Diver watched as friend became disoriented and descended to death on famous shipwreck

[SurteesDiver]

I think it is a New Zealand thing. The total population of New Zealand is only 5.1 million, less than the population of Sydney. As far as I can see from these forums, there were at least six scuba diving deaths there in the past 8 months or so. In Sydney, there may have been one (someone heard it mentioned on the radio news but nothing in press at all) over this same period.

I think a lot is related to the hunter/gatherer culture that we do not have (it is not legal to use scuba to collect anything here). It also seems that many may not be trained and even if they are, they take extreme risks to collect as many creatures as possible. Maybe this also applies to other diving.

Maybe. NZ has a lot of divers that do not pursue dive training beyond the open water cert (likely because that's all that is needed to get a cray). We also have pretty cold water, pretty marginal viz much of the time, exposed and rough seas, and a media that does not make any effort to differentiate between scuba and freediving. The poor viz makes the normal practice of one up one down freediving impossible and so many of our fatalities are freedivers (reported as divers) rather than scuba. Also re the media, I suspect that we have a lot of quiet news days so a dive fatality is big news where it may not be in a country that has a lot more "news". I suspect also that a much higher percentage of our 5m dive than would be case in Sydney... likely more than six times as many...

 

[DandyDon]

Maybe. NZ has a lot of divers that do not pursue dive training beyond the open water cert (likely because that's all that is needed to get a cray).

I'm curious. Does New Zealand even have laws that govern scuba diving, renting tanks and providing fills for locals who don't have certifications?

 

[Bazzathemammoth]

I'm curious. Does New Zealand even have laws that govern scuba diving, renting tanks and providing fills for locals who don't have certifications?

Does anywhere? Buying a fill or renting a tank is just getting compressed air. How can that require a scuba ticket?

Hiring regulators is a bit different, and I’m sure most shops would ask for an OW card. But you can buy regs secondhand without a question. I highly doubt a dive shop would ask about certification before selling you a reg either.

As someone said earlier, most divers in nz get ow and leave it at that, the old school learning from a mate thing is dying off thankfully. Locals tend to dive private so don’t need to advance their training to get access to more interesting dives. Diving to 50m on air with an OW cert isn’t unheard of here. I know an old guy who has been bent 3 times and still dives every now and then. One of my dive buddies is the third generation of divers in his family, and the first to get certed.

 

[MB NZ]

I'm curious. Does New Zealand even have laws that govern scuba diving, renting tanks and providing fills for locals who don't have certifications?

I get air fills from my local gas station. Never been asked for a certification, I'm quite sure that a request for nitrox would be greeted with a blank stare. They even filled a cylinder that was 6 months out of test, but luckily they put a note on it to say that it needed testing

If you're a tourist diving through dive centres with hire kit and guided dives, the situation is probably much the same as the rest of the world, but that isn't how most diving is done. New Zealand has one of the highest, if not the highest boat ownership per capita in the world and there is a lot of shore diving as well. Most people acquire some kit and go with or without a certification. I know guys who have dived for years with no certification. They always say they are going to do it, but never get around to it!

Again, I would reiterate that most people are sea food gatherers that happen to use SCUBA equipment rather than divers. The thought of jumping in to the ocean just to look at critters is an alien concept. Should this make a difference to diver safety? No, I'm not condoning the behaviour, just explaining the background.

 

[BoltSnap]

As someone said earlier, most divers in nz get ow and leave it at that, the old school learning from a mate thing is dying off thankfully. Locals tend to dive private so don’t need to advance their training to get access to more interesting dives. Diving to 50m on air with an OW cert isn’t unheard of here. I know an old guy who has been bent 3 times and still dives every now and then. One of my dive buddies is the third generation of divers in his family, and the first to get certed.

Almost as bad as it is in Libya. We have people not certified who learned to dive from a mate who learned from mate, etc. Folks doing multiple dives to 50m+ and getting bent, turning into a pretzel and dying. We have high rate of decompression illness injuries. No proper recompression treatment facilities either.

 

[BoltSnap]

Again, I would reiterate that most people are sea food gatherers that happen to use SCUBA equipment rather than divers. The thought of jumping in to the ocean just to look at critters is an alien concept. Should this make a difference to diver safety? No, I'm not condoning the behaviour, just explaining the background.

Wow, same here in Libya. It is all about filling their bellies. I am usually the only one going diving to take photos. The disaster here is the use of dynamite to fish destroying the marine environment in the process.

 

[DandyDon]

Does anywhere? Buying a fill or renting a tank is just getting compressed air. How can that require a scuba ticket?

Yes, in the US there are federal regulations as well as some that vary by state, then there are liability laws and fee-hungry attorneys. If a US fill station fills my tank when I was not certified by a recognized agency and I died, my heirs could sue for damages.

In Mexico and Central America, I arrived with 100 pounds of dive gear and fill out the paperwork, but they never looked. I can think of one time in Honduras when they pretended to look, but I showed them a Padi card that was misprinted without information...

As someone said earlier, most divers in nz get ow and leave it at that, the old school learning from a mate thing is dying off thankfully.

That's what I was asking about.

Diving to 50m on air with an OW cert isn’t unheard of here.

Oh, I did about that once in Belize's Blue Hole, but so did the whole boatload. In Cozumel, it's not rare to go to 46m/150 feet on the Cathedral site.

One of my dive buddies is the third generation of divers in his family, and the first to get certed.

Ok, that's what I suspected.

I get air fills from my local gas station. Never been asked for a certification

And that.

Most people acquire some kit and go with or without a certification. I know guys who have dived for years with no certification. They always say they are going to do it, but never get around to it!

That too.

 

[Jared0425]

Took place in New Zealand

Stuff

www.stuff.co.nz

There's a scene in Dr. Strangelove that describes this dive to a T...

The HMS Niagara has an absolutely fascinating tale about early diving and cargo salvage at a depth of 315ft. There's a out of print book that I just added to my collection called Niagara's Gold by Jeff Manyard recommended to my by Akimbo.

An even harder to find book is Gold from the Sea by James Taylor.

 

[Celt]

There's a scene in Dr. Strangelove that describes this dive to a T...

The HMS Niagara has an absolutely fascinating tale about early diving and cargo salvage at a depth of 315ft. There's a out of print book that I just added to my collection called Niagara's Gold by Jeff Manyard recommended to my by Akimbo.

An even harder to find book is Gold from the Sea by James Taylor.
View attachment 781635

You might like this .

Diving For Gold In Lough Swilly

On 25 January 1917, the Laurentic was sunk by a German mine in Lough Swilly, county Donegal. The luxury liner was carrying £5 million worth of gold.

www.rte.ie

 

[Sebs]

There's a scene in Dr. Strangelove that describes this dive to a T...

The HMS Niagara has an absolutely fascinating tale about early diving and cargo salvage at a depth of 315ft. There's a out of print book that I just added to my collection called Niagara's Gold by Jeff Manyard recommended to my by Akimbo.

An even harder to find book is Gold from the Sea by James Taylor.
View attachment 781635

Apparently there's a documentary on YouTube!