EastEndDiver
Contributor
He is also "Rescue Diver" certified with his 20 or so dives.
Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.
Benefits of registering include
He is also "Rescue Diver" certified with his 20 or so dives.
Mike,As I said, Matt did the best he could, if an inexperienced diver can remember even half of what he should do in an emergency I think he's doing great! If there is blame to go around it belongs with the other diver who simply abandoned his buddy and returned to the boat and never mentioned a word to anybody that his dive buddy was missing.
When I was back on the boat my buddy came up to me and asked me if I was okay. I said I was fine. He told me that when he signaled me with his noise maker, he saw me look around. He was holding onto a coral outcropping. But I didn't see him. Then he saw me swim off in the wrong direction, away from him. So he swam back to the boat.
Then my buddy said, "What I should have done is go to the surface to look for you instead of swimming back to the boat."
He did????
I thought he and his buddy lost each other. He kept his head, followed proper safety procedures, which was circling underwater for a minute, then he surfaced and waved at the boat for help. Then at that point Matt was faced with what everybody who is actually in a situation instead of reading from a book has to face and that is dealing with the unique circumstances that every incident will have and making decisions on the fly. Matt isn't an EMT, a police offer, and dive instructor or anybody else with training and working professionally every day dealing with emergencies. He's just a guy on a dive that suddenly took a turn and he's doing his best to cope and deal with it as he can.
Meanwhile, his douche bag dive buddy is sitting on the boat watching it all unfold, watching the captain hailing Mark, not opening his pussy mouth for an instant to step in and tell the captain, Marks probably looking for me, since we got separated and I like a A-hole just abandoned him, swam to the boat and never said a single solitary word about me losing my buddy to anybody while Mark for all I know was trapped underwater dying.
The only thing different you should have done Mark beside discussing more things with your instant buddy prior to the dive, was to stop that captain in the middle of his 'lesson' and explained to everyone on the boat, that your dive buddy abandoned you at the end of the dive and you were dealing with a lost buddy scenario the best you could and put the blame on your jerk of a dive buddy where it fully belongs. If the captain didn't like that you should have just told him to go do what he's paid to do, drive the boat and shut up.
FPDocMatt:"I really appreciate the replies from the posters who think I handled the situation appropriately, given my experience level.
And as usual, several posters think that I really am the pariah. But that's life on the Internet."
This was a huge mistake on your part. Your buddy was already onboard, so the Captain and crew were now focused on your well-being. When you refused to give the OK signal it gave them more cause for concern. When you then refused to answer the Captain onboard, I can understand his becoming upset. It is a tough job being placed in charge of a number of people you don't know. When you are at sea, the Captain is the alpha male. He needs all onboard to answer his questions.When the captain made the okay sign and asked, "What does this mean?" I figured he was just trying to establish his dominance. Obviously I knew what it meant, so why was he asking? I really felt that, especially after he kept asking it over and over with raised voice, he was laying a trip on me. And I was having none of it. I don't think this means I lack social skills, but I understand there are some on this board who think this. I think it means I don't need to take crap from an alpha male who wants to establish his dominance over me so that he can be right.
T
The reason I say that, having it to do all over again, I would give the okay sign immediately, is that I realize now that they could hear me, even from 100 yards away. So I could have given the okay sign, then communicated verbally the missing diver situation. But at the time, I did not know they could hear me.
So I surfaced again, and waved at the boat again.
This time some people on the boat saw me, and the captain came to the railing, and yelled, "Are you okay?" At this point, I thought, If I say I'm okay, then he's just going to turn around and ignore me, and my buddy will die. Besides, I'm not okay if my buddy is missing. So I yelled, "Is Joe on the boat?" Then he yelled even more loudly, "Are you okay?" Now I could tell he was irritated. I yelled, "Is Joe on the boat?" Somebody said "Yes", so I gave the okay sign.