Fiji Siren - Lost at Sea

[Altamira]

Considering the very small size of their fleet, their ship loss rate is off the charts, and likely setting an unenviable new world record. What astounds me is that divers continue to book trips on their remaining fleet. Maybe divers are thinking, "Hey, they just lost another ship, so we should be good to go for another year. Right?"

 

[tangfish]

Wow, the amount of schadenfreude on this thread is incredible! Y’all might be spending a lil too much time basking in the vitriol over on Facebook. I like to think of divers as generally being more decent folk than this, at least the ones I meet in person are, but I guess a keyboard and a little anonymity brings out the worst in us at times.

Anyhow, glad to hear everyone made it off of the boat safely (to me that is the most important measure). Sad to hear about the loss of this ship, and my sympathy goes out to the divers (both those onboard as well as booked on future sailings) and the crew who are now probably out of work for awhile.

 

[judyo1]

Wow, the amount of schadenfreude on this thread is incredible! Y’all might be spending a lil too much time basking in the vitriol over on Facebook. I like to think of divers as generally being more decent folk than this, at least the ones I meet in person are, but I guess a keyboard and a little anonymity brings out the worst in us at times.

Anyhow, glad to hear everyone made it off of the boat safely (to me that is the most important measure). Sad to hear about the loss of this ship, and my sympathy goes out to the divers (both those onboard as well as booked on future sailings) and the crew who are now probably out of work for awhile.

Yes, I feel particularly for the crew, who were the friendliest crew I have encountered on a liveaboard and who seemed to genuinely care about people safely enjoying themselves. I hope they are not out of a job.

 

[BDSC]

At the risk of acquiring the nickname “Lucky”, my favorite dive trip to date was in 2013 on the Palau Siren.

That's nice............................"Lucky".

 

[KathyV]

Gee I guess that was the "FAKE" Indo Siren I was on in 2012 & 2016

I was referencing the post below; perhaps they salvaged and repaired it?

They also lost the Indo Siren in 2011. I watched it burn in the Dampier Strait in January in Raja Ampat.

They had two boats in Raja at that time, the Mandarin Siren and the Indo Siren. It was the Mandarin that caught fire, not the Indo Siren.

Thank you for clarifying, I retract the statement that the Indo Siren met a fiery end; it was the Mandarin Siren that burned.

 

[KathyV]

Wow, the amount of schadenfreude on this thread is incredible! Y’all might be spending a lil too much time basking in the vitriol over on Facebook. I like to think of divers as generally being more decent folk than this, at least the ones I meet in person are, but I guess a keyboard and a little anonymity brings out the worst in us at times.

Anyhow, glad to hear everyone made it off of the boat safely (to me that is the most important measure). Sad to hear about the loss of this ship, and my sympathy goes out to the divers (both those onboard as well as booked on future sailings) and the crew who are now probably out of work for awhile.

Yes, I feel particularly for the crew, who were the friendliest crew I have encountered on a liveaboard and who seemed to genuinely care about people safely enjoying themselves. I hope they are not out of a job.

Thank you for the reminders, it just struck me as absurd that they can continue to attract loyal customers with their terrible record, and I also felt a bit giddy with a sense of relief that I've learned about the true situation before I also succumbed and became a card-carrying member of the Siren cult.

I have stopped at their beautiful booth at that dive expo show we attend every year, and have spoken with the nice people and listened to their sales pitch, and I have looked longingly at pictures of their lovely boats in exotic destinations and thought - maybe next year?!

But I am not smiling or hankering any longer, that Undercurrent account of the terrible last voyage of the Oriental Siren took care of that! I do feel sorry for the guests that have lost their dream vacations and the crew members that have lost their jobs - but just maybe it also saved their lives!

I recognize that no dive business is perfect, like all of us. And that they all have made mistakes and had their share of good and bad luck, and they have had issues with both incompetent employees and unreasonable customers, but the Siren's disaster record transcends all that.

I am sure that they have also provided many wonderful experiences and memories for loads of happy people, but that's just not enough IMO, safety comes first.

 

[ChrisM]

Received a call yesterday - 9 hours before our flight that the Fiji Siren was taking on water and had been evacuated. Needless to say, our trip was canceled. Does anyone know what happened? This is all I can find.

http://www.scubaverse.com/news-just-fiji-siren-lost-sea/

Reports I am getting from those in the Travel industry (but still hearsay) is that the boat struck a reef in the Namena area, and instead of staying there they moved the boat to deeper waters, and now it’s apparently in 2k feet of water

 

[Scott from LongIsland]

For those not on Facebook, Siren posted this earlier today:

"Regarding the incident, it seems that around 1am in the morning there was an impact on the vessel that caused a breach in the area of the engine room while cruising. Crew members immediately dived under the vessel and applied pre-mix epoxy in an attempt to try to stem the flow and all water pumps were activated (two main pumps and two portable pumps with a combined capacity of close to 4,000 litres or 4 tonnes per minute) to remove water from the vessel. At this point Fiji Siren headed towards land and placed emergency calls on channels 16 & 72 which to our understanding were, unfortunately, not answered.

By 2am it was clear that not enough water was being cleared by the pumps and so it was decided to call guests to muster in life jackets with only their passports and any medication that they might require. They were then evacuated to land with the diving skiffs along with non-essential crew where shelter was provided. Some of the remaining crew then went to work removing as much of the guest’s property as possible, as well as their own items, boat and crew documentation, and tender fuel. Other crew members were, of course, still trying to save the boat.

By 5.30am the main water pump had failed due to loss of power caused by the water in the engine room, however, the fire pumps were still running at full power with additional fuel being brought for them by Namena Divers, so great thanks to those guys for helping in the operation. There were multiple dives carried out to try and stem the breach further, which were sadly unsuccessful, and by 7:15 it was decided to remove all crew except the captain and cruise director.

Shortly after, it became inevitable that the Fiji Siren was lost and so the evacuation was completed and she sank below the surface at some time around 10am."

I find the information in bold a bit suspect. Was there no EPIRB on board and if not, why not? But they were able to contact Namena Divers somehow? I am curious what the laws are in Fiji about captain's running aground and hitting a reef. Bring the boat to deeper waters and down she goes...along with all of the evidence of the accident

 

[BDSC]

They have captains that have no idea what they are doing. They keep running into reefs.

 

[Scott from LongIsland]

If they keep running into reefs wouldn't (or perhaps the better word would be shouldn't) there be some sort of recourse for these captains? If they can't prove that they ran into a reef then no recourse.

To be clear...i am implying that perhaps they did not make those unanswered distress calls and that they waited until they got the boat off the reef and sunk it, thus getting rid of evidence that they hit the reef. Otherwise, if the distress calls went unanswered why didn't they then deploy the EPIRB. If they didn't even have an EPIRB that is a whole different and additional problem.