Error What should I have done differently? Diving incident in Cozumel.

[Shawn C]

How do you know his experience level? Did he tell you?

Not seeing someone check their gauge means little. If someone has AI (Air Integration) or is fairly experienced, you may not notice them checking their gauges, because it can be done with a glance. He didn't run OOA, so it's almost a little off-topic.

If they were buddies, there's not much you can do about someone who intentionally swims off. Given this was a drift-dive, and assuming he wasn't actually solo but rather buddied with the DM, that looks a lot more like a "team" dive.

A more challenging question would be, what should the DM do? The DM chose to stick with you and your wife when the other guy swam off to look at sharks. The DM may have been buddied with him, but was responsible for everyone. He can only herd so many cats at once, and chose to herd the two he could, and not the one that literally swam off.

You described him as a solo-diver in the OP, but now aren't which means a percentage of the responses are only applicable to what you initially wrote. It's hard to give advice or commentary when the story changes. Was he intentionally diving solo?

I had previously posted this but I'll post it again: He 100% was not a solo diver but I take your point. I see, from re-reading my original post, where you could think he was a solo diver as I did use that term. I should have said "the other diver was by himself and was the DM's buddy" or something along those lines vs 'solo diver'.

I have been diving for long enough (closing in on 40 years) that I'm pretty adapt at judging someone's diving abilities pretty quickly, both on the boat and, more importantly, in the water. As I have also previously posted, he wasn't a new diver but he wasn't very experienced either. I also noted that he'd never shot a DSMB prior to the dive in question. And, when he did try and shoot it, he lost it at depth.

He wasn't wearing a wrist computer so the only way for him to check his gas was by looking at a gauge which is pretty obvious and not at a glance.

 

[FishWatcher747]

To say the shark chaser was the DMs buddy is incorrect. You are describing a group dive led by a Cozumel guide where the only buddy pair was you and your wife. If the shark chaser wanted a real buddy he could have hired a private DM.

What exactly do you think you were accomplishing by splitting the distance between your wife and the shark chaser?

 

[Shawn C]

A more challenging question would be, what should the DM do? The DM chose to stick with you and your wife when the other guy swam off to look at sharks. The DM may have been buddied with him, but was responsible for everyone. He can only herd so many cats at once, and chose to herd the two he could, and not the one that literally swam off.

The DM did exactly what I would have expected him to do. Stay with the divers who were following his instructions (my wife more than me in this case) and not go chasing after a diver who intentionally did the opposite of what he asked and leaving two divers to go chasing after one. He could see that I was constantly checking to keep him and my wife in sight and, when the distance got to the point where it could become possible that I could lose site of them had I stayed where I was, I returned.

 

[Shawn C]

To say the shark chaser was the DMs buddy is incorrect. You are describing a group dive led by a Cozumel guide where the only buddy pair was you and your wife. If the shark chaser wanted a real buddy he could have hired a private DM.

What exactly do you think you were accomplishing by splitting the distance between your wife and the shark chaser?

I was trying to keep both groups in sight and act as a 'bridge' between shark chaser and the DM. When it became apparent to me that I was going to lose sight of either the DM & my wife, or the shark chaser, I chose my wife.

 

[AlGiordino]

This took place about seven years ago in Cozumel. My wife (150 dives over 20 years) and I (around 400 dives over 35 years) were diving one of the southern reefs, Francesca (I think), on our second of a two tank dive. We were with the DM plus one other diver we had just met. We were at around 70' max depth. It was a typical Cozumel drift dive with a mild current. Towards the middle of the dive the current picked up considerably. We weren't flying but it was significant. I believe that we ended up on Dalila for the last third of the dive.

The DM gave the gather together, we're heading up signal to all of us. Everyone acknowledges. As we were heading up for our safety stop, the DM shot his SMB. My wife and I were close to the DM but the other diver was no longer near us. He (solo diver) had spotted a couple of blacktip reef sharks down on the reef. I saw him look at us, look at the sharks, look at us and, in my head, I said "don't do it, bud". Yeah... he did. He turned and dove back down chasing the sharks.

I slowed myself down and I tried to split the distance between my wife & the DM and him, keeping everyone in sight. I was trying to act as a bridge between everyone. There was decent current and, since we were now at very different depths, the distance between him and I was rapidly increasing as was my distance from my wife and the DM. I was banging away on my tank trying to get the other guy's attention, but to no avail. I could tell my wife was not happy with me and was (strongly) signaling me to come back as I was now a decent distance from her and the DM and, effectively, had put myself in a no buddy situation. Since she, and the DM, were downcurrent, I was able to rejoin them reasonably quickly (couple of minutes). We did our safety stop and we surfaced... to no boat. I could see the DM looking in a particular direction and focused my gaze on where he was looking. Oh, yeah... there's our boat. But why is so far away that I can barely see it? Why isn't it moving? And, hmmm why can't I see it all now? I ask the DM and he says "I don't think it's coming". Ummmm.. what? He said that he thinks there's a problem with the boat. A long thirty minutes later, we are able to get the attention of another dive boat and they bring us aboard and then transport us to our boat (which had suffered an engine failure).

Meanwhile, no sign of the other diver. After another hour, we hear on the radio, that another boat has found our missing diver and they were bringing him to us. What a relief! I'm sure it was the longest 90 minutes of his life. It felt like forever for us sitting on the broken down boat waiting for any news of his being found. As we were being towed back to the marina, he came up to me and apologised profusely. He knew he'd made a bad decision and put himself in jeopardy. He said he saw me hanging back for him and was trying to get some shots of the sharks and, when he looked back again, he looked he couldn't see anyone. He'd never practiced shooting his SMB and when he tried to shoot it during his safety stop, he ending up losing it. There went his best chance and being spotted on the surface. He had no other signaling device.

Why am I posting this? To ask if there's anything I should have done differently. Should I have just let him go right at the outset, when he dove back down to the reef, and stayed with my wife? Should I have stayed with him and allowed my wife and DM out of my sight? Anything else that I can use as a lesson for the future?

I mean, you all had a plan, and it sounds like everyone understood. He made a bad decision there to ditch the plan, and there were consequences. Obviously there is always a slight risk being separated from your dive buddy, but I appreciate you trying to signal him to come back up. If you had gone back down with him, best case scenario is that you also would have been missing for 90 minutes.

Im glad everyone was ok, and i hope it was a good learning experience for him.

 

[Jai Bar]

Just about the SMB thing: if a diver does not know how to deploy and has never done it, diving in strong currents having the SMB visible on the choppy surface is important for the boat to spot it from distance.

Therefore, in my opinion it is better surfacing (yeah, carefully) and then inflating it, rather than completely losing it due to incompetence, so you don't lose the visibility advantage. Of course, I encourage any diver to carry one and know how to use.

 

[Shawn C]

Just about the SMB thing: if a diver does not know how to deploy and has never done it, diving in strong currents having the SMB visible on the choppy surface is important for the boat to spot it from distance.

Therefore, in my opinion it is better surfacing (yeah, carefully) and then inflating it, rather than completely losing it due to incompetence, so you don't lose the visibility advantage. Of course, I encourage any diver to carry one and know how to use.

Agree completely with you. I don't think that it's a good idea to try and shoot your SMB for the first time in a bit of a situation. Far better to surface with it than lose it. He likely would have been found much faster if he had it at the surface.