New Zealand: One student dead, one missing at Lake Pupuke

[DandyDon]

Where do you get that information from? To clarify -There were 8 divers in the water.There were 3 instructors and 5 students. 5 divers came to the surface and shortly after raised the alarm. During that time one more diver surfaced in hypothermic condition and was taken to hospital for treatment.

Now the third diver has been recovered in the "deep" part of the lake
The body of the diver missing in an Auckland lake has been found.

The diver, was found in deep water in Lake Pupuke in North Shore about 9am.

His body was found at a depth of 53 metres, about 130 metres from the shore, on the southern side of the lake.

I did have the numbers wrong, sorry - corrected that post.

So all 3 Insts were in the water while the 5 Students were in? Do you know if the dive plan included the 3 leaving the others? Of those 3, 1 surfaced cold, 1 found dead, the other found dead today.

So what did happen?

 

[Crush]

In my two to three years on SB I do not recall reading such a strange thread in terms of the number of injuries/fatalities relative to the training level of the students and the number of instructors.

Thanks DandyDon!

 

[Frosty]

Ok DD at this point I'm offering PURELY and entirely my opinion as to what happened based on my personal experience there and the facts so far.
The first 5 divers consisted of 3x students and 2x instructors. They were doing skills in the 9-20m water close to shore.they did their skills and surfaced
The next three divers consisted of 1x instructor and 2x students. They went out to do the deep dive.
the vis was bad, one diver had an issue and started flapping around stirring the silt further.At that point in time vis goes from low (see hand at arms lenth) to zero.Literally you can't read your gauges.
The instructor hunted for the two students with zero viz and freezing cold . He was experienced enough that when low on air he was forced to give up and inflate his BC and wait.-with no vis and the onset of hypothermia he was so disorientated you just have to trust your gear is gonna do its job and haul him up to better vis so he could surface
I feel that the affects of hypothermia combined with conditions (to my knowledge) unique to pupuke meant that one diver carried on going down rather than up and the other diver (the first recovered) simply ran out of air becuase he diddn't know what way was up.

From thousands of miles away it might be possible to sit back and be alalytical about this situation. Perhaps I'm just "soft" because this has certainly shaken me up. The lake is 10 miles from here and I've snorkled in it for years. My kids jump off the jetty and swim there in confidence. Its a spot I thought as safe and controlled an enviroment as I can dive in yet good people are dead.
Cut n paste

Police have located the body of a diver missing in Lake Pupuke.

A South Auckland resident was found around 9am this morning. He was found at a depth of 52 metres, 100 metres from the southern shore.

Navy specialists joined the police national dive team at dawn this morning to continue their search, using specialist sonar equipment.

The body of FELLOW STUDENT diver was pulled from Lake Pupuke on Friday afternoon.

The two men were part of an Adventure Education dive course run by Five students had gone diving with three tutors but alarm bells were set off when the pair did not come out of the water on scheduled time.

In a statement yesterday, the training centre say they are devastated by the tragedy and have cancelled all of their Auckland course for the following week.

 

[DandyDon]

From thousands of miles away it might be possible to sit back and be alalytical about this situation.

True that, but not my intent. It's certainly better to get answers from locals in the know. I am sorry this is upsetting you tho, yet - it really is best to talk these things out. That'll be mentioned in your Rescue course when you get to it.

I'm not clear on which parts of your post are facts you have acquired and which are your personal understandings or speculations. Is it fact that the 2 lost students were with 1 Inst on a training dive separate from the others when the accident happened, and it was the Inst who was treated for hypothermia?

I've been to the bottom of a zero-viz lake once, then decided that was very dumb on my part as it was zero-viz as soon as I went under. I did it tho, then decided I needed to get up, unable to see my gauge in front of my mask - so I inflated a little and hope I didn't overdo it. I came out ok, left the lake totally and never returned. Maybe it is clearer at other times, but even then - I don't want to visit it again for any reason. I have better camping sites closer and better dive sites elsewhere. My LDS takes their club there every year for the camping and camaraderie designed to keep customers loyal, but I worry about them diving that lake.

I guess the rest of your explanation is largely your personal understanding?

 

[Splitlip]

In my two to three years on SB I do not recall reading such a strange thread in terms of the number of injuries/fatalities relative to the training level of the students and the number of instructors.

Thanks DandyDon!

LOL. I have a head ache.

 

[sydney-diver]

Diver's body found - national | Stuff.co.nz

The body of a diver missing following a mishap on Auckland's Lake Pupuke has been found.

Police have confirmed the body of missing man, Daniel Waata Stoneham, 33, was pulled from the lake, on Auckland's North Shore on Sunday morning.

Mr Stoneham had been missing following a training dive which went horribly wrong.

Fellow diver Tyrone North, 37, also died. His body was found on Friday afternoon.

A third diver was taken to hospital suffering hypothermia after the incident. He was discharged from hospital late on Friday afternoon.

A police spokesman confirmed the body was found on Sunday morning after Navy specialists joined the Police National Dive team at dawn to continue their search of the lake for the missing diver

Mr Stoneham's body was located in deep water at a depth of 53 metres, about 100 metres from the shore on the southern side of the lake.

Specialist sonar equipment was used in the search.

Mr Stoneham lived in South Auckland.

''The body has been taken to Auckland Mortuary where an autopsy will be carried out tomorrow,'' a police spokesman said.

''Police express their condolences and sympathy to the families and friends of the two deceased divers.

''The families do not wish to make any comment to media and request that they be given total privacy so that they can grieve over their loss.

''Police thank the local residents living nearby, those persons who are collectively associated with the Pumphouse Theatre complex, Reverend Jason Rhodes of the Anglican Church, and the management of the local Dive shop for their involvement and assistance.''

Police said they would make no further comment on the diving tragedy as their investigation continues.

The divers were on a training course run by Auckland company Helix Training, which put out a statement saying it was shattered by what had happened.

''At the moment our total focus is on finding our missing diver and we are doing everything we can to assist the police with their investigations,'' it said.

Lake Pupuke has been the scene of several tragic accidents, including the death last year of 16-year-old Raphael Alualu, who drowned after jumping in from the cliffs above.

The lake is used for diver training because it is unaffected by winds or tides, but it is around 70m deep and does not have the buoyancy of saltwater. Police say the search will continue tomorrow.

 

[Frosty]

True that, but not my intent. It's certainly better to get answers from locals in the know. I am sorry this is upsetting you tho, yet - it really is best to talk these things out. That'll be mentioned in your Rescue course when you get to it.

Sorry Don I'm gonna have to walk away from this conversation and revisit it in a few days. Stupid of me to even get involved in this thread at the moment.I apologise if this seems evasive in any way -its not intended.

 

[Crush]

The next three divers consisted of 1x instructor and 2x students. They went out to do the deep dive.
the vis was bad, one diver had an issue and started flapping around stirring the silt further.At that point in time vis goes from low (see hand at arms lenth) to zero.Literally you can't read your gauges.
The instructor hunted for the two students with zero viz and freezing cold . He was experienced enough that when low on air he was forced to give up and inflate his BC and wait.-with no vis and the onset of hypothermia he was so disorientated you just have to trust your gear is gonna do its job and haul him up to better vis so he could surface
I feel that the affects of hypothermia combined with conditions (to my knowledge) unique to pupuke meant that one diver carried on going down rather than up and the other diver (the first recovered) simply ran out of air becuase he diddn't know what way was up.

1. If you stir up silt and can't read your gauges, why not rise up 5-10 ft?
2. The instructor hunted for the students. Why didn't the students hunt for the instructor? You know - look for 30 seconds, rise up a bit, look for another 30 seconds, then hit the surface? These were supposed to be advanced students...
3. Why would an instructor get low on air while looking for students? It doesn't take long. See #2, above.
4. If you are stirring up silt on the bottom which leads to disorientation, how can you go end up "going down rather than up?" Presumably you are as far down as you can get... and
5. If cold was an issue for the instructor, why wasn't s/he better prepared for he conditions?

 

[DandyDon]

Excerpting from Radio New Zealand : News : Regional : International organisation probes divers' deaths

Spokesperson Haydon Allan says the men were both qualified in advanced open water diving, and had completed a rescue diver course. Mr Allan says they have no idea what went wrong.

 

[Diveworx]

The amazing thing is they were taking 4-5 month training course, which I've never heard of here. Also if the accident happened here the company would be super defensive as a big lawsuit would be almost inevitable here. I suspect the legal system in NZ is not as predatorial as here.

Adam

Full time and part time training courses have been offered in NZ for some time now but has been big business since the late '90's. What has made them so popular is that these courses were made eligible for almost 100% government funding for course fee's, dive equipment/materials and a living allowance. These courses are run by PTE's (Private Training Establishments) under the governance of the NZQA (NZ Qualifications Authority) and each course while driven by the applicable Training Agency also earns the student nationaly recognized Unit Standards.

The course duration is dependent on the program on offer but when I taught them here in Auckland 10 years ago they varied from 6 weeks to 9 months! I personally thought it was a bit of a have and so did the government eventually as they restricted the amount of funding and allowance available to students which signed the death Nell for many of the quick-buck dive centers that sprung up all over the country. Some of which made alot of money and then bailed out as the government stepped in the get the situation in hand.

A concern of mine is that over the past decade or so is that these PTE's have been churning out thousands of instructor level divers who's experience guiding and teaching is based purely on role play and not with actual students on real courses. As alot of the dive jobs for these instructors in NZ exist within these PTE's, some of these instructors then go onto teach the next generation of divers through the same course they had just completed. This has lead to a facsimile of a facsimile situation.

There is more to it of course and others may disagree but my opinion is based on my experiences here in NZ and those experiences gained teaching overseas for the past 12 years.