Two fatalities in Monterey

[vshearer]

For all the supposition I believe the basic sequence that led to this was covered in post #98, with a slight variance. If in fact one tank had "minimal" air consider that at 80' you are at about 3.5ATM. IP let's say 150. So to take a breath about 200 - 225 PSI. Does that sound minimal?

One diver OOA panics and grabs, other diver also in stress and no longer can breath ultimately tries for surface but holds breath resulting in AGE/Barotrauma.

But we will never really know. What we do know is that they were young, did not have a lot of dives overall, and probably could have avoided the issues with more experience.

But finding the agencies at fault is not reasonable, as they really do not do anything but provide an entrance to this sport. Perhaps they should be more adamant about insisting on exhibited basic swimming skills, but until certification is legally required to participate you cannot blame them. So it is a bit of a Catch-22, the more the industry pushes the C-cards the sooner they will find themselves liable overall.

And Thal, I agree with 90% of your position, but you really jump to conclusions here as far as nailing down the number of dives. In and of itself that sounds like someone trying to build a case using specific details that at this point are really unknown and irrelevant. Someone really good in the water can take to diving in 1/10 the number of dives as someone that is a marginal swimmer. The one thing you and I and Bob agree on is that people that don't swim really should not be in the water to begin with, but we have no idea what that particular skill level was with these divers do we?

The following is not directed in any way towards the divers involvled in this incident, rather it is directed at the overall direction this thread has taken:

Instruction is knowledge, not a license. If ANYTHING good can come from this discussion I would hope it would be for those just getting into diving to really understand that before you start diving you need to be a decent swimmer, not great, just comfortable in and under water.

 

[Quero]

VooDooGasMan, have you ever raised a kid? I raised three of my own and had two of my nieces live with me for periods during their adolescence, and I can say that the magic age of 17, on the cusp of adulthood, was the absolute most challenging time of their development for all of us.

Kids at that age can sit down with you and have a perfectly reasonable conversation about boundaries, risks, and rules--and they will repeat/justify the boundaries and rules whenever you ask them to as well as promise to stay within the boundaries, steer clear of risks, and follow the rules. You've done all you can to protect them by establishing the boundaries, and you just have to trust them to follow through with their promises.

In their heart-of-hearts, though, they honestly believe that the parents/adults guiding them towards adulthood overstate the risks and impose unnecessary restrictions. So before you know it, they've decided to push the boundaries, take the risks, and break the rules, sometimes with grave consequences.

They follow the dictem, "Don't ask first; apologize later."

How can you know that something like this isn't what happened with these two boys? How do you know that they didn't just slip away for a little forbidden fun that went tragically wrong? How can you morally call their instructors and dive supervisors killers, as you did in this post?

The parents have the right to put these Individuals out of the dive business for killing there children, It should have never happen, and could have been avoided, they were totally irresponsible to the youth diving program.

I have enormous compassion for the parents' suffering, but I also have compassion for the dive professionals who were working with the kids. It's just not fair of you or anyone else to baldly call them killers or suggest out of hand that they obviously failed in preparing the boys adequately for the challenges of the dive they were doing when they died. We don't have any public testimony about what happened, but it seems to me that it's highly unlikely to be the open and shut case of gross negligence you believe it to be.

 

[Blue Sparkle]

vshearer, I agree with a lot of what you say, so I'm not taking issue with most of your post (in case it seems like it), but the part about swimming I'm not so sure about. There was another recent thread that seemed to emphasis lap swimming/fitness swimming, so maybe that made me take notice.

What we do know is that they were young, did not have a lot of dives overall, and probably could have avoided the issues with more experience.

But finding the agencies at fault is not reasonable, as they really do not do anything but provide an entrance to this sport. Perhaps they should be more adamant about insisting on exhibited basic swimming skills, but until certification is legally required to participate you cannot blame them.

If ANYTHING good can come from this discussion I would hope it would be for those just getting into diving to really understand that before you start diving you need to be a decent swimmer, not great, just comfortable in and under water.

But... the boys in this accident might have been on the swim team for all we know (unless I missed something indicating otherwise). Whether they were or not, it hasn't occurred to me to make a connection between what happened and their swimming ability. I mean, it's possible they are connected, but without knowing more, doesn't it seem like a leap? Right now the thing that seems most likely, from what we know (which is not conclusive of course), is some sort of double OOA/LOA scenario. That seems more likely to occur at depth (or at least not on the surface), is why I'm not making the swimming connection.

And then I keep coming back to my usual dive buddy and me. Of the two of us, I'm much more comfortable on the surface, and a better swimmer. I learned to swim as a toddler, and I love it. OTOH, my buddy struggled through the surface swim in OW class.

And yet, right now, if I had to choose one of us to be buddied with in an OOA situation at depth, I'd choose him over me. Not that I'm a liability, but of the two of us, I'm pretty sure he'd be the calmer, more methodical one. Also, while I think I'm lucky to hold my breath under water for 45-60 seconds, he can easily go *minutes*. At that point, who cares if I can swim better, faster, more stylishly, or more confidently on the surface?

All else being equal, I agree that surface swimming ability is an asset (and I love to swim, so far be it from me to discourage teaching swimming) And yet, I don't know if I would assume that divers who are not good swimmers are necessarily weak underwater while diving -- especially in the case of a problem at depth. To my mind other skills are more important then: Calm, logic, the ability to stave off panic with thought and method, breath-holding ability, skills in motor memory, etc.

 

[VooDooGasMan]

Quero, like you pointed out, there was a lot of staff (divemasters) that they somehow made a huge mistake. I will not tolerate If someone who is in a leading position, and made life past on.
Vshearer, mentions that if you don't swim you should not be in the water to begin with. Comfortable in or underwater is a thing all need to have and some do not.

There was this fellow that gave his girlfriend a ring in a clam shell on a dive, she said yes, Me and my wife seen them. A short time later he was at alki and wanted to dive alone to get over his fear of panic, she was on the pier, or beach and he came up screamed for help and drowned.

No doubt he should have not been in the water, but he was trying to overcome this for some reason.

In 99 a fellow named john just finished Idc, He taught his first class, I helped and the class went great, he had the skills down, in the pool, in the academics, I told him a couple of tricks on doing skills in open water. After last dive john said, that really works great, the two girls wanted to do another dive, john agreed to take one and I took the other. I always had a dozen tanks in my truck.

John went down with his gal and took off, when my gal was ready we took off. About ten minutes into the dive I ran across john and he was looking at a sea creature, I tapped him on the shoulder and asked where is his buddy, his eyes got big and he looked around and gave me the I don't know. I give him the buddy up sign with my gal, put my grill up to his and then back kicked and pointed at him and her, and buddy up sign and stay right here. With in a minute I found her 40' away, brought her back( she was just getting ready to surface with inflator in hand overhead) changed buddies and we went our own ways. Every one was happy great dive seen a lot.

John say's thanks, to me after the girls left, I said no problem john, but you need to tell the dive shop manager what happen, if he ask me I will tell him, and the girls are handing in there gear right now and it might come up. John agreed. I never asked and about two weeks later I called john and asked if when he was going to teach another class, He replied my teaching career is over, I don't trust myself to teach, I like diving.

Some can teach some areas of scuba well, other areas not so well. If you can not stay focus and teach all areas of scuba well, you have no business doing so.

As Thal said many Instructors have been found guilty of teaching Improperly in the court of law.

Oh, Query, when my child turned 14 he stoled $500 from my wallet, I never said a word to him, The next day I took him diving, never seen him again. Did I mention, I do not tolerate thieves either.



Happy Diving

 

[AbyssalPlains]

I decided to scratch my originally intended post about all this bla-bla in absence of facts. If you can't say anything nice, say nothing at all.

 

[DeepSeaDan]

I'm going to take a WAG and say "none," for two reasons: (1) I flipped a coin and it came up "none," and (2) I've never heard of an agency instructor who teaches a diver to dive in a lake or quarry, including lessons on ocean diving. (Likewise, I've never heard of divers trained in warm water being taught about cold water / kelp ... beyond being told to get additional instruction as needed.)

Agreed, but what you did not mention completely is the importance of ANY scuba Intructor's attitude towards "risk". I believe it is imperative, particulalrly with younger divers, to stress the absolute importance of recognizing, then staying, within the bounds of one's own personal capabilities & limitations. That it is the prudent diver who takes things slowly, gradually building skills proficiency & confidence incrementally, by easing gently into more & more complex diving environments.

Imbuing the new diver with such an attitude, coupled with repeated encouragement to pursue con-ed, should be the responsibility of every instructor, IMHO.

Regards,
DSD

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

Agreed, but what you did not mention completely is the importance of ANY scuba Intructor's attitude towards "risk". I believe it is imperative, particulalrly with younger divers, to stress the absolute importance of recognizing, then staying, within the bounds of one's own personal capabilities & limitations. That it is the prudent diver who takes things slowly, gradually building skills proficiency & confidence incrementally, by easing gently into more & more complex diving environments.

Imbuing the new diver with such an attitude, coupled with repeated encouragement to pursue con-ed, should be the responsibility of every instructor, IMHO.

Regards,
DSD

I completely agree ... but in this particular case there's no evidence to date that the instructor failed to do that ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[DeepSeaDan]

I completely agree ... but in this particular case there's no evidence to date that the instructor failed to do that ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

My comment was not intended in any way as a criticism of any dive leader related to the subject incident; rather, in threads like these, I find opportunities to put forth what I hope are constructive thoughts for the participants, in the shared hope that in tragedies such as these, some good may be realized.

Regards,
DSD

 

[Warren_L]

I do not know who trained them to begin with or who organized the trip so let's make it a complete hypothetical. Would there be a breach of duty if an Instructor took a recently O/W certified minor into a cave on a trust me dive? How about on such a dive when the Instructor was not even accompanying the minor? Does the same sort of reasoning extend to a transition from fresh to salt water based on the "qualified for the environment in which you were trained" clause? An interesting question, no?

This is an interesting question, yes. To some extent, all training dives including open water dives are to some degree, "trust me" dives. So given that, how do you assess whether a breach of duty of care has occurred? I don't really know the answer except that perhaps one might judge the degree of risk involved in order to find a good delineator? But again, with something like risk we are talking about something qualitative that can be at times difficult to quantify.

As prudent instructors, we take measures to mitigate that risk. In open water courses, as you know, we run through skills training in the pool and do academic work to prepare the students for their open water experience, but no matter how much of this we do, it is still a trust me dive. A lot depends on what is judged as acceptable by us the instructors and the agencies. If you compare this scenario to that of taking a newly OW certified child into a cave on a trust me dive, I think there is no comparison as the latter I would consider to be poor judgement.

Your cave comparison is not exactly a fair one in the context of this accident. It is generally accepted that in order to cave dive one requires specific training by a recognized cave training agency by a qualified instructor. This is not the case for someone diving in the ocean for the first time, or should it be, according to your analogy?

 

[TSandM]

You know, the question of preparing someone to go from Lake Tahoe to Monterey is kind of an interesting one. Tahoe is colder than Monterey, especially in the winter and spring, so my guess is that the divers were well accustomed to the exposure protection they had to use for this dive. Tahoe has at least as much depth as you can reach in Monterey Bay, so having to watch depth and time shouldn't have been unfamiliar, either. My guess is that Tahoe doesn't have much current, but dives within Monterey Bay don't most of the time, either (at least to my knowledge). So the only major difference would be exposure to much reduced visibility, compared with Lake Tahoe.

Although reduced vis is something that can bewilder divers, remember that these two had already done two dives in those conditions, so it should not have come as a surprise. Nor does reduced visibility justify a failure to monitor gas supply.

Thinking about it, and again realizing it was NOT their first dive in the bay, I really don't see adaptation from Lake Tahoe as a big issue here. I'd be more suspicious that it was excitement at the amount of things there were to see that might have distracted them from good gas management.