Error Two wreck divers dead - Marsascala, Malta

[clownfishsydney]

Is it really correct that a new diver with only 2 years of experience was allowed to do a technical dive on a CCR? That seems wild. Do you know what training that diver had completed? Was this dive part of a formal certification course? What equipment configuration was the diver using and was it properly set up to allow for quickly closing the valve for the wing inflation regulator?

My condolences on the loss of your friend.

I think you will find it is relatively common. For example, Dave Shaw had only been diving for just over a year (I think, hard to see what date he actually started) and had only done 62 dives. However, one of these was to 61 metres. He had actually reached 50 metres before he had done 30 dives. When he died at 270 plus metres on 8 January 2005, it was his 333rd dive! Most of the dives were actually training dives.

 

[ginti]

I think you will find it is relatively common.

Relatively common among people who end up having fatal incidents, like David Shaw.

As a community, we need to do a better job explaining the risks of certain activities.

I don't know the diver, and if in 2 years after OW he managed to perform many (hundreds of) dives in several environments and even experienced at least a few issues, plus studying and understanding well all the theoretical concepts ("understanding" include to comprehend that scientists are far from actually understanding the real word), maybe he was ready for rebreathers.

Honestly, except for very few people, I doubt the above is feasible.

The responsibility to avoid these types of accidents is really on the community, not on the single instructor.

My deepest condolences to the families and friends of the victims - nobody should experience anything like this.

 

[Wibble]

Relatively common among people who end up having fatal incidents, like David Shaw.

As a community, we need to do a better job explaining the risks of certain activities.

I don't know the diver, and if in 2 years after OW he managed to perform many (hundreds of) dives in several environments and even experienced at least a few issues, plus studying and understanding well all the theoretical concepts ("understanding" include to comprehend that scientists are far from actually understanding the real word), maybe he was ready for rebreathers.

Honestly, except for very few people, I doubt the above is feasible.

The responsibility to avoid these types of accidents is really on the community, not on the single instructor.

My deepest condolences to the families and friends of the victims - nobody should experience anything like this.

So you don’t think that you can do T2 within two years of T1?

Not picking a fight here, but following a progression is natural. Doing MOD2 within a couple of years of MOD1 is not exceptional, just as for T2 after T1.

It is exceptional that this sad incident occurred. A training dive is probably the safest diving anyone can do as a full risk assessment and deep thought has gone into the course’s syllabus and tasks. The instructor will be both at the top of their game and experienced with training the course tasks.

 

[ginti]

So you don’t think that you can do T2 within two years of T1?

Please, read well My understanding here is Mod2 within a couple of years of OW:

I don't know the diver, and if in 2 years after OW he managed to perform many (hundreds of) dives in several environments and even experienced at least a few issues, plus studying and understanding well all the theoretical concepts ("understanding" include to comprehend that scientists are far from actually understanding the real word), maybe he was ready for rebreathers.

Honestly, except for very few people, I doubt the above is feasible.

 

[cerich]

A training dive is probably the safest diving anyone can do as a full risk assessment and deep thought has gone into the course’s syllabus and tasks.

you happen to have any statistics that support this conclusion?

 

[Wibble]

you happen to have any statistics that support this conclusion?

Hmm. Nope. I completely made that up and am unrepentant.

Fact is that courses are meticulously planned and vetted by the agency. They've trained and vetted the instructors. The instructors are "at work" so subject to health and safety controls.

Hence it SHOULD be the safest way of doing those dives as the instructor should vet the student: if they're not up to the task in hand, they're off the course.

OK, crap happens. We cannot second guess what happened in this instance and nor should we.

I know that in my technical training it was very much a controlled environment by my instructors. Vastly better controls on technical diving than for recreational diving.

 

[Wibble]

Please, read well My understanding here is Mod2 within a couple of years of OW:

OK. That's a completely different thing; very unusual to get that far in such a short time.

Apologies if I misread your comment.

 

[CG43]

my greatest respect for Chris.

The question remains why such accidents happen and how they can be avoided.

The diver had a problem, panicked and dove up without exhaling. The responsibility for this cannot be placed on his training, regardless of what certificates he had.
Panic can override everything you have learned. He was a person in the wrong environment and was not entirely unjustified in his fear.
To react correctly, you need more than you can teach in a classroom or during 1000 dives without serious problems. The diving instructors I have met are aware that they often have to dive with divers who endanger themselves and others. Sometimes they have enough other tasks to do than just observe their students.
If they did that, they would turn some divers away from certain dives. As an amateur, I have done it a few times, but I don't have to earn money from it. A diving instructor should have this freedom too.

Best wishes, Rainer

 

[Miyaru]

'Hero’ diver sacrificed life to try to save colleague

Divers Krzysztof Białecki and Dominic Dubaj died after incident at Żonqor wreck

timesofmalta.com

'Hero’ diver sacrificed life to try to save colleague​

Divers Krzysztof Białecki and Dominic Dubaj died after incident at Żonqor wreck

Krzysztof Białecki was nicknamed ‘tato’, which means dad in Polish, because of his leadership and experience.
A ‘heroic’ experienced diver sacrificed his own life trying to save another diver, who died later, according to a friend who witnessed the tragedy.
Krzysztof Białecki, 48, died at Mater Dei Hospital hours after the incident off Żonqor, Marsascala on Saturday.
“He was helping another diver. We don’t know what happened exactly. But Krzy knew that he was sacrificing one hour of decompression.
"It was his decision. He knew what he was sacrificing,” said Joanna Wyrebek, a diving instructor who was with the group of Polish divers when the accident happened on Saturday morning.
The other diver, Dominic Dubaj died before he reached the hospital.
Both men were Polish but lived in the UK and had travelled to Malta last week with the group Diving Explorers. Białecki, a diver with 20 years’ experience, had co-founded the group and was given the nickname ‘tato’, which means dad in Polish, because of his leadership and experience.
The group was exploring the Le Polynesien, a World War I wreck at a depth of 50 metres when the accident happened.

'It was clear that something was wrong'​

Wyrebek told Times of Malta she was taking some footage of the dive when, at some point, her camera stopped working and the current was strong, so she resurfaced.
“As soon as I got on the boat the two divers popped to the surface,” she said. They were both conscious at that point but it was clear that something was wrong.
“Tato started saying: chamber, chamber. He then went back into the water to start his decompression. But the pain started. He did not manage to decompress,” she added.
The diver “sacrificed himself and knew the risks” when he went to help his fellow diver in trouble, Wyrebek said. The other divers helped him back onto the boat and, after some time, the Armed Forces of Malta arrived to assist the pair.

'He is our hero, a legend'​

Dubaj died before getting to Mater Dei Hospital while Bialecki was placed in the decompression chamber but died later that day.
“We are absolutely devastated. He is our hero. Our legend. We want to carry him in our hearts and minds. We can’t forget him. He was one of a kind. A good person with a big heart,” she said.
“I called him tato, which means ‘dad’. He was my diving dad. He had a day job but diving was his passion – in capital letters,” she said.
Wyrebek, a diving instructor, knew Białecki for 10 years and said his group was the largest Polish diving club in the UK. She said members of the club often travelled to Malta for dives.
A tribute on Divers.24 said Białecki enjoyed enormous respect and recognition in the diving community and his passion attracted many enthusiasts of the sport.
“Krzysztof was not only a leader but also a mentor for many young divers. His contribution to popularising diving among Poles living in Great Britain was invaluable,” it said.

 

[Germie]

Ok, this will be a long long answer. But I have to write. I have to react about 3 things: experience, risks when teaching and helping others.

I have to react first about the 2 years of experience. I see here a lot of opinions as this is impossible, not enough experience, blabla. But we don't know how much diving the person did in 2 years. Yes it sounds fast, but maybe it is not. And remember, not every diver can progress the same way.

To dive to 100m within 2 years after ow is possible, but for sure not for everybody. I also did. Not on ccr, but at that time a ccr was less likely to go to than now. But if I had choosen to dive ccr, it would also be possible.
I finished my full cave 18 months after my ow course. Dive 390 was my qualifying dive. So not just a little bit with in the standards of 100 dives, but a lot. I just dive a lot.
My first 100m dive was my qualifying dive of my full trimix, divenumber 521, 24 months after ow. So again within standards that write 100 or 300 dives are needed (depending on agency).

I finished my advanced nitrox/ART in april that year, 1.5 week later my cavern, intro and full cave, my normoxic trimix in june that year and in october my full trimix. So I did all technical courses in 6 months.

A couple of years later I decided to go for ccr. 3 months after buying my first ccr I had my mod3 and had been to 128 m. I dove several times a week and always practised the skills because I bought a ccr for deep diving.

This means 2 years certified is maybe fast, but also not always too fast or impossible. And then, 68m is or within the normoxic plus zone mod2 (that is till 70m, the second techcourse after adv. nitrox), or it is the mod3, that is a 100m course. If you decided to go to ccr and then take a year, this is not impossible.
50 hours is not that much. A lot do this amount in 6 months.

People only seem to look at a startdate and an enddate, but not what happens between. And you don't talk about experience in months diving, but about the amount of dives. But in discussions it is the months of experience that seems to be important.
I think best is to talk about hours under water, but that is another discussion.

I only want to say that if someone is doing 500 dives in 10 years everybody thinks this is ok. But if the 500 dives are done in 2 years, then it is too fast.

So even 2 years after open water, or 2 years ccr, it seems this is possible and is within standards. We can discuss if the diver did not had enough experience, but we don't know the details.

And then, point 2 about teaching trimix courses. My normoxic instructor told me when we did the last dive of the course: if you make a mistake now you will end in a wheelchair. If you make a mistake during a full trimix course you will end dead. So do you want to dive?
He maybe said it rude, but sometimes this is the truth.
Also when I did my full trimix instructor course, my instructor trainer warned me: if you teach courses to 100m, there will be an accident with a student. You don't know when, but it will happen. So be sure you do everything according to standards that nobody can blame you.

The 3rd thing I want to mention is about helping others. Remember everybody can get panic, you can be trained very well, but even then panic can occur. And you don't know when it will happen. There is a very small boundery between stress and moving into panic. Also the idea of better 1 dead than 2 dead is true, but if you come in this situation, nobody knows how you will react.

I have been in such a situation. And in this case group pressure brought us in this situation. I was only a recreational diver, it was my dive 250. I dove a 18 liter steel single tank and my buddy a twin8 liter steel. My buddy was an instructor with 1000 dives experience. This was no course dive. We did a wreckdive on the Northsea. This means current, bad viz, so quite hard conditions. We wanted to take a reel to guide us over the wreck as this is what you do on such dives. No pentration was planned. But the reel was to bring us back to the anchorline.
The others on the boat said we don't need a reel, all that lines are annoying. So we decided to skip the reelwork and just jump in. The viz was bad, 1m max or so, this means you are doing a nightdive during daytime here. We swam around the wreck at the sandbottom to see if there was some fish. And then we found out we were in the wreck. Ok, no problem let's find the exit. We swam and swam, but no exit. We hold each others hand as the viz was now turned into zero. Then my computer beeped: deco. Ok, no problem. But no exit. We swam and swam and I made a calculation that I had air (nitrox) only for 20 minutes left. If I did not find the exit, my life would be over in 20 minutes. So within that 20 minutes we had to find the exit, even with my last breath I can swim the 27m to the surface and then they bring me into a chamber, so don't worry about deco. But no exit. Then I started to think about my buddy as he is using more gas than I do. Will I share gas or will I follow the guidelines: kick him away and try to safe yourself? Before I found the answer, he came with the no gas signal. And I shared. I did not think about anything. He was in panic, I was stressed, but able to think. We found the exit. You don't know how happy you are when you see some green light again from the surface. My buddy wanted to get up directly, I knew we need something so they can see us. I decided to shoot my smb as this means with this charter: there is something interesting under it, so grab the smb please. And hoped they would grab it. Also I dropped my spool on the wreck to hope it would get stucked. Then we went up and did the deco according to my computer. I finished with an almost empty tank with only 10 bars left. But both healthy. After this happens we have discussed it, nobody would ever say again no reels, but my buddy was only thinking when it happened: I have 1000 dives, am instructor, know the rules and now I don't know how to make it out? So he did not think about how to safe us or himself, only about how it could happen. I don't know why I stayed calm or relatively calm. But I have decided to safe both of us and this was in the situation we were a bad thing, but now I am happy of course. At that moment I did not think, just react.
So this means you don't know how you will react.

Also on another dive years later I have saved 3 people out of a cave who could not find the exit again. The 4th diver exited, and because of oc diving he was not able to do a search. I was on ccr, so I could do. I said to him wait here out of the water so you don't get too cold, but then you can help me when needed. When I went in to find the divers, he went into total panic people said when I came out again. He jumped in the water of 6 degrees C without gloves and hood, tried to swim under without cylinders, etc. He realised he got stucked in the line and probably had broken the line. (this was true). I found the others and brought them out. Then everybody was safe. But 1 of the divers that was stucked in the cave decided to walk faster than normal to bring his cylinders to the car (250-300m away). It was 32 degrees outside, so very hot. In the evening he got ill because if a sunstroke.

I have done CPR to my dad, happely all ended well, he is still alive and healthy. But my mum was also there, when it happened I shouted her to call the emergency. She did not know anymore how a mobile phone works. She went with my dad in the ambulance and the next day she asked where the ambulance was standing when they came. She did not remember that she walked in the ambulance. So here stress or panic make your brain blind.

So with this examples I want to state that you don't know how you will react to stress situations. And panic is a thing nobody is immune for. Also helping is something you probably don't make a real decision, you just do like you don't think about breathing.