Diver Dies near Mukilteo (in Puget Sound)

[Lamar Jr]

This guy sounds like a really special young man with a zest for life. How tragic that he should die doing something he loved at such a young age.

As someone said earlier.....Where was his buddy??????

 

[Kat]

My thoughts & prayers are with his family & friends. He sure sounded like a wonderful young man.

The second article said he was seperated from his buddy for about 10 minutes. That seems like a pretty long time.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

Here's a recent interview with the dive buddy ...

http://www.northwestdiver.com/news/2003/0620-2.php

A few facts come out in the article ...

They did a dive to a max depth of 93 fsw. Ben was using a tank that he'd already done one dive on.

They came up to roughly 58 fsw and separated so Aaron could explore the inside of a dome structure. Ben stayed outside the structure. This dome is only about 20 feet in diameter, so it's not clear how they managed to separate as a result of this decision. But according to the dive buddy, it was approximately 10 minutes later that he surfaced without his dive buddy.

The victim did indeed run out of air in his main tank, although it's not yet been ascertained that his pony bottle was also empty. According to the dive buddy's comments, the tank was empty when he attempted to use it to inflate the victim's BCD, which is why the BCD got ditched. Not sure this was the right thing to do .... my training would've led me to orally inflate so as to be able to tow the diver and perform rescue breathing while getting the diver ashore ... not to mention that oral inflation would take a lot less time than stripping a BCD off of an unconscious victim.

It's easy to second-guess ... but the story suggests that several poor judgement calls on the part of these two divers contributed to this tragedy. A less complacent approach in any one of these areas could probably have prevented this young man's death.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)