Catalina Island - Diver dies while Lobstering

[DandyDon]

I think that hunters tend to hunt for the sport more than for the food value, but again - I think; I'm not a hunter on land or sea. Sorry to hear about these loses, majority to mistakes as Ken suggests. Hunters seem to have the poorest buddy skills, but the chase can do things to the mind. Florida always has a lot of loses, especially during mini season.

There were broken off antennas lying on a ground on Sunday. There are definitely people taking them out at night at the park.

And that sucks too.

I resemble that remark.:wavey: I can still count on two hands the number of dives I've had since OW certification a year ago. One of those dives was the manta ray night dive in Kona at a depth of 30' a few months ago. Please don't take this as bragging, but it also happens to be one the easiest dives I've done since certification... and definitely the coolest.:cool3:

Based on that experience alone, I may have had no second thoughts if someone invited me to go on a night dive for lobsters at a 30' depth here in the So Cal waters. After reading this thread, and others like it, I now know better, and would probably decline until I gained more experience.

BTW, what is the safest/best way to get experience diving at night here in Southern California? Are there certain spots that a beginner like me can dive safely at night with an experienced buddy?

Night diving is cool. Night hunting is far different. Check your equipment even closer, follow your training well, perfect your buddy skills, etc. Have fun; stay safe.

From the link above:

It sounds like maybe the deceased and buddy had a miscommunication about air remaining followed by a failed CESA with the buddy not knowing he was low or out; it that the way y'all read that?

My home buddy & I worked out our signals for telling each other exactly how much each has and I thot they were great until they failed...

On our last trip, he gave me a signal for 100 when he had 1,000 left twice; I took to just grabbing his SPG frequently to look.

On a deeper dive when we established that he had 1200 and I had 1000, then shortly later when I wanted to ascend on 700 as agreed, he ignored my fin tugs and light flashes!

Next outing, I'm asking him to decide how he wants to signal air pressures, ascent calls, etc. I carry a pony, but don't want to lose him either.​

 

[cruiser]

Since that day old Don will only dive alone. He says he would rather die then have to deal with that kind of guilt again.

Mr. Bugs, that's some power stuff.

 

[Rick Murchison]

I think that hunters tend to hunt for the sport more than for the food value, but again - I think; I'm not a hunter on land or sea.

Perhaps there are some... but I, for one, never go to the trouble of hunting unless I intend to kill something good to eat.
Rick

 

[Leejnd]

Perhaps there are some... but I, for one, never go to the trouble of hunting unless I intend to kill something good to eat.
Rick

Lobster is my favorite food on the planet. And there is no better lobster than the one you catch yourself, from its natural habitat, well-fed and NOT all stressed out from however long it spent in the tank at the store (and all that it went through to get there). The only reason *I* go bug hunting is to get bugs to eat.

Personally, when it comes to diving, I prefer NON-bug-hunting dives...but I go bug hunting because it's the only way to get this amazing delicacy for the price of an air fill.

 

[ItsBruce]

Personally, when it comes to diving, I prefer NON-bug-hunting dives...but I go bug hunting because it's the only way to get this amazing delicacy for the price of an air fill.

Parking at dive boat: $15
Dive boat ticket: $115
Tips on dive boat: $20
Fishing license: $35

But the lobster is just the price of an air fill!!!

 

[Teamcasa]

I don't think I'd recommend Casino Point as a good place for inexperienced people to practice night diving. It is filled with kelp which is exactly what makes night diving in LA tough. I'd suggest Laguna on a night without surge as well as Vets Beach.

Stay out of the kelp until your sorted with the darkness factor.

Inexperienced people need to become experienced before they start practicing night diving in the first place.

I like the park for night dive practice as you don't need to get very far offshore and there are plenty of land marks to aid in night navigation. The kelp is something all SoCal divers have to get used to anyway.

 

[Leejnd]

Parking at dive boat: $15
Dive boat ticket: $115
Tips on dive boat: $20
Fishing license: $35

But the lobster is just the price of an air fill!!!

Hey Bruce - I don't bug hunt from boats. I bug hunt from the beach. So for me, it really is the cost of the air fill. Which is...$5.

(Oh, yeah, and there's the fishing license...but that's an annual liscence that I would get anyway because I also go fishing from our sailboat...and I caught 23 bugs last season...so I still think it works out financially. Have you tried to buy a lobster at the grocery store lately???)

 

[drbill]

I night dive the Casino Point Dive Park frequently... even more frequently this year because I'm gathering footage for a new DVD. I find it an easy night dive to do despite the kelp. Yes, I've been diving Catalina for over 40 years now, but I can still get entangled (and I dive solo so I have to do the disentangling all by my lonesome... unless that lovely mermaid happens to swim over to help).

The one exception to night diving in the park is when there is a good current blowing and the kelp is lying almost horizontal near the bottom. This is a perfect time to get really entangled as the kelp is whipping about in the current as well as having most of its biomass pretty close to the bottom. I don't call a night dive because of this, but I don't recommend to less experienced divers that they do one under those conditions.

 

[stedel]

I can simply heartily recommend the L.A. County Advanced Diver Program to any diver who wants to gain the experience and skills to and be able to handle virtually any situation the he/she might encounter in California waters. Please go to the LACountyScuba dot com website for a full description of the program but briefly it is a summer long program with beach, boat, search and rescue and many other practical open water dives, confined water exercises and classroom lectures on many topics of interest and benefit to every diver.
Stephen Mendel
LA CO IT 5012
NAUI IT 41353
PADI MSDT 233989
CMAS, YMCA and HSA

 

[mbwilliamn]

"Inexperience" doesn't kill.

"Inattentive" kills.

So does "distracted," "careless," and probably a dozen other adjectives we could use to describe not only a dive, but specifically a lobster dive. Lobster diving/hunting is an extreme form of task loading, which means it's easy to froget to monitor things like depth/time/air.

Experienced divers get inattentive and die. Inexperienced divers get inattentive and die. It's not the level of experience that does them in, it's the inattentiveness.

Also don't lose sight of the fact that "experienced" is a relative term. I'm going to problably define it differently than someone who just finished up their OW class and that will be different from someone who's already got 100 dives under their belt, and that will be different than someone with 1000 dives.

In the "Why Divers Die" talk that I give (an offshoot of our Scuba Show presentation from the Coroner, Chamber, and myself), I've taken the D.A.N. stats for the last four years (300+ fatalities) and broken the fatalities down into (1) Bad Luck [5%], (2) Bad Health (medical) [25%], and (3) Bad Diving [70%].

Based on my analysis and the way I've assigned things after reading the case descriptions, fully 70% of the fatalities occur because of bad decision-making by the diver. Out-of-air factors in there pretty strongly.

- Ken

I'd be very interested in how those "bad diving" numbers line up across number of dives. In private aviation, there are a high number of mishaps with new pilots, but the majority of really bad (usually fatality) related incidents happen above 100 hours and under 1000 hours. This is the point where the pilot starts to feel like he "knows everything" and blunders into something beyond his skill. In diving my observations (no data to back this up) is that point seems to be between dives 30 and 300.