Wife describes losing husband - Maui, Hawaii

[Trailboss123]

The times I dove Molokini were awesome. The weather was great, as was the boat and the crew. Kona coffee, fresh pineapple, whales everywhere, it was awesome. One thing I remember was almost nobody paid any real attention to the dive briefings. I'll bet half the divers didn't realize the back wall went down 300 feet or so.

Yep-- The frontside and backside are 2 completely different dives and experiences.

 

[drrich2]

One thing I remember was almost nobody paid any real attention to the dive briefings.

It can be hard to listen to dive briefings. Early in my diving (and not so early!), I had a lot of trouble getting much from dive briefings. I'm a reader, and I like to go over things repeatedly (cue Forrest Gump's Mom, 'Momma always had a way of explaining things so that I could understand them' kinda thing); I was task-loaded just being on the boat, worried about taking too long to gear up and looking inept or inconveniencing people (or somehow missing a dive), worried about what'd happen when I ran low on air ahead of the rest, I'd catch myself daydreaming or I'd stop listening to think about something the speaker said while he kept going and I missed the rest... All of which assumes I could hear over the boat noise.

My point is, when divers don't 'listen' well to dive briefings, it's not always that they don't care, arrogantly think they 'know it all,' or expect to be taken care of by others in a white-washed, danger-free excursion. Sometimes they just plain can't.

Someone will counter 'You should speak up and ask them to repeat it.' Uh, yeah. How many times? How much of the briefing? Trying to walk me through till I really got it wouldn't have been practical. Frankly, I often 'winged it.'

I can be pretty dense and slow facing novel situations, so I'm not typical, but I'm not the dullest tool in the shed, either, so if I had that much trouble, odds are some other people do, too.

However, my experience has taught me that I should take all of that with a grain of salt and over-communicate, over-explain and be overly-concerned. I would rather risk pissing off and boring the experienced diver on the boat, in order to cover the bases and re-communicate the basics with the masses.

Thank you for your service to divers. People like you help people like me more than you sometimes know.

Richard.

 

[Charred]

So I agree that buddies should descend together, and the divers are ultimately responsible for making sure they do. And of course there are some lingering questions about the accuracy of the reporting. But let's say the DM did, in fact, tell the wife to go down with the first group while the husband and another diver who had trouble descending before went with another DM, with the plan that the buddies would reunite on the bottom. Can we agree that's not OK? Can we agree that, while the buddy couple should have said no and insisted on sticking together, that they shouldn't have been put in that position in the first place? Can we agree, even if we don't want to go so far as to hold the dive op liable in a civil suit, that if we found out this was standard practice for them, we'd steer our loved ones elsewhere out of concern that our loved ones might go along with that instruction to split up, as these two did, even though they ought to know better? This isn't about blame; it's about prevention.

If a DM told me to split from my buddy, who happens to be my wife, I wouldn’t because I dont outsource my or my wife's safety.

That being said, my wife and I often descend at different rates but our eyes are always on each other. If she is coming down slow, Im sitting there watching her come down.

Again, I know how to descend on a wall and dont need a DM to tell me how.

And I will circle right back to the divers should not be expecting to have the DM babysit them. I read that article and come to the root cause that people need to stop expecting the DMs to be underwater sherpas.

 

[NothingClever]

If a DM told me to split from my buddy, who happens to be my wife, I wouldn’t because I dont outsource my or my wife's safety.

Fundamental, right?

 

[Bob DBF]

Fundamental, right?

Right up there with air, depth, and time.


Bob

 

[-MJ-]

Elements of this story make me think of something I’ve witnessed countless times in similar situations, which may or may not be relevant here. If the male diver is overweighted, he descends rapidly at the beginning of the dive, too quickly for his wife who descends more slowly. On reaching the group, he begins kicking, and thus maintains his depth. The wife joins, and they exchange OKs. When the dive pro points out the shark, the male diver stops to watch. Since he has stopped kicking, he drops. Since he’s watching the shark, he doesn’t notice. Given the info from other divers that this site can reach depths of 300ft, he could easily be in blue water by the time he realises he’s away from the group. At which point vertigo and/or gas narcosis can kick in, along with rapidly using up his air. When the wife sees him, it sounds from the poor descriptions as though he is in a feet down, head up orientation, as one who is overweighted will often be. I can understand in this situation that the dive pro, if able to reach him, may add air to his BCD if he is incapable of doing this himself, to help achieve neutral or perhaps positive buoyancy. They may even drop his weights if they feel they have no other way of returning him to the surface.

I have no knowledge of this event beyond what has been described here, but I would strongly suspect overweighting could be a contributing factor. I witness it regularly even (or especially) with divers who describe themselves as experienced. Often trying to talk these divers out of using so much weight is an uphill struggle, and many divemasters prefer to give their customers the weight they ask for rather than to help them understand that they actually do not need that much. Just my two cents.

 

[JH007]

Before husband swam off into the blue didnt she say they gave each other the ok sign?how are they not considered "buddy up" at that point. Seem to me the DM did an alright job cause he got to her before she was a body also, gotta take personal responsibility in extreme sports, I'm not going to go sky diving and decide not to pull my chute and blame others (if I were to survive)

 

[Kimela]

Before husband swam off into the blue didnt she say they gave each other the ok sign?how are they not considered "buddy up" at that point.

Yes, they shared the 'ok' signal and then were distracted by the sharks. If they were within 8 feet of one another at this point that's close enough for me to consider my buddy and I 'buddied up'. Should we be closer? Probably. But the reality of current, surge, taking pics, exploring on the dive all mean we meander in and out of about a 15ft radius of one another. Add strong current and it gets sketchy. But she didn't say they had current working against them. When my buddy and I don't do our giant strides one after the other I get nervous if I'm the one waiting for him to descend. It can be difficult to pick him out of a crowd of black neoprene and fins (he recently got orange fins and it's really helpful.)

This is just another call to action for me and my buddy to maintain a closer proximity to one another at all times. I hate that I learn these lessons from such sad circumstances - but I wish more divers were here, reading and learning the lessons with us.

 

[BFRedrocks]

I get nervous if I'm the one waiting for him to descend

Usually my wife and I giant stride one after the other, but if we're part of a group and we can't go consecutively, we always wait at the surface for each other and always descend together.

 

[2Bobbyo]

I was certified through NASDS back in the late 60's. Nitrogen narcosis remains fresh on my mind and always will.