Missing Diver

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Have you tried glo toobs? so as to distinguish your group from other groups?

We used them in Belize when night diving the Hol Chan...it mad it quite easy to identify our group from all the others...(we were red :)

Paul in VT
 
My family is headed for the channel islands next week. For our night dives two of us will have solid blue markers and the other two buddies will have flashing blue markers. Hopefully we wll be the only blues but it helps when the buddies match.
 
Tank lights are pretty common and easily duplicated. I cuff everyone's right ankle with a reflective arm band. It's elastic, has a velcro touch fastener and the center stripe is glint reflective (shows up super in a dive light). The bands are designed for folks out running in the dark to make them show up in car headlights soon enough to prevent close encounters. Soldiers will recognize these immediately - PT happens at dark thirty. I carry six or so in my weight bag to hand out and get more whenever a few walk off (they are $3-$4 each in the post clothing sales store). If you're following somebody's fins through the muck or at night, you can't miss the band. Cheap, sturdy, easy to slip on and uncommon. Just my solution and it works for me - interested in hearing other 'bright' ideas.
 
cannon_guy:
Tank lights are pretty common and easily duplicated. I cuff everyone's right ankle with a reflective arm band. It's elastic, has a velcro touch fastener and the center stripe is glint reflective (shows up super in a dive light). The bands are designed for folks out running in the dark to make them show up in car headlights soon enough to prevent close encounters. Soldiers will recognize these immediately - PT happens at dark thirty. I carry six or so in my weight bag to hand out and get more whenever a few walk off (they are $3-$4 each in the post clothing sales store). If you're following somebody's fins through the muck or at night, you can't miss the band. Cheap, sturdy, easy to slip on and uncommon. Just my solution and it works for me - interested in hearing other 'bright' ideas.

The only problem is that now you become bait to larger fish, durring a night dive I was spun by a large fish when he tried to snap my dive knife (stainless steel tank banger).
 
I'm not clear on whether Ray aborted his dive when he realized he was with the wrong group or continued diving with them. Having just been scolded for not surfacing with my buddy when we became seperated from our group, I'm thinking someone in Rays position should have surfaced immediately after discovering he's with the wrong group.
 
This was not a training dive. Myself the dive con and the three divers all happen to be members of the same dive club and went diving together. Even though we in a way treated it like a training dive by planning the way we did - that was just a formality to make the three newer divers (who were unfamiliar with the quarry) feel a little better about the dives. The dive con and myself dive that quarry regularly.

To answer the question about future planning I saw only two things we could do differently to improve chances of this not happening again. I like the suggestion of another poster about the entire group marking ourselves in some manner (ribbon.) This could be achieved easily with a unique colored marking or tank light. In addition, future dive planning will introduce the plan that if we encounter another group, to avoid mixup, we will all stay put until the other group clears or possibly ascend or descend by 10 feet to clear from the other group. Once our dive club meets on August 6th, we will discuss this and come up with a new group plan policy that all club members will understand and follow when group diving in limited vis.

StSomewhere:
toodive4, so what's the consensus on how to deal with this in the future? What (if anything) will change on your training dive briefings?
 
Ray did not abort his dive. What apparently happened was the group of three (Ray and his two new buddies) had completed their dive. The other two had surfaced with Ray but descended to make the swim back. Ray decided to stay on the surface and swim back. The other two divers stayed slightly lower and under Ray on the way back. It is not entirely clear exactly when Ray noticed he was with the wrong group - his comments upon meeting back up with us were he was simply wondering "where in the hell this schoolbus we were going to see was." We had planned on visiting the bus, the people Ray went with didn't go to the bus... which is when as he put it... he started to wonder if he was with the right group... Oh well... alls well that ends well...

As a note, if you realize you are not with your group - that is a little different than realizing you are not with your buddy. When diving one on one with a buddy, a seperation is much more likely to end in panic or disaster for one buddy or the other (especially with less experienced divers.) Surfacing after a brief period should be the agreed upon action.

When diving in a group of 4 or more, no one person should ever find themselves alone. If two divers lose two divers or 3 lose 4 etc... it is fairly safe to continue in your groups. Although you still can not be 100% certain there isn't one person out there on their own, the likelihood of that is very low... unless you have a renegade diver that is known to wander off on their own. Given that - our situation fell into that fraction of a percent less than 100 that did in fact see two divers sperate and both end up as singles.

Two divers seperated from the group - one all alone did as he was supposed to and surfaced. I surfaced and located him. That was the easy part. The second diver (Ray) was not located at the Surface and no surface bubbles indicated that he was not nearby. All along however he was safely diving in a three man buddy team that he thought was part of his team.

Strange situation... but not neccessarily handled wrong on anyones part... not even Rays. Even when he realized he was with the wrong group... he was generally safe to assume that the other four of us were safely together.

Just hope it never happens to you... it's no fun : )

Ken




del_mo:
I'm not clear on whether Ray aborted his dive when he realized he was with the wrong group or continued diving with them. Having just been scolded for not surfacing with my buddy when we became seperated from our group, I'm thinking someone in Rays position should have surfaced immediately after discovering he's with the wrong group.
 
A group of 5 why not split into 2 teams? ie one group of a buddy pair and a second team of 3. In the team of 3 you place the most inexperienced member in the middle. You tell this diver that he is responsible for maintaining contact between the team ie he has to look fron and behind and/or side by side to ensure everyone is together. If anyone cannot be located (and you should be able to see the diver in that vis) the dive ends and all divers in the team surface. The other buddy pair keep an eye on each other and operate independently from the 3 diver team.

You're in a quarry - no current, crap viz but surely you ought to be able to dive closely enough to see each other or in close enough proxiimity to touch or am I missing something?
 
Thanks toodive4, what's great about SB is you get to learn from the experiences of others. Esp. helpful to plan what-if scenarios for those of us who aren't instructors, DM's, etc. Great stuff. :)
 
toodive4:
I like the suggestion of another poster about the entire group marking ourselves in some manner (ribbon.) This could be achieved easily with a unique colored marking or tank light.
Or any other distinctive bit of dive gear. I've never seen another diver with gloves like mine. I wonder why? :wink:

080904616xs.jpg
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/teric/

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