Tragic ... but if there's one thing I've learned over the years it's that news reporters notoriously get the facts wrong when covering scuba accidents.
Redondo is a popular dive site for classes. The north side ... where almost all classes are conducted ... is a shallow slope. You have to go out quite a ways to hit 40 feet. There are a number of "attractions" that have been placed down there primarily for the benefit of new divers and OW students doing their "tours", most in less than 40 feet of water. If they were on this side, which is likely if it's an OW class, then the reporter probably got the depth wrong ... unless they were out past the attractions, which isn't something an OW class would be likely to do.
The south side of the site goes much deeper, down a steeply sloping bottom. OW classes are unlikely on this side because the bottom's too steep to get your students kneeling ... which almost every instructor does for doing their mandatory skills. For this reason I'm skeptical about the depth reported.
As for the mask flooding ... many (most) OW classes don't have students wearing hoods and gloves in the pool. Putting on this exposure protection makes a mask clear much more difficult, and students who haven't practiced it in a pool will struggle with it. This may or may not have been the case, but it's not common practice for OW students to use cold-water exposure protection in the pool, since it has a tendency to make you feel overheated. Same goes for drysuit ... or even the 7 mm farmer john wetsuits that are so common among OW classes here. These are things a student needs to get acclimated to.
Finally, mask clearing. I have seen ... several times ... students perform the skill flawlessly in the pool, then during checkout dives the cold water hits them the first time, and it's all they can do to keep from flipping out. There's a reflexive survival instinct that affects some people more than others that makes it feel like your regulator is leaking as soon as that water hits your nose. That feeling is much more prominent in cold water than in warm. My guess is that the flooding mask induced some degree of panic in this woman, because the cold water on her nostrils made it feel like her regulator was breathing water instead of air. She probably reacted so fast that the instructor didn't have time to notice anything before she needed to do something ... and if that student's initial response was to bolt, the only thing she could do is go with her.
My fear is that she embolized on the way to the surface. The only time I ever had to deal with a full-blown panicked OW student was a similar situation, where as soon as he attempted a mask clear in OW he immediately shed some gear and attempted to bolt. Fortunately in my case he was the only student, and I was able to respond immediately to prevent a tragic outcome. I can easily imagine another instructor not quite so fortunate.
In the absense of facts, there's always going to be some second-guessing in cases like this one. But unless you've been in a situation to see how it can happen and how quickly things can get scary, it's difficult to imagine. I'd hold off on being too judgmental of the instructor in this case until I learn more about what really happened. It may turn out that she did everything right, and simply didn't have more than a split second to avert a tragedy.
Sometimes you just can't predict how a student's going to react to their first exposure to cold water. Or even later exposures. TSandM will recall a situation where a somewhat experienced diver panicked and bolted because he couldn't get his mask to stop leaking. He'd been trained in the tropics, and it never occurred to any of us that he'd react the way he did to cold water mask flood exposure until it happened.
Some addition thoughts ... with the abysmal weather we've had recently there's a high probablility that visibility was very poor. This plays on a person's mental state when they haven't experienced it before. The story said this was a risk-averse woman who was taking a class because her boyfriend talked her into it. That's always a potential recipe for trouble ... and one I hope the instructor was aware of.
My guess is that this woman's mental state played a far more important role in the accident than any lack of skill on her part, or any lack of adherence to proper care on the part of her instructor. Take it for what it's worth ... in the absence of facts, one conjecture is worth about as much as another.
... Bob (Grateful Diver)
