Feb 19 2017 Cozumel diving fatality

[scubadada]

When I'm underwater in neutral buoyant with almost no air in BCD, it's easy to be in any position I want it to be. I'm going to just hang in mid water to where I'm comfortable, so diving in most efficiently is not my goal. Relaxing & enjoying the underwater scenery are. After all I usually run out of my bottom time before I run out of air in the tank anyway. I'm not trying to fin like mad underwater trying to go from place to place while keeping the body in perfect horizontal, etc., which ends up straining my neck anyway. This kind of perfectly horizontal diving & finning is like walking while looking at the sky for the whole dive, very tiring. Just relax & float are my way of diving like the picture, below.

View attachment 399254

Definitely demonstrates neutral buoyacy, nice position in the water column.

 

[cruiser]

I haven't posted in awhile, but wanted to chime in on this. My back inflate BCD naturally puts me face down in the water for good trim while diving. When on the surface, I float on my back with the BCD underneath me. If I went unconscious, I would be face down in the water and drown.

 

[Ron Lee]

I think that I need some help with my weighting distribution.

As far as getting a correct cause of death, don't count on it. You can speculate based upon whatever info you deem is correct but usually adherence to basic diving fundamentals possibly could have prevented the death or disappearance.

 

[dmaziuk]

... usually adherence to basic diving fundamentals possibly could have prevented the death or disappearance.

I'm not sure this means what I think it means.

 

[Ron Lee]

I'm not sure this means what I think it means.

Your comment is meaningless without elaboration.

If she had a buddy that stayed with her then maybe she would not have died or would not have gone missing if she had a lethal medical event. Very simple.

 

[dmaziuk]

Your comment is meaningless without elaboration.

If she had a buddy that stayed with her then maybe she would not have died or would not have gone missing if she had a lethal medical event. Very simple.

Yes. But we've done that 32 pages ago and even had a thread split on that exact note.

Edit: actually, looking back maybe we didn't. Looks like that bit was in the other thread -- there was a whole thing about buddying up with the DM that led to "DM responsibilities" thread.

 

[boulderjohn]

I just completed a PADI online member forum, the online version of the meetings held throughout the world to keep professionals up to date with lots of things related to their work. One section dealt with safety, and they gave examples of situations that might arise in your work and how you should deal with them. They said all the situations they described were based on real events, but had been altered to make them actually hypothetical. One of their cases was almost exactly like this one, except it had a happy ending. Since the forum content was created before this incident, this incident could not have been the one upon which it was based.

In the situation they describe, a diver in a group signals a desire to go to the surface and heads toward the surface with his buddy. Once the diver is near the surface, the buddy goes back down to join the group and so never sees the buddy to the surface. When the group surfaces later, they are surprised to find the diver is not on the boat. In their commentary, PADI said that if a diver thumbs the dive and ascends early, a buddy should stay with the diver all the way to safety on the surface, especially if you do not know why the buddy wanted to end the dive. They talked about the fact that divers ascending to the surface alone has been a factor in a number of accidents over the years. (I can immediately think of three such incidents myself.)

I had a dive this past autumn in which we were doing a planned dive to 280 feet. As we began our descent next to an ascent line, the lead diver stopped at about 150 feet and gave the hand signal that indicated a problem. He paused for a moment and then gave the thumb. The rest of us repeated the sign and began to ascend with him next to the line. Then he suddenly grabbed the line, which was surprising, since there was normally no need to do so in a lake with no current. I was at that point right in front of him, and sensing a problem, I got a firm grip on him as he continued to ascend. The line ends at the edge of the shore on a slope, and he gripped it until we were both lying in the mud on the edge of the lake. It turned out that he must have gotten a tiny perforation in his ear drum on a dive a couple of weeks before when he had had trouble equalizing, and he had started to get vertigo on the descent as water entered the ear. As he ascended, that little bit of vertigo turned into a swirling, terrifying madness. He did not indicate a serious problem when he gave the thumb, so it would have been very easy for the rest of the team to let him go to the surface alone while we continued the dive.

 

[dmaziuk]

...In the situation they describe, a diver in a group signals a desire to go to the surface and heads toward the surface with his buddy. Once the diver is near the surface, the buddy goes back down to join the group and so never sees the buddy to the surface...

IME the times we came out first, DMs were pretty insistent that we come up together: index fingers together when we gave the thumbs up. That's after spelling it out at the briefing, too. That was Bonaire & Curacao, and Dutch-trained DMs. It was also early on and they may have watched us clueless newbies more closely... but anyway, a diver ascending solo on a group dive is the opposite of my personal experience to date.

 

[archer1960]

IME the times we came out first, DMs were pretty insistent that we come up together: index fingers together when we gave the thumbs up. That's after spelling it out at the briefing, too. That was Bonaire & Curacao, and Dutch-trained DMs. It was also early on and they may have watched us clueless newbies more closely... but anyway, a diver ascending solo on a group dive is the opposite of my personal experience to date.

My Cozumel experience has been the same: buddies always ascend together unless briefed otherwise before the dive. The one pre-briefed exception I've seen was on the first dive of a multi-day trip, when my insta-buddy (a fairly experienced diver, with 200+ dives and DM certified) told the group that due to a sinus infection, he might not be able to equalize, and would bail early if that was the case, while I would continue with the group. He turned out to have no trouble, and we had a great week of dives together.

 

[John Bantin]

If any of you that witnessed this tragedy in any way, or have a link to a news report regarding this sad event, I'd be glad to hear from you by email. john@undercurrent.org