Student dead - West Vancouver, British Columbia

[DandyDon]

Female dies during scuba diving class at Whytecliff Park

A female scuba diving student has died despite a coordinated emergency response on the beaches of Whytecliff Park Sunday.

A small diving class was exploring the waters of the popular dive spot in West Vancouver when their instructor signalled something was wrong.

“It happened about 130 feet and we started to ascend from there and it continued on the way up,” said Frank Methorst, a member of the class.

A fellow student was apparently in distress and most of the class immediately made their way back to the surface. By the time Methorst caught up, he said the student was already getting medical attention.

“We’ve gone on another course with her,” he said. “It’s pretty upsetting, it’s pretty emotional.”

Emergency crews received the call around 12:30 p.m. and were quick to respond, calling in additional support including an air ambulance and a hovercraft from the Canadian Coast Guard. Despite their efforts, the patient was declared dead at the scene.

“At this time we don’t know exactly the details,” Assistant Chief Martin Leduc of the District of West Vancouver Fire Department said. “What I can tell you is we were performing CPR on the beach and the patient is deceased.”

Whytecliff Park is known as one of the province’s premiere diving destinations, which draws people of all experience levels. Local divers say they are part of a small-knit community and the tragic news hits close to home.

“You usually see the same people weekend after weekend. There’s lots of training here so there’s new people coming by all the time,” said Dennis Diamond, who believes he was diving below the group.

While emergency crews have attended scuba diving accidents at Whytecliff Park in the past, they say it’s no more dangerous than other dive spots.

“Diving has its inherent risks. I think they work hard to mitigate those,” Leduc said.

 

[Dizzi Lizzi]

So terribly sad.

 

[gizZzmo]

Anyone know the cause of death?

Dive there quite often...sad news indeed.

RIP

 

[Dan]

RIP

Taking a student to 130' deep? Like to hear more detail about the dive condition there (visibility, temperature, etc.), student / instructor ratio, the number of dives logged by the student, gear condition (I heard about reg free flowing could happen at low temperature), air pressure in the tank, etc.

 

[Diver0001]

RIP

Taking a student to 130' deep? Like to hear more detail about the dive condition there (visibility, temperature, etc.), student / instructor ratio, the number of dives logged by the student, gear condition (I heard about reg free flowing could happen at low temperature), air pressure in the tank, etc.

I dived a lot at that site in the 1980's and it is one of my favorites for easy deep diving near Vancouver. 130'/40m dives (and a lot deeper) are possible and common there. I did not trigger on the depth because it is a suitable site for doing the PADI deep specialty.

R..

 

[wgw04024]

Sad. I assume this is all drysuit diving yes? 130' up there has got to be cold.

 

[Marie13]

RIP

Taking a student to 130' deep? Like to hear more detail about the dive condition there (visibility, temperature, etc.), student / instructor ratio, the number of dives logged by the student, gear condition (I heard about reg free flowing could happen at low temperature), air pressure in the tank, etc.

It would have to be a deep or AOW class, correct?

 

[Diver0001]

Sad. I assume this is all drysuit diving yes? 130' up there has got to be cold.

I can 't speak to the course but the water is always cold. I took my training, including advanced and the deep specialty there in the mid 80's and we did our dives in wet suits. My impression given 30+ years of retrospect is that diving along the coast of BC should normally be done in dry suits; however, wet suit diving is not exceptional. Temperatures at depth are seldom much lower than on the first 10m of the surface.

R..

 

[DandyDon]

Sad. I assume this is all drysuit diving yes? 130' up there has got to be cold.

I dived Puget Sound some one weekend years ago, great dive destination as you can see things there you won't see anywhere else - altho the local divers kept asking me what brought me to Seattle as few actually go there just to dive I guess. I was fine in my 7 mil jumpsuit over 1 mil skin, and most divers on the boat to the San Juans were in wet suits. I did invest in neoprene socks as soon as I got back in case I got to go again, but my only real challenge was that they use DIN valves.

 

[Scott]

It would have to be a deep or AOW class, correct?

Most likely a deep class. AOW max depth is 100 feet.