Two fatalities in Monterey

[Lobzilla]

I think that part of the false sense of security comes from the agencies and instructors not being honest with the public about the real risks and about how well prepared today's students are to meet those risks ... to me it is an "informed consent" issue, at least in part.

Exactly. It was at my 13th dive after OW when I met a GUE instructor who called the gear 'LIFE-SUPPORT equipment'. Nothing new to me but I saw some other jaws dropping.

 

[lamont]

Apples and oranges, Lamont - you ARE a trained and well-practiced diver.

[speculating] These young men were not. They got excited and 'into' their first ocean dive, when suddenly there wasn't air. From there on out, they didn't succeed.

and they're both dead now.

any discussion of how to fix what happened to them by traveling back in time is a bit futile.

the living people reading this discussion are what is important for lessons learned now, and the lesson out of this should be gas management, buddy skill, s-drills, etc -- not dropping your weight belt.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

I have no irons in this fire, but imho, i think that some of this could have been avoided had a couple of experienced divers been bringing up the rear. To play look out for the laggers and the ones that may have fallen behind for some reason.

I can only visualize how 19 students would look UW. I am sure disorganized would be one word that comes to mind. No matter whoes at fault, if there is any fault to lay, these were just teenage kids. We can harp all day long about gas mang. dropping weights and everything else, but these two were under age and still considered kids and preperations should have been made as such. More adult supervision, paring the kids with experienced adults, adding more adult divers on the dive, what have you. I would like to know how many adults were actually on the dive with the kids. I often wonder when something like this happens and it is reported, "when we surfaced they were missing from the group." I envision them being the last in the long line with nobody looking back to make sure all are still there. Kids have to be supervised at all school dances, proms, outings, what makes this any different? There should have been more adult experienced divers in the water with the 19 kids.

I have considered sending my daughter on scuba type trips and this is one reason that I always change my mind. If I could not be there and diving along with them than she should not be going. Granted my kid is much younger, but hearing stories like this are one of my worst nightmares.

"Bringing up the rear" doesn't work for the conditions these kids were diving in ... in the type of visibility typical in NorCal (or just about anywhere else along the west coast), there is simply no way to keep track of 19 people. Someone strays by 10-15 feet and you just cannot see them anymore ... you could swim right past them.

This is why it's so important to teach independence from the get-go ... which involves instilling not just the skills to plan and conduct your own dive, but a respect for what can happen if you don't take it seriously enough.

On the west coast, there is no group diving ... there are no divemasters in the water with you ... you are expected to complete your training with sufficient skill and knowledge to get together with your buddy and plan/execute your own dive. If you cannot do that, you shouldn't be diving here. This is one of the reasons we see such disparity of viewpoints between those who teach and dive in tropical locations vs here ... the conditions and expectations are so different.

Given what I now know about who trained these kids, I gotta believe they were sufficiently trained for this dive ... which leaves me more than ever wondering what went wrong.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[Thalassamania]

Lamont ... you are quire correct, however, that will not fit into the time frame that the recreational agencies are insisting on while a weightbelt drop (non-optimum I grant you) will, though would likely not be drilled to a level of competence any more tha air sharing evidently was.

Bob, I know nothing about who trained these kids. Without naming names, can you share with us what leads you to think that the kids were properly trained in the face of what appears to be a massive training failure?

 

[lamont]

Lamont ... you are quire correct, however, that will not fit into the time frame that the recreational agencies are insisting on while a weightbelt drop (non-optimum I grant you) will, though would likely not be drilled to a level of competence any more tha air sharing evidently was.

so, we're just assuming a lack of good training and figuring out how to train diver in its absence now?

and something that i think has been frustrating me immensely in reading this thread is that i actually don't see the point of speculating about the details of this particular incident as it applies to the deceased and what could be done better. i also gave up on trying to fix diving training a long time ago, and i'm uninterested in trying to blame or defend any instruction they had in this thread. maybe they got insufficient training, maybe they got really good training and this is just a case of the inherent lack of control that instructors have over their students after they're released into the wilds -- train enough divers and some of them are going to die -- the instructors in this case could have just got very tragically unlucky.

all that doesn't matter to me.

as far as lessons learned, what do we, as trained divers at varying stages of experience take away from this _for ourselves_? and i've already mentioned my opinion on the takeaways multiple times.

anyone reading this who is a certified diver with little experience probably should take away that they're very inexperienced and unprepared by their training, and should be searching for better answers. they've already been through the basic OW training at the very least, so trying to fix OW training is going to be pointless for the majority of the readers of this thread. encouraging divers to get better at useful basic skills is something that we could choose to do though.

i don't get the fixation on the specifics of the incident, and i don't get the fixation on trying to take a broken OW training program and patch over it to just make sure they teach ditching weight belts. they're dead and you can't fix that. OW instruction is broken, and if you'd like to fix that start looking at the GUE OW program that everyone ridicules as a start. what is left that is fixable? that's our own personal level of preparedness.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

Bob, I know nothing about who trained these kids. Without naming names, can you share with us what leads you to think that the kids were properly trained in the face of what appears to be a massive training failure?

Knowing who they are ... having been diving with them before ... having shared conversation about how we teach, what we believe makes a competent diver. These are diligent people.

I understand you don't believe this could ever happen to one of your students, Thal ... and I hope it never does, because it's an instructor's worst nightmare ... but people are fallible ... teens more than most.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[Peter_C]

From what I understand and please someone correct me if I am wrong, there were 19 paying customers on board the Monterey Express. I would assume they chartered the boat. There were three instructors with the youths. Simple math says there should have been 16 youths. The conditions of the day were surgy with at best 15 feet of vis and probably more like 10 feet of vis. This would mean lighting at a depth of 40+ feet would be reduced. The dive site has kelp in parts of it, but not necessarily where the youths were found deceased. The kelp this time of year is not very thick.

Most likely the youths were trained in Lake Tahoe. The lake has good vis with between 20-100ft. Very little current, and zero surge. I do not know how many ocean dives they had done, but if someone has an idea please share. Friday night they did a night dive at the Breakwater. The conditions on that night warranted plenty of ocean dives before tackling a beach entry at night with surge and 8 feet of vis once at depth. This may or may not have been their first trip to the ocean for diving. (What an awesome experience it would have been had this accident not happened).

I was thinking what the outcome might have been if they had been diving in a team of three. We often do so, and I feel for some situations a team of three is ideal.

Lamont's Rock Bottom link in his signature is something EVERYONE needs to know, understand, and apply to EVERY dive. Yours and your buddies life depend on it.

 

[tddfleming]

"Bringing up the rear" doesn't work for the conditions these kids were diving in ... in the type of visibility typical in NorCal (or just about anywhere else along the west coast), there is simply no way to keep track of 19 people. Someone strays by 10-15 feet and you just cannot see them anymore ... you could swim right past them.

This is why it's so important to teach independence from the get-go ... which involves instilling not just the skills to plan and conduct your own dive, but a respect for what can happen if you don't take it seriously enough.

On the west coast, there is no group diving ... there are no divemasters in the water with you ... you are expected to complete your training with sufficient skill and knowledge to get together with your buddy and plan/execute your own dive. If you cannot do that, you shouldn't be diving here. This is one of the reasons we see such disparity of viewpoints between those who teach and dive in tropical locations vs here ... the conditions and expectations are so different.

Given what I now know about who trained these kids, I gotta believe they were sufficiently trained for this dive ... which leaves me more than ever wondering what went wrong.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

Bob:

Thanks for the insight into the conditons out your way. I have not put any blame in instruction is this case, as I remember reading that some of you knew who it was and felt that was not the issue. A decision that one would make under normal conditions may not be the same when that one becomes part of a group. Different mind set. I also feel that with 19 kids the planning would have been complexe at best. How does one go about planning a dive for 19 kids, x amount of adults, as far as gas planning goes???? I feel that would have been a large logistical task at best. Maybe I am over thinking this??? While they should be responsible for themselves and their own planning, we are still talking about kids. I would not leave my grocey list planning up to any high school student I met let alone hope that they packed clean underware. My parents could have and did talk to me till they were blue in the face, but did I listen, not really. I may have known better, but as kids we push the limits and advise that are given. Just because someone can get cert. or pilot lic. does not make them mature adults and make good decisions. I still cannot put my head around the fact that if one got into trouble why the other would not have tried to save himself??? The one news cast where they interviewed a guy had mentioned that their gas may have not been on before they jumped. Just maybe, if the conditions out there are as you said that under these circumstances, another site with more viz would have been better??

 

[DandyDon]

I hate 3 person teams. Twice as many people for me to watch closely, more likely for any one to think a second has the third covered well when not, etc.

I noticed in Two Carson High School Students Died in Scuba Diving Accident Saturday | Facebook

Stokes says this scuba diving event was not an official school planned trip, but it does have connections with the school because it was a Carson High School teacher who organized the trip on the side.

 

[Lobzilla]

Lamont ... you are quire correct, however, that will not fit into the time frame that the recreational agencies are insisting on while a weightbelt drop (non-optimum I grant you) will, though would likely not be drilled to a level of competence any more tha air sharing evidently was.

Bob, I know nothing about who trained these kids. Without naming names, can you share with us what leads you to think that the kids were properly trained in the face of what appears to be a massive training failure?

Knowing who they are ... having been diving with them before ... having shared conversation about how we teach, what we believe makes a competent diver. These are diligent people.

I understand you don't believe this could ever happen to one of your students, Thal ... and I hope it never does, because it's an instructor's worst nightmare ... but people are fallible ... teens more than most.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

As critical as I am about run-of-the-mill scuba instruction, at this point it appears that a massive inability to plan and execute a dive was the cause for this accident.

To what degree the students or the teachers were at fault for this remains to be seen.