Death rate for experienced scuba divers

[Altamira]

This winter in nearby Pompano Beach I was surprised by the lack of diving activity. In past years, the marina there had had 6 active dive boats --2 for Pompano Dive Center, 3 for South Florida Diving Headquarters, and 1 for ScubaTyme. When I arrived this past January, I learned that Pompano Dive Center was permanently down to 1 boat, and that boat was often booked for shark tagging, meaning no diving from it. ScubaTyme's boat was out for maintenance. SFDH often had only 1 boat running because only enough people for one boat had signed up. On a number of occasions, there was no possibility of diving from that marina because there were not enough booked divers to send out a boat--they required 4. I had a couple of booked dives canceled because of lack of enough divers.

I contacted someone from ScubBoard who is active in the Key West area. He said the same thing was happening there. He said there were days when the dive shops had zero customers. A big day raked in $17.

Is this getting to be the standard for winter operations, or is the decline in relation to the hurricane damage sustained last year?

 

[Schwob]

... part of this thread goes to show that conjecture and estimates, however educated (and at least one seemed quite educated) are and will never be a substitute for real numbers and dtatistixs based on real numbers ... e.g. by those large operators ... or their insurers....
But, for what it's worth (and that worth is debatable... its a sentiment may be...), so far it seems no one here is vehemently thinking that the reccreational fatality rate for trained divers should exceed .12 in 100k dives.

 

[Aviyes]

Probably a higher chance of dying during travel to/from dive sites, than from the actual diving.

 

[KathyV]

Probably a higher chance of dying during travel to/from dive sites, than from the actual diving.

That may be true, I'm sure that boating injuries and fatalities are recorded separately from diving accidents, even if the boat was carrying divers. The same way that airplane crashes are counted separately when the plane was full of skydivers. And of course the accidents are due to different activities even though the scuba divers and skydivers were on the boat or plane to dive.

 

[2airishuman]

Is there a summary of the average death rate for "experienced" scuba divers that summarizes things as simply as the below for skydivers?

Experienced skydivers

Once a skydiver is fully trained, the average injury rate is 0.3 injuries/1000 jumps and the fatality rate is just under 1/100,000. Some forms of parachuting undertaken by experienced parachutists do involve higher risks. For instance, public displays average an injury rate of nearly 1/1000 jumps and a fatality rate of 5/100,000 jumps.

https://www.diversalertnetwork.org/files/Fatalities_Proceedings.pdf - see page 75.

The average overall fatality rate for non-commercial SCUBA diving, according to the best available data, is approximately 0.45 - 3.4 fatalities per 100,000 dives, worldwide, with some smaller studies reporting higher and lower rates. Effective statistical analysis is confounded due to a lack of accurate data on the number of dives undertaken and by definitional and forensic problems in determining whether any particular fatality is in fact a SCUBA diving fatality -- unlike other activities, most deaths due to natural causes that occur while SCUBA diving end up in the accident statistics. On the other hand, there are problems with underreporting, because there is no mandatory reporting and some accidents -- especially those that occur in areas where diving is uncommon -- are missed by the statistics.

Experience wise, there is wide consensus that the least safe dives are the first 10-20 dives that occur after completing dive training, though rigorous statistical analysis is difficult because many divers who achieve certification do not ever make 20 additional dives, and it is therefore difficult to determine how many dives in the 10-20 dive range actually take place.

There are two key points I always make when discussing overall safety of diving:

• It is my personal conclusion that the risk of a fatality actually caused by SCUBA diving, for an experienced diver, who does not engage in dives that are known to have unusually high risks, is probably close to 0.1 per 100,000 dives. When reading accident reports, there is very little left to read once you weed out the inexperienced divers, the medicals, and people working near the outer limits of technical diving.
  
  
• Serious but non-fatal injuries are extremely common in other sports and "adventure" activities but rare in SCUBA diving. Using skydiving as an example, ankle injuries are common to the point where most serious participants will sustain one at some point. Collarbone injuries are similarly common among people who ride horses. Bicycle crashes can be life-changing.

 

[2airishuman]

That may be true, I'm sure that boating injuries and fatalities are recorded separately from diving accidents, even if the boat was carrying divers. The same way that airplane crashes are counted separately when the plane was full of skydivers. And of course the accidents are due to different activities even though the scuba divers and skydivers were on the boat or plane to dive.

DAN includes fatalities that occur in boats on the way to and from a dive site in their statistics. They are around 1% of the total.

 

[Schwob]

ttps://www.diversalertnetwork.org/files/Fatalities_Proceedings.pdf - see page 75.
...

Whoa, page 75 of 286...
... Interesting so... (requires more reading)
Thanks for the link ... and your observations!

 

[Johnoly]

... will never be a substitute for real numbers ......

Great Quote !! .............................So it's a 2 part problem getting data.
Most divers are wearing a computer today. But that computer needs to be able to send info back to the manufacture if they want to compile data.

The problem today is that the tiny wifi chips in your phone, sucks ALOT of battery power just to monitor wifi signals. It would be sweet if after your dive gear got back home to a known wifi hotspot and uploaded it's data automatically to the manufacturer.

The good news is technology is getting better and better. Zentri a wifi chipset manufacturer is making some huge advances in the "internet of things" marketplace and finding ways to make wifi chipsets 'sleep' so they consume almost no battery power. Just me, but it would be great if a wifi chipset just powered up once a month based on the dive computer's clock to 'look' for a trusted homestead hotspot and downloaded my dive log automatically. Across the diver nation, I would guess that data would be very valuable to dive shops that want to know the active divers in their area so they can advertise services/trips to. FB is almost doing the same thing by postings.

 

[Diving Dubai]

@Schwob

One source of information often "forgotten about" on SB is the annual BSAC Diving Incident report. These can be accessed from the BSAC site without being a member. You can go back to 2012

While not providing the exact data you want they do extrapolate a great deal and there is discussion on age (in 2016-17 the age range of the 11 fatalities was between 36-72)

Obviously they only correlate reported incidents, however they take them from the following groups/agencies as well as BSAC

Maritime & Coastguard Agency
MOD Superintendant of Diving
PADI Europe, Middle East and Africa
Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents
Scottish Sub-Aqua Club
Sub-Aqua Association

in 2016-17, 9 out 11 fatal incidents were non BSAC and this is pointed (by me) only to demonstrate that it reported diving incidents, not just BSAC

There is also a video of the presentation of the 2017 data which is only 30mins long and worth a view

Although it's UK centric the report, and especially the descriptions of the incidents is worth reading, and given the attention the the AI forum gets, I think SB should make more use of it.

Anyway hope that helps

 

[CT-Rich]

Most skydiving is going to occur under similar conditions. You can’t walk down to the beach for an evening sky dive and the opportunities for cave sky dives is very limited.

For recreational diving, the best bet would be to look at area that has fairly homogeneous conditions with easily tracked statistics, like Bonaire or the Cayman Islands. Tracking across a a more diverse area will skew the data more. Florida has lots of different types of sites, including cave country, which are going to have many times the numbers of deaths per 100,000 than the Keys.

If you look at something very specific, like the Andre Doria, the rate will be really high. Kind of like looking at highway fatalities, they will vary considerably from country to country and time of year.

A few divers die every year in the RI, but it seems most of them are medical related, like heart attacks and not being the direct result diving, but physical exertion.

Just my un founded 2 psi.