Yet another golf ball diver dead - Naples, Florida

[DandyDon]

I'm not sure if I understand if he was trespassing (and doing it for fun) or was working as a "professional"?

It was a side gig, not a profession, but "The son said they had permission to be in the lake. "

 

[SlugLife]

Based on the info available, it sounds like a strong possibility of:

* He couldn't easily ditch a large amount of excess weight.
* He either ran out of air, or couldn't retrieve his regulator (i.e. regulator entangled in loot bag).

---

As someone who treasure-dives, it's a good reminder that any large amount of excess weight should always be easily ditchable. I'll sometimes recover anchors, and the only anchors worth retrieving are the very heavy ones. I never attach them to my BCD.

Initially, I used my BCD to float anchors, and then swim them back to the boat, but I found that to be a bad plan, because it's very hard to manage buoyancy, trim, surfacing-rate, etc. It's also easy to get task-overloaded; I noticed an increase in difficulty re-inserting my regulator in the surface, which might be relevant if my BCD lost buoyancy or waves from nearby boats.

Since then, I've found the best way to handle these retrievals (other than lift-bag) is to first drag the anchor up the slope (underwater) to the shore-line. After the dive, I jump in with my (sidemount) BCD, fins, and no tanks, swim to the anchor, and then bear-hug the anchor swim it back about 10-meters/yards to the boat, clip it to a drop-line, and finally pull it up once back in the boat. I prefer no-tank, because it's less complexity and entanglement-risk.

Anyway, I guess the point of my rambling is I could easily see someone with 50-lbs of "treasure" having difficulty on the surface, even if they hadn't run out of air.

 

[SlugLife]

However, sometimes it is worthwhile to work "the middles" which is much more difficult and dangerous. The diver may not be able to read the pressure gauge, may not be able to read a compass (doubtful they have one actually) and there are zero topographic features to provide reference. In addition, it is extremely hard to run a straight course while running blindly over a flat muck bottom and there is very little ability to judge depth changes with any accuracy. The inability to run a straight course is also hindered by the drag and weight of hundreds of balls in a big mesh bag that is clipped off on one side of the diver, always pulling and dragging them to the side.

So.. if a diver were to get lost in the middle it is a challenge. They might have to resort to hand swimming and BC filling to fight like heck to make it to the surface in a negative condition, spin around, see which way shore is and then rapidly and uncontrollable sink back to the bottom (remember wearing ankle weights and snow boots) and try to "remember" which way shore was and then try (once again) to run the proper direction (blindly) to reach the shore before the air runs out.

As a "treasure diver" (not golf-balls), I can confirm that some of the BEST spots for loot are places are the "middles" where other divers don't go, and visibility is much worse (often 2-3 inches of "vis") because that's where the silt settles. I'll sometimes even dig through sea-weed blind in some areas where there is vis, but often picked over by other divers, because any loot out in the open would have been passed by several divers already in the last week.

secondary independent air source

I always dive with 2x independent air-sources, although my main dive-buddy refuses, despite me having a spare he can use for free.

 

[chillyinCanada]

It seems to me that he was entangled somehow, otherwise he wouldn't have removed his bcd and tank, as was observed by his son. He may have been struggling for sometime already by then.

 

[boulderjohn]

From this quote in the last article linked...

It sounds like he wore a weight belt, perhaps so he would have it to hang his bag. We've been told in other golf ball accident threads that experienced divers will overweight so they can stay on the bottom searching for more balls that are money to them. I can't imagine why adding air to his BC wouldn't make him float better, maybe because he was out of air or had pond muck stuck in the inflator, but since he was at the point of "struggling to stay afloat and was gasping for air," my next guess is that panic set in when he removed his tank and I guess BC (the only way to ditch a tank during a dive) even tho those helped him float, but kept his weighted belt and bag, which sunk him faster after ditching flotation aids.

In such an emergency, oral inflation of the BC would help if he couldn't add tank air, and ditching his weight belt would have helped, but it'd be difficult to think in a "struggling...gasping for air" emergency.

I do have a personal hunch that too many divers are drowned in such emergencies by failing to ditch weights, so I practice ditching mine on the first dive of every trip.

I was aware of the bolded part you quoted; I was contesting it. I still doubt it. Here are some reasons.

• He was at least somewhat experienced as a golf ball diver and should have been aware of the effect of the weight of a bag of balls and been prepared for it.
• He had enough buoyancy to reach the surface.
• Once on the surface, he struggled to remove his BCD, which does not seem to be the act of a man who is sinking because his BCD is not sufficiently buoyant. It would make some sense if the golf balls in weights were attached to the BCD, but the story said he had a weight belt, and the golf balls were attached to that. In that case, removing your only source of buoyancy because your weight belt is pulling you down would be a curious decision.

 

[nippurmagnum]

Many (professional) golf ball divers don't wear BC's.
A diver might collect 600 -700 balls on a dive .. about 60-70 lbs.
60 lbs of balls is pretty negative and the bag can easily be snagged on something, plus some mud and debris and leaves etc. get into the bag during the ball stuffing process.
All the golf ball divers I have seen, do not wear fins. Instead, they wear heavy boots (over top of normal dive boots), with ankle weights around them and they also wear enough lead on the BC/harness and weight belt(s) to be able to walk/run/crawl on the bottom. This is around 12-15 lbs negative (before the balls) in order to be heavy enough to run over the bottom in a bent over position with their arms outstretched and hands spread over the bottom. If the diver is not at least that negative, then they can not effectively "run" on the bottom.

Often the visibility precludes seeing the spg, but generally there is time to move up slope to make an exit. It is not a big deal to run 20 ft up slope, stick your head out of the water, see where you are relative to the golf shot and check the air pressure. Generally balls will accumulate along the banks and generally concentrate at the bottom of slopes, where the edge meets the flat bottom. So that is where the search effort is concentrated. Even with bad visibility, the experienced golfball diver can detect this sloping feature and knows which way to turn in order to run up slope and make an exit. Often this edge is close maybe, 10-30 feet from the edge of the pond surface. Obviously this is a gross generalization and some lakes have vertical walls of rock which were cut mechanically when the lake was excavated during the construction of the golf course.

However, sometimes it is worthwhile to work "the middles" which is much more difficult and dangerous. The diver may not be able to read the pressure gauge, may not be able to read a compass (doubtful they have one actually) and there are zero topographic features to provide reference. In addition, it is extremely hard to run a straight course while running blindly over a flat muck bottom and there is very little ability to judge depth changes with any accuracy. The inability to run a straight course is also hindered by the drag and weight of hundreds of balls in a big mesh bag that is clipped off on one side of the diver, always pulling and dragging them to the side.

So.. if a diver were to get lost in the middle it is a challenge. They might have to resort to hand swimming and BC filling to fight like heck to make it to the surface in a negative condition, spin around, see which way shore is and then rapidly and uncontrollable sink back to the bottom (remember wearing ankle weights and snow boots) and try to "remember" which way shore was and then try (once again) to run the proper direction (blindly) to reach the shore before the air runs out.

If a problem develops, it might be essential to be able to ditch the large bag of balls. If the bag is attached with a barrel clip or something, it is not unusual for it to be jammed with sand and debris since it is constantly being drug on the bottom. If it is attached to the harness rather than a weight belt (which should have a quick release buckle), it could go downhill fast.

It is not a trivial endeavor and is done solo.

It is not unusual for construction debris and other dangerous materials to have been disposed of in these ponds. There are lots of things that can go wrong and the divers do not carry a secondary independent air source and I have never seen an octopus being used either, it would be filled with mud and debris anyway after half an hour.

It's not a good recreational activity, even though it superficially sounds like it is shallow, simple and easy. I'm not sure if I understand if he was trespassing (and doing it for fun) or was working as a "professional"?

Thank you for an excellent post. I had imagined that this would be, as you say, shallow, simple, and easy, but from your description, this is very hazardous indeed. I tend to think that having a buddy would make things even more hazardous, because in zero visibility and high entanglement risk situations, having multiple people flailing around in a panic would just make things worse. I wonder if there isn't some better way of dredging these water hazards, especially if, as you say, the balls are concentrated around the edges. Something like this: New device harvests submerged golf balls from shore

 

[nippurmagnum]

This seems to be another non-diving approach to retrieving golf balls, on a larger scale:

 

[johndiver999]

Cheap manual labor is sometimes best I assume. I know that some operators will bring in a dredge system and harvest a lot of balls that have fallen deep into the mud and have otherwise been missed by divers. However, this is a somewhat capital intensive operation and to be worthwhile , there needs to be a lot of balls, probably 40-100 thousand. One problem with mechanical means is that the balls age with time submerged. A diver who hits the pond every few weeks will yield better quality balls. Dredges are used on a much less frequent basis, is my understanding, plus a diver in the pond does not preclude play on the course.

 

[John C. Ratliff]

As I stated in a post above, I have a full day's experience with a ball hawk in 1970, and have picked up golf balls in the Clackamas River downstream (apparently) from a golf course for years. I took one of the golf balls out of a paper sack of about a dozen in there that I've picked up last year. I give them away to golfers.

Now tonight, I took one of the golf balls and, after washing dishes, put it into the water. It was negative, but barely. I dropped it from the surface to the bottom, where it bounced about three times in 3 inches of water. Golf balls, in my experience, do not weigh much in water. Just enough to sink and make golfers angry.

So, let's say that the diver has 700 golf balls in a sack (unlikely, in my estimation). Let's say that the bag of 700 balls, each of which weighed 0.5 ounces in the water. That's 21.9 pounds of golf balls. It is significant, but again, unlikely from my experience diving with Ginnie Tayor. I'd say that 350 balls in a bag is more likely, and that's about 11 pounds. But these bags are bulky. Add to that the potential for entanglement (no one has mentioned water weeds, which is also a major hazard), and you have the potential for a fatality, which occurred.

Years ago, I did a lot of research on diving accidents and how divers would react in an emergency, and also the type of BCD to use that was best for floating an unconscious diver face up. I rejected tank-mounted BCDs, as then you had the scuba and the BCD together. Get ride of the scuba, and you get rid of the BCD and its buoyancy. I favored a different concept, which I called the Para-Sea BCD, which was a wrap-around vest, with a parachute harness to which the scuba tank could be attached. That way, you could ditch the scuba without loosing the buoyancy. Also it would float the diver face-up. It was rejected by diving manufacturers, in favor of the wrap-around BCD attached to the tank. I have enclosed the Para-Sea drawings from my patent to show you how it works.

In this particular case, the ball hawk diver got rid of his scuba and buoyancy rather than his weight belt. This was a decision which I predicted in the 1980s, as you have to move your hands way down to your waist to get rid of the weights. My thought is that some of these accidents are due to a conscious decision by the diving industry not to embrace the best designs for lifesaving, but rather for travel (weight) and performance underwater. I continue to use my Para-Sea PFD whenever I canoe with my wife (twice so far this year) and when I'm diving (today, for instance). I have not bought into the dive industry's emphasis on a PFD that is attached to my tank, as I may wish to get ride of the tank, or to snorkel dive without a tank but still having my BCD, as I did at Molokini Crater off Maui a few years ago with my wife.

I have pretty much given up on the diving industry pursuing this concept, but if anyone wants to pursue it, please message me. The patent is expired, and this concept has significant applications for handicapped divers too. I used to have two Para-Sea BCD prototypes, and now it is down to one that I continue to dive after 3 decades of use. I have tried all sorts of them, including the Dacor Nautilus Constant Volume System (CVS) and newer tank-mounted BCDs, but still prefer my design.

SeaRat

 

[Nitrox_DiverNY]

may he Rest In Peace. was really interesting reading other peoples replies to this post, never would have thought golf ball diving was such a dangers endeavor or that is was such a common practice