It seems like this isn't the thread to use to reopen discussion on the theories behind the Watson tragedy. Clownfishsydney has worked hard to compile a ton of information and then started a thread which would give us the opportunity to ask him further questions about the information.
If you go back and read this thread:
Watson Murder Case - Discussion You will see an extensive discussion which takes place over a 4 year period and which starts out with most of us thinking Watson was guilty. As we read more and more about the case, some of us began to think that Watson was not guilty. It is a lot of reading, and you will see a turning point in the posters' opinions about half way through the thread, and a strong shift toward Watson not being guilty, toward the end of the thread. McFadyen (CFS) had very little to do with the shift of opinion. He too, started off believing Watson was guilty.
If we were to rely soley on the spoonfed infromation from shows like 48 hours, we would have wanted to see Watson hanged. But it was the inconsistencies in the witness statements and the discussion in absolutes as to how divers should respond to various situations that changed my mind. The press always has an agenda beyond just reporting the story. They don't report on the nice time the honeymoon couple was having before the accident, nor the witness statements of "the glowing newlywed bride", nor the fact that later dives in the trip were scheduled for wall dives where a planned murder would have sent the victim to irretrievable depths.
We are supposed to believe that Watson planned this months in advance, flew half way around the world, had a few days touring Australia, going to the Opera, having a romantic time, and then pulled the air off/air on murder on the very first dive?
Searching for an explanation based on hearsay and then finding an explanation by assigning conspiracy and murder is the same as looking into the sky and claiming to see UFOs when a reflection of sunlight off a military aircraft is observed. A little more thought and insite gives us an explanation which is more feasible than a UFO.
Only in the last few months did I come across McFadyen's website.
His website brought some clarity to my hypothesis that Inadequate training, Gabe's over estimation of his own abilities, and being out of practice, were together the root cause of the tragedy. Dr Edmonds statements and the discussion in the thread above, solidified my conversion from thinking Watson was guilty to being positive that he wasn't. Watson's bizarre behavior is only indicative of him being a bizarre dude.
If we are to use our own experience and empirical evidence to define diver's behavior, then here are some of my observations which are detailed in the above linked thread. I have worked with 1000s of dive students and have seen many types of panic, poor decision making, and bizarre behavior. I have witnessed passive panic with overweighted divers sinking slowly with arms outstretched and the husband/boyfriend swimming around at 20 feet, just looking at their buddy lying on the bottom 80 feet below, looking up. I have witnessed "Advanced" divers breath around the mouthpiece and inhale water as they sank toward the bottom.
I've seen Rescue divers practicing, and when they contact the "distressed" diver, they drag him down 40 feet below the contact point and then react by inflating the BC and make a buoyant ascent. I've seen rescue divers make a safety stop while responding to a bleeding diver with no thought to the possibility that the victim could bleed out during the safety stop.
I've come across divers who didn't do an equipment check before entering the water and had set their kit up on nearly empty tanks. They got to 70 feet on a night dive and ran out of air. When I came across them, they were just sitting there at 70 feet, OOA and doing nothing but waiting for the grim reeper. In each of the above cases, someone was there to remedy the situation. In Watson's case, no one was immediately available or able to deal with their situation.
IMO agency standards allow Instructors to teach short courses that cover the minimum standards, but poorly prepare divers for real life open water diving. We know from statements made, that Tina panicked during her confined water training. We know that it had been years since Gabe completed his Rescue Course. He was out of practice, out of his element, and when things started to go wrong underwater, it was out of his control.
The same instructor who signed off on the panic prone Tina, also signed off on Gabe's training.
Three days ago, one of my students completed all of her skills per agency standards while in the pool. She periodically had panic attacks throughout the entire 3 hour confined water session. In the end, I would not sign off on her training because I didn't feel that she could go into the ocean and not risk panic. She has the opportunity to come back and build more confidence, practice her skills, and spend time working on buoyancy, trim, and general underwater proficiency.
What if the situation were reversed. There is no possible way that Tina could have saved Gabe. Would we be calling her a murderer had Gabe been the one who died?
Everything in the Watson scenario is explainable with compareable diving situations.
.
