Diver Dead in South Florida

[scubadada]

I can tell you that is was a little nerve wracking the first time on your boat. Watching that huge vessel coming straight at me, or at least it seemed that way in my mind, had me prepped for an emergency descent. I was pleasantly relieved to have the starboard side hull slowly pass by just a couple of feet from me. Stellar boatmanship every single time. Damn I miss diving with you and Melanie.

Me too

 

[The Chairman]

I can tell you that is was a little nerve wracking the first time on your boat. Watching that huge vessel coming straight at me, or at least it seemed that way in my mind, had me prepped for an emergency descent. I was pleasantly relieved to have the starboard side hull slowly pass by just a couple of feet from me. Stellar boatmanship every single time. Damn I miss diving with you and Melanie.

Me too

Me three.

 

[Kay Dee]

My personal favorite is Never, ever surface without an SMB over your head following a free ascent. I mean, seriously.. any diver doing a drift should deploy an SMB at depth. It's not rocket science, it requires about $50 worth of gear, and makes it easier and safer for everyone.

ROCK SOLID ADVICE!

 

[johndiver999]

My personal favorite is Never, ever surface without an SMB over your head following a free ascent. I mean, seriously.. any diver doing a drift should deploy an SMB at depth. It's not rocket science, it requires about $50 worth of gear, and makes it easier and safer for everyone.

As I tried to indicate, a marker is definitely better, but there could be many reasons why a diver might ascend without a marker. Releasing a stream of bubbles - even under an SMB, provides some additional visibility.

 

[rjack321]

I think these are all excellent points. Perhaps the Coast Guard will consider that any time a captain kills a diver/swimmer with the props of the boat, that it was 100% the operator's fault. I really don't know the answer to that question.

Fatalities or injuries are 100% the captain's fault. His license is a going to be permanently suspended, his new boat is done, he's never going to operate commercially again.

If a diver does something "dumb" or unexpected, doesnt have an SMB, swims the last 15ft at an angle or whatever - guess what? It's STILL the captain's fault if he runs into them. Maintaining an adequate watch in all directions, not starting the engines before checking all around, not engaging the transmission before knowing where all the divers are, knowing how the boat and the spinning bits will move relative to the people, using tag lines, proper ladder design, it's all on the skipper.

 

[Telvar]

Hi all,
Horrible accident, my thoughts go out to all who knew her.

From where I'm sitting, many thousands of miles away, it seems the captain may have made a grievous mistake, but that's up to authorities, lawyers and insurance companies and not up to me or -to me- this forum.

As far as I'm concerned, any diver doing stuff like this should use smbs, because a captain (of this boat and all other boats in the vicinity) isn't omniscient. If deploying the smb fails, there is a lot of other stuff divers should do like vertical ascent, leaving bubbles, hovering 10-15' below the surface to make sure everything is safe, etc. The problem with that is the fact that things can -and will go wrong- equipment failure, panic, dumb mistake, etc. that may cause divers to act unexpectedly, like surfacing too near/under a boat, too fast, you get me. Any captain should always take that into account.

This is probably where the inherent risk of the trade comes in. Generally, I would advocate against operating the engine with divers being within 300' of a boat in any direction. Ever. But with dives in less than absolute perfect conditions, that may leave divers unable to reach the boat which is also quite an issue. In a perfect world I would advocate using non-lethal means of propulsion near divers but I know too little about boating to know if that is an option.

From this accident, my lesson learned is to be more cautious around boats with a running engine and to start to always take along an smb with every dive and practice using it more (I mostly do shore dives in a lake without any boats around, but not exclusively).

I'm curious how you all feel about the issue of operating a boat anywhere near people in the water.

 

[Wookie]

I likely missed something, and I’m a big advocate for using SMB/DSMB, but didn’t the captain back down over her when she was already on the surface during pickup? A SMB is wonderful for finding and not hitting divers on their ascent, but I’m usually stowing mine to have both hands available to get on the boat once the boat sees me and I’m getting ready for pickup.

 

[Ukmc]

Good for you Don. I do that in close quarters for the same reason.

Weight belts make awesome tourniquets. I've yet so see a dive boat without one.

Weight belts are not awesome tourniquets as they are not flexible enough, they are too wide and also may not allow to maintain necessary pressure to overcome blood pressure to stop the bleed. That is why a belt or any kind of cordage would work better. Every boat has a rope... More importantly, while a tourniquet is a good solution for arterial bleed of distal extremities, it is not always a solution for a femoral artery bleeding. If the injury is mid thigh or close to the knee, then it would work. However with high thigh/groin injury or pelvic injury there is simply no room to apply the tourniquet and attempting to place one would make matters worse. A first aid kit with hemostatic agent and a lot of pressure or a blood vessel clamp is the only hope and of course getting the injured to a medical facility the quickest is often the difference between life and death. Without knowing all the facts, it is hard to give an impression of what was the right way to manage this wound, but if the captain communicated to the other two divers in the water to hang on to save precious seconds to get seriously injured diver to a medical help - it could have been the right thing to do. I would love to know all the facts to better learn from this accident. My thoughts are with the family. This is a terrible tragedy.

 

[scubadada]

I likely missed something, and I’m a big advocate for using SMB/DSMB, but didn’t the captain back down over her when she was already on the surface during pickup? A SMB is wonderful for finding and not hitting divers on their ascent, but I’m usually stowing mine to have both hands available to get on the boat once the boat sees me and I’m getting ready for pickup.

I almost always have a flag and hand it up. When I am on a DSMB, I hand it up also, inflated, with the spool clipped off. Either way, I have both hands free

 

[Wookie]

I almost always have a flag and hand it up. When I am on a DSMB, I hand it up also, inflated, with the spool clipped off. Either way, I have both hands free

Yes, and I have no idea how this boat was set up, when we were live boating, we had 2 deckhands, one for you to pass things up to and one to steady you to your dive station. This was reportedly a 6 pack, which often don’t run with a deckhand, so offering to hand your stuff up is nice and all, but...