Diver dies while diving Great Barrier Reef, Port Douglas

[Shaun Delport]

Man dies while diving off Port Douglas on Great Barrier Reef

Sad.
No answers yet on this case.

 

[clownfishsydney]

WTF! Three in two days, although the other two were snorkelling.

 

[Beau640]

Plus another snorkeler that required medical attention but didn't die. Just like the other post, doubt all these elderly people are just up and dying all of a sudden. It's not like this week is elderly scuba dive and snorkel week - if it was due to age/co-morbidities you would expect to see this other times of the year. Something else changed to cause all these issues.

 

[boulderjohn]

The dives off of the Quicksilver on Agincourt reef are generally pretty shallow with benign conditions. Divers wear "stinger" suits over their wet suits to cover exposed skin, including hands, to protect them from potentially harmful organisms.

 

[DandyDon]

WTF! Three in two days, although the other two were snorkelling.

Along with a helicopter crash in the area. Some confusion as to whether he was alone or not. He survived to start a signal fire. Too cheap to carry a PLB I suppose: ‘The farther you are the worse it looks’

This one said he was diving with a buddy at least, and it was his second dive of the day. The tour operators first fatality in 11 years: British man dies while scuba diving on Great Barrier Reef

 

[Steelyeyes]

Interesting that the last two lines of the article in the OP refer to the two elderly snorkelers that died and the theory that their cardiac arrests were likely due to Irukandji jellyfish.

 

[WetPup]

A series of unfortunate events

Regarding the snorkellers: I admit I don't buy into the irukandji story. There would have been other evidence of an irukandji sting, not just cardiac arrest. The fact that there was a medical dr on site, plus all the crew who have extensive first aid training, and none of them noticed any other irukandji symptoms? Really? I have no doubt the coroners report will investigate these claims, but as it currently stands, I am hard pressed to believe it is anything other than a run of bad luck.

Edit: there's a bit more info here. Certified, 60 years old, was seen with his reg out of his mouth. Possibly panicked? But that begs the question, where was his buddy?

 

[boulderjohn]

Edit: there's a bit more info here. Certified, 60 years old, was seen with his reg out of his mouth. Possibly panicked? But that begs the question, where was his buddy?

What evidence do you have of a panic?

The story so far screams of a medical event, like a heart attack. You can have a cardiac incident that will kill you in an instant, in which case you will settle to the bottom, likely with the regulator dropping out of the mouth. You can have a cardiac incident in which the loss of circulation leads to to the sensation of not getting any air from the regulator as the CO2 builds up. In that case, there is a good chance you will panic and discard the regulator.

In cases like that, buddies are pretty much useless. In a case in North Carolina a couple of years ago, two veteran divers were calmly looking for megaladon teeth, side by side. One of them made a brief, strange snort and died. That was probably a case of sudden cardiac death. One of the greatest volleyball players of all time, Flo Hyman, was substituted out of a game. She turned to shout encouragement to her teammates and collapsed. They think she was dead before she hit the floor. She was a victim of an aortic dissection as a result of marfan syndrome.

 

[WetPup]

Obviously I have no evidence. Hence my use of the word possibly

 

[Wingy]

And another diver dead off garden island in Perth with "a pre existing medical condition" - not good