How exactly did the LifeGuards find the son? Did you see them spot and bring him in?
@DebF: I don't know how the Lifeguards found the son. I was not looking out over the water when the son surfaced. I was alerted to the situation at the time of the first Lifeguard announcement. They mentioned the diver's name and requested that the diver should report to the Main Lifeguard Tower. I looked out and saw 2 Lifeguard jetskis patrolling what would later be the search area out in the water. I also saw the jetskis towing people geared up in scuba equipment to the search area. Civilian divers were called to exit the water, and soon thereafter the helicopter appeared. It's entirely possible that it took some time (minutes) for the son to get the attention of the Lifeguards once he had surfaced.
The reason I ask, is the post from the Unions news/web site.
@DebF: Whoever made that "Reader Comment" post on the U-T website was probably exaggerating the 40 min timeframe. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if that poster already had a beef with SD Lifeguards and how they do their job.
FWIW, based on the location of the search efforts, anyone surfacing at that time of day could inflate a safety sausage and get the Lifeguards' attention within a minute...even without any help from paddleboarders or surfers. The area is pretty much right in front of the Main Lifeguard Tower. I have no idea what kind of signaling devices (if any) that the son had with him at the time.
Having witnessed as a bystander much of the Lifeguard response to this particular incident, I really can't be critical of the way they handled the rescue/recovery efforts. I think the part of the story we should all focus on is the very consistently reported inexperience of the buddy pair...and their poor judgment to plan/execute such a deep dive. Even if they were doing a blue water descent, a reasonable buddy pair would level off at the agreed upon max depth and then likely decide to swim east until they could see that abundant La Jolla Shores sand. I will concede that this would require good buoyancy control, buddy communication, and very basic navigation skills.
No doubt people will try to find fault with someone, but it is not the shops responsibility unless they demonstrated some very strange behavior when renting gear.
Plan or no plan, going to that depth proved to be a bad decision for them. The lesson we should learn from this is that accidents can and will happen and at that depth, the consequences are dire. Until the son reveals more information, all we can do is speculate and I happen to believe they planed a deep dive then Nitrogen Narcosis changed the plan and the tragic outcome.
Inexperience, Nitrogen Narcosis, Panic and OOA changes even the best of plans.
The son is going to have to live with whatever happened. His life has been tragically changed forever and will need significant help through this. Divers need to take dive planning more serious. All to often, diving deep is the goal and I’m just as guilty. When I first started diving, I could not wait to go deep. So deep I went. Fortunately, I survived but it was just dumb luck.
Here is a warning to new divers: Don’t go deep, you won’t find anything down there but colder water, darkness, narcosis and the pleasure of watching your air get sucked out of your tank at an alarming rate.
If you must (and we know your ego requires it) go deep, do so only with an instructor or very well qualified diver, have a good plan and know your limitations.
I couldn't agree with you more, Dave. You summed it up quite well.
Was there a dive computer involved? If so, has any of that factual information been cited yet, or is everything still based on word of mouth?
The 161 fsw max depth referenced in John Moore's Divebums email was given out by Lifeguard/SD Fire Rescue sources. It was not reported by any local news as far as I know. Based on the information flow surrounding local dive accidents in the past few years, the Divebums list-serv is
far more credible than anything reported by a non-diving journalist.
keep in mind, that while it's not easy to go deep without planning it at the shores (i agree with your explanation Crispix), the news report has them swimming out to a buoy and going down it like a descent line. doesn't sound like they took the usual swim out, stop at the line up, descend to the sand, and then swim to the canyon slope before going down further.
The salmon-colored buoy was mentioned only on the Divebums email. AFAIK, it was not referenced by the local news media. It is the one detail in the Divebums email that I'm a little confused about it. I am not aware of any buoy in the vicinity of the search area that matches that description. When this detail is clarified, I'll be sure to update this thread.
