Accident - Australian Diver Death

[Cave Diver]

From the article: Wife feels for dead husband's co-diver | Adelaide Now

Assuming there is any accuracy to the reporting, one has to wonder what their team protocols are and why they were separated by "great depths" considering the following statements:

Friends have told how Dr McAlister's co-diver has been traumatised after watching his mate die in the depths, unable to help as he himself ran out of air.

Authorities are still trying to solve the riddle of what caused Dr McAlister's death. There are conflicting reports as to whether he died as a result of getting caught in the guide ropes and whether his friend tried to help free him.

Other divers are mystified why he did not cut the ropes to free himself if that is what happened.

The co-diver was gradually surfacing to avoid the bends when he saw Dr McAlister at a great depth below him invert in an unnatural position, authorities said

 

[TSandM]

I don't know what is taught in the Australian cave diving classes. But I just spent a week in Canada with two very experienced technical divers (although, for the most part, they weren't doing technical DIVES on the trip) who are accustomed to diving together. To my observation, they dove together as a convenience only; they generally got in the water together, but were completely unbothered by ending it separately (sometimes by almost a half hour!) It is not the way I was taught to dive, nor the way I dive, but I know it is the way some folks do. Perhaps there was no intention to have a "team" on this dive.

That's all I can think of, because otherwise, having a teammate entangled or disabled so far beneath me that I couldn't go down and help him is such a long, complete failure of situational awareness that I can't even imagine ME doing it (and SA is my weak point).

 

[LiteHedded]

I don't know what is taught in the Australian cave diving classes. But I just spent a week in Canada with two very experienced technical divers (although, for the most part, they weren't doing technical DIVES on the trip) who are accustomed to diving together. To my observation, they dove together as a convenience only; they generally got in the water together, but were completely unbothered by ending it separately (sometimes by almost a half hour!) It is not the way I was taught to dive, nor the way I dive, but I know it is the way some folks do. Perhaps there was no intention to have a "team" on this dive.

That's all I can think of, because otherwise, having a teammate entangled or disabled so far beneath me that I couldn't go down and help him is such a long, complete failure of situational awareness that I can't even imagine ME doing it (and SA is my weak point).

i think there's a word for those types of folks

 

[Cave Diver]

I don't know what is taught in the Australian cave diving classes. But I just spent a week in Canada with two very experienced technical divers (although, for the most part, they weren't doing technical DIVES on the trip) who are accustomed to diving together. To my observation, they dove together as a convenience only; they generally got in the water together, but were completely unbothered by ending it separately (sometimes by almost a half hour!) It is not the way I was taught to dive, nor the way I dive, but I know it is the way some folks do. Perhaps there was no intention to have a "team" on this dive.

That's all I can think of, because otherwise, having a teammate entangled or disabled so far beneath me that I couldn't go down and help him is such a long, complete failure of situational awareness that I can't even imagine ME doing it (and SA is my weak point).

From what I've read it seems that a lot of British divers have mostly a solo mindset as well. Of course based on some of the sumps I've heard described, I'm not really surprised.

 

[UCFKnightDiver]

Wow, kinda dumb!

 

[boulderjohn]

In The Last Dive, Bernie Chowdhury clearly states that on the dive in which he got severely bent, he and his "buddy" were intentionally "same ocean" buddies. They were only near each other for a few minutes during the dive.

If you read the latest missive from BSAC, their explanation of what tech diving is like is interesting in that regard. They say that technical divers try to be independent, relying primarily upon redundant air sources that they carry themselves and rarely rely upon a buddy as a resource.

I think a lot of us have team skills so drilled into our heads that we are surprised that a sizable portion of the diving world does not agree.

 

[Jeff_S]

I think drawing any conclusion from that particular article is impossible, as it was clearly written by someone who knows nothing about diving.

But here's what makes it interesting to me: Andrew and I just spent two day at Beneath the Sea in NY (largest consumer Scuba Show in the country). UTD's latest promotional material is headed by the line, "Beyond Buddies is a Thinking Team." So people would walk by the booth and ask what makes UTD different, to which I would answer something like, "we think the buddy system is arcane and not working."

This got most people to stop for a moment to talk, and once they found out we were not advocating solo diving, but rather the concept of training and diving as a team, almost everyone agreed that in many cases the buddy system is nothing more than two people in the same ocean.

This belief was even more prevalent in the recreational instructors I spoke with - at first I thought that was hypocritical, but then I realized they were all talking about each others' students.

So regarding the article from the OP, really the only conclusion we can actually draw is that WE KNOW the buddy/team system works when practiced correctly, and its creation was based on incidents exactly like this one in Australia. Whether these two guys could have helped each other if they were together no one will ever know, but my completely non-scientific research at BTS leads me to conclude that many, many divers think the buddy system, as practiced today, is imperfect at best.

Jeff

 

[TSandM]

Jeff, so true! I've had a couple of recent experiences diving with instabuddies from outside of my little diving universe, and I've been nonplussed at the casual disregard for keeping together that I have seen -- and this is from both recreational and technical divers.

I know the argument is that you should be completely self-sufficient and having a technical buddy should only be a minor convenience, but I want that extra brain and set of hands readily available to me. Since I don't find diving as a team to be a burden or an annoyance (but rather a pleasure in the vast majority of cases) it makes it quite easy to maintain that point of view.