18 and 19 one can infer they absolutely surfaced to discuss laughing through the regulator...go back and read post 18 and the beginning of post 19. The instructor states he spoke to her and then they re-descended:

"where at minute 14 of diving rocio makes me the sign that he wants to go up, we're going up (we were 4 meters deep) and he tells me that I had caught a laugh attack and had the feeling of having water in my mouth, and I say that with the regulator in the mouth can laugh without problems that will not enter water, after this i ask if I wanted to follow , that we were next to the boat, that there was no problem that we had already dived and if I wanted we could cancel diving, which she answers to me that as we will cancel if she was having a great time and I was enjoying it a lot, I answer nahuel if I'm sure, I want to follow.

We go back down, and we continue to dive 18 more minutes,"

Also regarding my statement about her being found with regulator in her mouth, my mistake, I stand corrected, post 19 indeed states she was found without reg in her mouth. Thanks for pointing that out. It changes nothing, except it adds the possibility that she displaced the reg and did not know how to recover it and thus possibly drowned as a result...again preventable if under the proper care and guidance of the instructor.

-Z

 

[Zef]

Since folks are doing math that includes BCD inflation, a 30lb lift BCD fully inflated at the surface requires just under 1/2 cubic foot of air. So... measurable but not major use of cylinder pressure. And if someone was fully inflating underwater requiring a greater portion of the cylinder pressure, we would be discussing weighting and/or runaway ascents rather than rate of air consumption.

This folk did not include it in the math, hence why I stated "now lets discount...". This folk was just pointing to an action the diver in question would most probably have taken that would attribute to her air consumption, however significant or insignificant amount that accounts for. It was simply an attempt to point out that there were factors that contributed to her death that when stepping back and looking at the big picture were totally avoidable.

It would be interesting to know where the other divers in the group were when the instructor was on the surface speaking with Rocio. Did he leave them at 4m? or did he have them all surface with him? The answer to this question can be used as a frame of reference in interpreting the events that unfolded that day.

-Z

 

[Rechno]

I don´t understand, why you are so focused on the calculations.
From what i read:
a) we don´t know the starting pressure (so everything is just an assumption)
b) the statement was, that at the time of ascent to discuss the laughing issue they were at 4m depth. I did not find that 4m was the average or max depth for this first part of the dive (please correct if i missed it)
c) we don´t know if the brief surfacing to discuss the laughing issue was counted in the following dive time.
d) when the instructor realized, upon planning to end the dive, that a diver was missing, he returned and started a search. So this time should clearly not be considered as pre-planned, when discussing if the dive was planned proper.

So for me there is way to much assumption in any given scenario.