3 divers missing off of Java

[Dan]

To get a flavor of how diving around Sangiang island is like, here is a recent YouTube video posted by Maria Friska Hutabarat in April 2019.


Here is a video around the island, posted by Kevin Moezes.

 

[chillyinCanada]

Maria's video is, uh, artistic. It's hard to tell what the current may have been on her dive.
But both videos show some nice corals and viz is not that bad. I'm a very big corals fan, so depending on price and logistics, I'd dive there.

 

[SoFlaDiver954]

You would think it would be easier to spot 3 divers (or two if one didn't make it) than 1 in the water. If all 3 didn't make it, I feel like that would narrow down the list of possibilities. In the event none of them made it to the surface, what could have been the cause?

Bad gas? I guess it could be, but all 3 members of one team and none from the other team?

Entanglement? Maybe a huge ghost net, but what else could entangle 3 people?

Single accident that snowballs? Maybe something happens to one or more of the divers and mass panic ensues?

What else?

 

[Dan]

If bad gas, how come the other 3 divers from group 2 came up with no problem?

Group 1 went south with the current and group 2 went north against the current.

Other than that I haven't heard anything more and hate to speculate. I even haven't heard if any of them carried SMB.

 

[BlueTrin]

You would think it would be easier to spot 3 divers (or two if one didn't make it) than 1 in the water. If all 3 didn't make it, I feel like that would narrow down the list of possibilities. In the event none of them made it to the surface, what could have been the cause?

Bad gas? I guess it could be, but all 3 members of one team and none from the other team?

Entanglement? Maybe a huge ghost net, but what else could entangle 3 people?

Single accident that snowballs? Maybe something happens to one or more of the divers and mass panic ensues?

What else?

Currents have been mentioned multiple times in this thread.

To me it seems the most likely possibility.

 

[SoFlaDiver954]

Currents have been mentioned multiple times in this thread.

To me it seems the most likely possibility.

Currents alone dont just kill people, let alone 3 at once. Maybe a stiff current swept them into some sort of entanglement?

 

[kelemvor]

That's correct. Sangiang Island is northeast of Krakatoa. I dove there back in 2008. Not much to see & current could be treacherous there.

Having PLB would definitely help. I carry both PLB and PAB.

I know all about PLB's but this is the first time I've heard of PAB. What's that?

Looking at the video of rescue divers in a vast endless and potentially bottomless ocean - it just looks so futile ... how effective is it to conduct a S&R operation without UW Scooters really? Why isn't mobility gear like UW Scooters a part of standard gear in rescue units worldwide?

I've never heard of using a UW scooter for a missing person at sea search. Usually it seems to be airplanes, helicopters, and boats. The only time I recall reading about scooter searches is when they've switched to body recovery.

 

[Dan]

I know all about PLB's but this is the first time I've heard of PAB. What's that?

Personal AIS Beacon, like Nautilus Marine Rescue GPS, using VHF radio signal rather than the 406MHz used by PLB. PAB has limited distance transmission (surface-surface), so it’s good for a quick local distress Man Over Board alert to boats equipped with AIS, Automatic Identification System Overview

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.al...asics-epirb-ais-plb-pab-whats-difference/amp/

Here is my PAB

I tether my PLB & PAB together to one of my BCD D-ring and put them in one of my BCD pocket to make sure them won’t swim away when I pull them out of the pocket.

 

[Steve_C]

The ocean is a big big place and a diver is a small small dot. Even with SMBs it is easy to miss 3 divers among the waves and reflections especially if the estimates of where they are are off by tens of miles at least.

 

[Dan]

Missing Singapore, Chinese divers might have been swept away by strong undercurrents: Indonesia rescue official

“JAKARTA - Indonesian rescuers searching for three missing divers, including a Singaporean, who might have been carried away by undercurrents expanded their search on Thursday (Nov 7) to an area covering 1,400 nautical square miles between Java and Sumatra islands.

The Sunda Strait, the narrow waterway between Java and Sumatra, has strong undercurrents which have swept away divers in the past.

"We have entered the fifth day. We are taking into consideration an exhaustion factor. We are adjusting down the duration, the time (our) divers spend below, and increasing rotations (of divers being deployed)," Mr Muhammad Zaenal Arifin, a senior official at Indonesia's search and rescue operations (Basarnas), told The Straits Times via telephone, describing the search efforts.”