4 diveres went missing - Malpelo, Colombia

[manixle]

facebook post today from Otmar, the owner of Yemaya II

Coiba Dive Expeditions
12. September um 18:07 ·
Today we bring you very sad news. Some of you might have heard of it already:
The Colombian dive boat Maria Patricia lost 5 divers in Malpelo.
One of them was found alive by one of Yemaya's skiffs after drifting overnight in the ocean.
2 more divers were rescued by the Colombian army a day later, 45 nautical miles from the island.
After searching for 10 days, the dead body of Colombian diver, Erika Vanessa Diaz, was found 140 nautical miles from Malpelo.
The dive guide, Carlos Jimenez, is still missing.

Search operations commenced on our second diving day, with the Colombian armada dispatching 2 ships and 2 airplanes. A US aircraft, which constantly flew over the area, spotted the 2 survivors floating in the sea. Our mothership Yemaya as well as our 2 speedboats participated in the marine search for three full days.

We want to express our gratitude to all our guests onboard for their understanding, solidarity and help during the rescue operation. We were not able to dive for three days, but everyone was supportive of our efforts. A big THANK YOU for this attitude!!!

We are very sad and also very upset about what happened, how it happend and how it was managed from the beginning. These are losses that could have easily been avoided. We do not want to go into detail because it's not our operation and it did not happen on our boat. But we can say for sure that a situation like this never would have happened onboard Yemaya.

Obviously, an accident can always occur. (By the way, we never had an accident in our 7 years of operation in Malpelo.) However, a catastrophe of this magnitude is more than just an accident and has NOTHING to do with currents or waves. It has to do with the lack of minimum safety standards and their implementation. It has to do with the lack of adequate safety equipment and well-maintained skiffs that, in case of a lost diver, would guarantee a quick response. It has to do with the lack of responsibility and respect for the lives of the divers onboard.

We are very sorry about the death of Vanessa and the fate of Carlos. We hope that their families will find peace, consolation and relief in this difficult time.

Life goes on. We will keep on diving in Malpelo, with respect for nature and according to the conditions that the ocean imposes. We will go on and improve our operation and try to make the adventure of diving this magnificent underwater world as safe as possible.

A group on our November 29th to December 9th 2016 trip had to cancel due to an illness by one of the members, so you still have a chance to grab one of our last remaining spaces for 2016. Please see below for our updated availabilities.

Best wishes and we hope to see you soon onboard Yemaya.
Otmar

 

[Dan]

....One of them was found alive by one of Yemaya's skiffs after drifting overnight in the ocean.....

First of all kudos to Yemaya's skiffs crew who rescued the "American". I'm just a bit confused about the "after drifting overnight in the ocean" part, which seems inconsistent with the earlier account of he was found holding on a rock south of La Torta, without his gear, not floating in the ocean.

 

[namerg]

 

[fbrissette]

Hello. I am Peter Morse the Australian "American" that was involved in this story. There are a number of things that are either incorrect or omitted still within the media. I have currently withheld my story from the mainstream media as it is certainly controversial and I have hoped that media would so far focus on hope for finding Vannesa and Carlos for the sakes of their families. I am afraid my story will open up a pandoras box regarding negligence and potential culpability in events leading this this horrible story and in the search that took place (much) after. Unfortunately, as hope for the families might be fading, the Colombian media has begun searching for who to incriminate for their loss. I would just like to take this chance within the dive community to say that if anyone really does need clarification on events that take place they are welcome to contact myself and I will endeavour to relay candid and objective information. I can only say now that Vanessa and Carlos were fantastic people, and while I am happy to still be here, I am at the same time incredibly saddened by their loss. My heart goes out to their family and friends and I wish them the strength to get through this time.

Peter, I'm mostly interested in your decision making process. Specifically why did you decide to leave the group (in a stressful situation, the normal reflex is to stay with the group) and how did you come to the conclusion that leaving your equipment behind was the way to go ? I realize that it was to swim faster, but that was a risky proposition. I'm a relatively strong swimmer (can swim 4k open swim in an hour) but how did you know you would make it and not end up alone and in a much worse situation ?

Gutsy move that likely saved your life. I really hope I'm never in a similar situation.

 

[bspeedster]

I think that Peter Morse's post as well as Yemana's post on facebook are very vague and can be seen as defamation b/c there are no details to back up their words, especially those of Yemana as they are a competitor dive group. There may have well been actions that could have been taken to avoid such a situation, but unfortunately the accident did occur and I am personally deeply saddened about the situation. Perhaps more details about what had happened could be posted as an educational tool to teach others things to do and not to do in difficult dive situations.

 

[MariaF]

facebook post today from Otmar, the owner of Yemaya II

Coiba Dive Expeditions
12. September um 18:07 ·
Today we bring you very sad news. Some of you might have heard of it already:
The Colombian dive boat Maria Patricia lost 5 divers in Malpelo.

Otmar

I find it extremely distasteful and disrespectful that the crew of the Yemaya would use this opportunity to bad mouth the competition during this time. Although you found one of the divers (great thing you did and thank you) you are in no place to step on your competition this way. Accidents happen and this was a terrible accident. And it was not due to maintenance of the boat or mismanagement of the Crew. Harold, the owner of the Maria Patricia has been diving Malpelo for 30 years and something like this has never happened.
Very bad business sense to do your plug during this tragedy.
I hope Carlos is found soon.

 

[Centrals]

Must have been sharpening the knife over last 7yrs!!!! Pathetic.

 

[Baja Johnny]

TRAGEDY DESTINED TO OCCUR:

Maria, with respect:

I think Otmar was in fact QUITE TASTEFUL in not bad-mouthing the competition. If you know much about boats and operations....as i'm sure Otmar does...I can tell you that i do as i've been involved in this business for over 20 years...and i have also been on the Maria Patricia as a client....I was ASTOUNDED at the lack of skills and basic safety operations and lack of adequately trained n and tenders for a boat that ran off-shore operations. The crew, captain and owner on the other hand were all very gracious and very nice people, but that does not make up for having trained personnel and adequate safety gear and a daily dive operational safety plan each day. Having spent much of my adult life on boats, running boats and being involved in search and rescue operations....i would have to rate the Maria Patricia at the bottom of the list for several reasons that i won't go into at this moment. MOST IMPORTANT is that people go to sea trusting their lives to the operators of such boats...most if not nearly all of these guests/clients have no clue about the seaworthiness of the boat they are on or the ability of the crew to handle a safety situation---they just assume the boat and crew are all certified and trained....How little the public knows unfortunately. I have seen this so many times in my career diving around the world. This incident however bothers me tremendously because i was on this boat and i had told my friend/assistant that was on the boat with me that this boat would one day have a very bad accident.....due to the fact they have few people on board that i would even consider boat people; lack of adequate dive tenders and motors; dive tenders going out to the other side of the island without a hand held radio...my list goes on and on and on....

I am so saddened because this tragedy should have been avoidable....IN fact was likely very avoidable...with the proper training and personnel and proper equipment --- from radios to well maintained dive skiffs.

for now, i'll stop here...but follow up with more later.

How amazing it is that we are hearing there are survivors...WoW! only those of us lost at sea know what it feels like to taste the sweet goodness of dirt under our feet after floating for hours at sea wondering if we'll ever make it back to see our loved ones....

 

[Riko Lopez]

Lost Divers in #Malpelo! what really happened.

Thanks to Peter to share his terrible experience in #malpelo, after reading nonsenses from the Colombian newspapers and the Dive operations. It is fair to the Divers community to understand what really happened so the same mistakes won t be repeat it again.




I am so sorry to everyone that I have not gotten back to in the past three weeks. It has been an emotionally confusing time. I still aim to respond to every message personally, but in the meantime I will try to let this be a bit of a summary of what has happened and what is going on with me. First, I need to say that physically I am completely fine and I am so grateful to my amazing sister, Kristen and Laura for coordinating everything behind the scenes to make sure that I had good people there when I arrived back on land. So, here I will try my best to give a very condensed summary of what has happened. I went on an 8 day dive trip to the islands of Gorgona and Malpelo off of the Colombian Pacific coast. Malpelo is basically a giant rock with sheer cliffs on all sides that sits 480 km off the west coast of Colombia. I have wanted to dive here for more than five years as this place is supposed to attract a lot of the shark traffic that migrates between the Galapagos and Cocos islands. I was even contemplating setting up a small ecotourism business here if the diving were as good as folklore suggested. Anyways the guests were split into three groups. I was in a group of four guests (including myself) and one guide. We had been diving together all week and were getting ready for our last dive on Malpelo before making our intended return that night to Buenaventura. Our guide, Carlos hadn't dived with us the last day (myself and another of the guests were instructors so they let us dive on our own) as he was busy trying to move one of the mooring blocks that was 50 m below the boat. . I wasn't personally aware of his dive profile, but he was spending considerable time at this depth most of the day and leading to our group's last dive, Carlos was at the very least very tired and extremely cold (he was only wearing a 3/2 mm wetty). It is worth noting that Carlos was a fantastic guy and was the person who has dived the most on Malpelo of anyone in the world and even named almost all of the dive sites there. I really trusted and liked him. Right before were were going for the final dive Carlos rejoined the group and told us wed all say goodbye to the rock together. Of course, we were ecstatic to have him with us for the last dive. After getting into the zodiac to take us to the dive site from the main boat Carlos suggested to the group that we change sites to dive "El Catedral", which is a slightly more advanced site with some unpredictable currents but usually many more sharks than the site we had been planning to go to. Of course it was our last dive so sounded awesome and everyone agreed. It is important to note that there were no radios on the zodiacs so only our driver was inherently aware of our decision to change sites. We started the dive ~1540 on the afternoon of the 31st of August. About 20 mins into the dive Carlos started shooting straight to the surface from 27 m. The group was confused, but concerned for him so we all followed. I thought maybe his computer entered Deco, so was accepting that maybe our last dive would be cut a little short (typically our dives were 45-60 mins). Carlos signalled to do a safety stop at 5 m and he didn't come up from it for 5 mins. This made me more suspicious that he was in Deco so I stayed with him. There was some current near the surface so we were aware during the safety stop that we were drifting away from the site.

facebook post today from Otmar, the owner of Yemaya II

Coiba Dive Expeditions
12. September um 18:07 ·
Today we bring you very sad news. Some of you might have heard of it already:
The Colombian dive boat Maria Patricia lost 5 divers in Malpelo.
One of them was found alive by one of Yemaya's skiffs after drifting overnight in the ocean.
2 more divers were rescued by the Colombian army a day later, 45 nautical miles from the island.
After searching for 10 days, the dead body of Colombian diver, Erika Vanessa Diaz, was found 140 nautical miles from Malpelo.
The dive guide, Carlos Jimenez, is still missing.

Search operations commenced on our second diving day, with the Colombian armada dispatching 2 ships and 2 airplanes. A US aircraft, which constantly flew over the area, spotted the 2 survivors floating in the sea. Our mothership Yemaya as well as our 2 speedboats participated in the marine search for three full days.

We want to express our gratitude to all our guests onboard for their understanding, solidarity and help during the rescue operation. We were not able to dive for three days, but everyone was supportive of our efforts. A big THANK YOU for this attitude!!!

We are very sad and also very upset about what happened, how it happend and how it was managed from the beginning. These are losses that could have easily been avoided. We do not want to go into detail because it's not our operation and it did not happen on our boat. But we can say for sure that a situation like this never would have happened onboard Yemaya.

Obviously, an accident can always occur. (By the way, we never had an accident in our 7 years of operation in Malpelo.) However, a catastrophe of this magnitude is more than just an accident and has NOTHING to do with currents or waves. It has to do with the lack of minimum safety standards and their implementation. It has to do with the lack of adequate safety equipment and well-maintained skiffs that, in case of a lost diver, would guarantee a quick response. It has to do with the lack of responsibility and respect for the lives of the divers onboard.

We are very sorry about the death of Vanessa and the fate of Carlos. We hope that their families will find peace, consolation and relief in this difficult time.

Life goes on. We will keep on diving in Malpelo, with respect for nature and according to the conditions that the ocean imposes. We will go on and improve our operation and try to make the adventure of diving this magnificent underwater world as safe as possible.

A group on our November 29th to December 9th 2016 trip had to cancel due to an illness by one of the members, so you still have a chance to grab one of our last remaining spaces for 2016. Please see below for our updated availabilities.

Best wishes and we hope to see you soon onboard Yemaya.
Otmar

I find it extremely distasteful and disrespectful that the crew of the Yemaya would use this opportunity to bad mouth the competition during this time. Although you found one of the divers (great thing you did and thank you) you are in no place to step on your competition this way. Accidents happen and this was a terrible accident. And it was not due to maintenance of the boat or mismanagement of the Crew. Harold, the owner of the Maria Patricia has been diving Malpelo for 30 years and something like this has never happened.
Very bad business sense to do your plug during this tragedy.
I hope Carlos is found soon.

 

[Riko Lopez]

On surfacing I asked Carlos if he was alright and why we aborted the dive. He answered that there was too much current. I asked him about the 5 min safety stop and he shrugged. At this point it seemed we were moving slowly SE of the dive site, but only 300 m from the stern of the main boat. No need for concern yet. Carlos and two of the guests put up their safety sausages (visual aids) to alert the boat where we were and we awaited to get picked u by one of the zodiacs. However, we were in a different place to where anyone expected to see us come up and about a half hour early. There was no one on dive watch on this boat. Several silky sharks (Carcharhinus falciformis) were curious about our presence, so started circling the group. One of the guest was a little nervous about their boldness, so another guest and I (anxious for a chance to get a bit more in for our last dive) went down about 10 m to play with the sharks and show they weren't being threatening. We stayed around the feet of the other three while they were signalling the boat. After about 15 - 20 mins I thought it was a little odd that no one had come to pick us up yet so I surfaced. On surfacing first I saw that the other three were still contentedly holding onto their sausages, but on turning around I saw that we were at least 3 - 4 km from Malpelo, and the dive boat was just a point on the horizon. I urged the others to try and swim with me back in the direction of the island and boat, because if we could not see them they could definitely not see us. Carlos disagreed with me and asked that we conserve energy and wait to be picked up. Immediately myself and another guest, Jorge, left the group and started swimming. It was about 1630. I yelled back that Id let the boat know where everyone was (moving steadily SE of Malpelo..). The current was a bit stronger than I had thought and Jorge had some trouble making progress against it. We quickly split up and he later rejoined with Hernan, one of the guests. I just swam. I tacked 45 degrees into the current to try and make better progress. Just before dark I used to rest of the air in my tank to try and swim harder and get close enough the rock that I could hear the waves so I wouldn't rely on light to get back. With no air left I took a moment to get rid of the tank and weights. I hadn't stopped to do it before as every moment without swimming was a further distance from the boat. At 1930 I could see I was ~500 m from the boat and I was sure that I was going to make it and I could drink a beer and tell them where the other four were. I couldn't understand why no one had looked for us yet down current. But all of a sudden the boat started moving. In the opposite direction. Into the current. and then they turned their lights off and I couldn't see them any more. I got back to malpelo at 2000 and waited approximately where the boat had been moored thinking that surely they would come back. Or at least do a lap of the island. No sight of anything for over an hour. I was getting tired as I had to swim constantly against the current to not get pulled away from the island, and there was a 3-4 m swell. I remembered that on the other side of the island there was a ladder. This was the only way up onto the rock, and surely there would be a radio and maybe even water at the top. So i swam there. I got to the ladder about 2200. But it was raised. I swore so much. I couldn't understand why the boat had left and gone into the current, and hadn't left anyone else at the island and didn't think to make sure the ladder was down. All I had to do was get up and then Id be safe and Id be able to get in contact with someone to tell the boat to turn around the other four were the other way, and then water, and beer, they were still on the boat. I was so thirsty. This was the first moment that I thought maybe I wouldn't survive this. I didn't have energy to fight against the current all night and all sides of malpelo were vertical rock faces covered in barnacles and being smashed against by 3 m waves. I tried anyways. I spent several hours trying to climb the rocks to get up to the ladder. But it was a dark night and I couldn't see anything and I was getting grated across the rocks each time i tried. My wetsuit was completely torn and cold water was coming in. My hands and legs were bloody and I was getting worried about all those previously adorable sharks that had escorted me for my swim back to the rock. I gave up climbing for a while to swim around the island looking for a better place to climb up, or hold onto or any signs of a boat. About 0200 in the morning I tried again to climb up to the ladder. This time exhausted and desperate. Finally a huge set of waves took me and smashed me into the side of a tall rock face about 50 m from the ladder. I put my hand out to protect my face and my hand entered into a small ledge. The wave passed and I was left hanging onto the side of the cliff. Involuntarily in a moment of adrenalin I pulled myself up and I was dry and sitting on a ledge on the side of the rock. I spent the night there fantasising about waterfalls and beer. At 7 am i was getting poked by a crab. I sat up and was covered by about a dozen crabs, two lizards and lots of bird ****. I grabbed the biggest crab and was excited to rip off his claws and drink the liquid inside. And then i happily imagined myself drinking my morning pee out of my dive mask. Only then did I notice that there was a boat moored just in front of me. Less than 100 m away. So i put down the crab and dive mask. I jumped up and down and blew my whistle at the boat, but they seemed confused. I put on my gear and jumped back in the water and started swimming to the boat. At this point my desperation must have been evident so they came and picked me up. It was another dive boat from Panama. I was so happy to see them. They gave me water, a hot shower and espresso. It was amazing. Oddly, they had no idea there were divers missing in the area. I told them about the other four and they immediately advised the authorities. They assisted the Colombian armada for the next four days trying to find the missing four divers. I felt bad that the other tourists onboard wouldn't get the dive trip they signed up for in Malpelo, but they were amazing and eager to help everyone find the others. Two days later they found two of the guests, Jorge and Hernan. I had rejoined my dive boat at that point and was told that they were initially waiting for night time to look for our lights. But no one thought to bring a light on a dive that started at 1530 in the afternoon. Also, the next day they found Carlos' GPS left on his bed. Apparently he always takes one. I was brought back to land via one of the navy ships on Tuesday the 6th of Sep. Laura an amazing friend of mine from Medellin was there waiting for me and we got a lift to Cali where Lis and Kristen were just arriving from Boston to see me. We had an amazing week. Sadly, last weekend they found the body of the other guest. Carlos has still not been found. I am so grateful to still be here, but it is a very bittersweet feeling at best. I cant imagine what it would have been like to spend all that time floating around in the ocean. My night was already too much and I would not have had the mental tenacity to survive even a second one. I feel so sorry for the families of Vanesa and Carlos. They were both such good people. It all just really sucks so much. To make all matters just a little bit worse, the dive boat I was on tried to tell their families that their deaths were my fault after they found the other body. I was the only foreigner onboard and they said things like I forced them to dive or that I insisted on changing the dive site. Luckily because three of us survived, the truth is winning. The dive operation will eventually have to deal with the potential negligence that led to this incident and the delay in rescue effort. Now all this doesn't even feel real anymore. The memories just sit somewhere in the back of my mind, like an old nightmare. Mostly, I just feel numb. Lis and Kristen left Colombia yesterday. I miss them so much. I have missed my flight twice now to Brasil. I just bought another one for tomorrow afternoon. I will try not to miss it. I have done some interviews with Colombian media. They will hopefully be released after I leave. Ill do my best to stay in better touch with everybody once i have found a place and time to settle a bit. I want to go home, but I need to find out where that is. Thank you everyone who has taken the time to write me your kind words. Im really grateful to know people like you. There are a lot of assholes in the world. Its amazing when you can surround yourself with the people who aren't.