Diving in the News, October 13, 2012 November 12, 2012
Posted by Chris Sullivan in Miscellany.Tags: Adventure, Belize, burst disc, Diving, Diving fatality, Diving Rescue, hydro test, hydrostatic test, Rescue Diver, SCUBA, Scuba Diving, Scuba Equipment, Scuba Tank, Sport, tank explosion, VIP, Visual Inspection Program
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Unfortunately the weather has turned cold and I have to content myself with writing about other people’s diving for now…
A UK Diver received a bravery award at Buckingham Palace for rescuing another diver in trouble. No doubt that he saved his fellow diver’s life. The people that I dive with wouldn’t hesitate to do the same thing, and every one of us has done some “minor” rescue of a fellow diver, rendering assistance before they got themselves into real trouble. I’m glad I dive with people like that.
Also in the near miss category is another diver drifting away in Florida. This one was rescued by a fisherman. The diver had a safety sausage with him. That’s a good idea when diving in the ocean. A little further South from Juno Beach we dove in some fierce currents on the offshore wrecks. If you’ve got a decompression obligation you could end up surfacing several miles from where you started if you had nothing like the wreck or a line to hold on to.
My first glimpse of this story revealed the name “Amigos Del Mar” and I immediately thought of the dive operation in Cabo San Lucas with the same “Friends of the Sea” name. It’s probably a pretty common name for dive shops in the Spanish speaking world, and this one is in Belize. An employee of the shop was killed by an exploding scuba tank while filling it. While these incidents are rare, they are mostly preventable with good maintenance. The article speculates about faulty gauges and faulty compressors putting too much pressure in the tank, but I doubt it. If a gauge consistently read low, people would start to notice when they attached their regulators to tanks that had been filled at that station. A one time sticking gauge might have been the problem, but more likely it was a fault in the tank caused by daily use in a salt-water environment with insufficient attention to inspection and maintenance. Tanks also have burst discs that blow when they are overfilled, which is supposed to be below the pressure used in their hydrostatic tests.
Diving in the News, Oct 27, 2012 October 27, 2012
Posted by Chris Sullivan in Emergencies, Fitness and Nutrition, Miscellany, Training.Tags: Adventure, CPR, Dive Training, Diving, Diving Accident, Diving fatality, Outdoors, SCUBA, Scuba Diving, Scuba Training, Sport, Training
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A La Jolla, California diver died in hospital after losing consciousness on a boat dive. It seems that everything that could have been done was done to save him. The cause appeared to be a medical problem, and the diver appeared to be over 40. From the news at least it seems that the most common cause of death among divers is medical problems with older divers. Fitness would clearly be a good thing, but so might better training and skills. Diving should be relaxing, not physically stressful. I’ve reported on fatalities in La Jolla before. A solo diver died there in September, and a man died on his first solo dive at 155′ a few years back.
Diving in the News, October 20th, 2012 October 20, 2012
Posted by Chris Sullivan in Miscellany, Shipwrecks.Tags: Adventure, Dive Medicine, Diving, Diving Accident, Diving fatality, Dry Suit, Guiness Book, Outdoors, PADI, SCUBA, Scuba Diving, Scuba Training, Shipwreck, Sport, Training, Wreck Diving
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The Hindustani Times ran a first person article about panic while learning to dive. I felt compelled to correct the reference to an “Oxygen Tank”.
Instructors and Dive Shops should take note of this report on a dive shop which failed to provide a medical questionnaire before training. Even though the former student had died on a holiday, they were found responsible, fined, and expelled from PADI.
After the Costa Concordia disaster I thought it might end up as diving destination. It already has, with looters stealing what they can from the wreck. Sometimes, often actually, I’m truly embarrassed for our species. Meanwhile there are plans to refloat it, so the thieves will be the only ones besides police and search and recovery divers who get to dive it. In the “it’s a small world” department, the woman who cuts my hair was once a hairdresser on the ship.
The world record for longest cold & salt water SCUBA dive has been broken in Ireland. Kudos to the diver and support team for raising money to support families of children with cancer, in memory of his two year old nephew. If any of my dive buddies who are reading this want to give it a try, I’ll happily be your support diver, but as I don’t have a pee valve in my dry suit I’m not about to do it myself. As I reported earlier the definition of cold in this case is below 15 degrees Celsius (59F).
A 68 year-old diver died in the Great Barrier Reef (hardly a week goes by without at least one diver death). I’m not counting, but it seems like a lot of fatalities are older divers. Of course, this proves nothing unless you also adjust the stats for a some variables, like the number of divers in each age group, etc.
Let’s be careful down there.
Diving in the News, October 6th, 2012 October 6, 2012
Posted by Chris Sullivan in Emergencies.Tags: Adventure, Decompression, Diving, Diving Accident, Diving fatality, F, SCUBA, Scuba Diving, Scuba Instructor, Sport, Technical Diving
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I’ve taught Search & Recovery as part of the PADI Advanced Diver Course. We couldn’t get a lot of interest in the full course from new divers. This search course at the San Diego Harbour Police looks challenging, and fun. I mentioned before that in the early eighties my NASDS course we lifted a car (a Vega, I think) in our advanced driver training. We’re a little less ambitious with today’s courses.
I didn’t know there was good diving in the French Riviera. If I win the lottery I’m definitely going to swing the yacht by every once in a while. I’d have to buy a ticket of course, which I never do.
It’s hard to glean the truth out of news stories, especially those about diving fatalities. This article describes the death of a diving instructor in Lake Mead, and says he ran out of air at 350′, with another short article saying he was diving a Hoover Dam relic. Diving on air at 350′ isn’t sensible (in both senses of the word), but the reporter seems to have got it wrong. He shared “air” up the ascent line and was separated from his “dive partner” and made a free ascent to the surface. From a little Google searching Xavier was an accomplished diver, and has been described as an technical dive instructor in this article, which also says that were separated when he attempted an emergency ascent – a small but critical difference in the description. The article quotes Jill Heinerth, who was associated with Xavier on the “We Are Water” campaign, which included this video. He was 48. A post on Scubaboard corrects the news reports to say he was diving on mixed gas.
Diving in the News, Sept 29, 2012 September 29, 2012
Posted by Chris Sullivan in Emergencies, Miscellany.Tags: Adventure, Diving, Diving Accident, Diving fatality, Outdoors, SCUBA, Scuba Diving, Scuba Equipment, Scuba Instructor, Scuba Training, Sport, Training
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OK I get it I think. The son of Gene Roddenberry, creator of Star Trek, also called Eugene, is a diver. His project cleaned up trash from the L.A. River and made art about it. Good publicity and awareness I think but not my thing. Not that I’m not for cleaning up the bottom of our inland waterways, and not that getting public awareness is bad, and the sculpture they created is actually pretty good. So OK, I like it…. I guess.
Paris Hilton scuba dives. Lately in Maui according to Twitter. Perhaps I’ll run into her on a dive boat some time.
You can now go scuba diving in the virtual world with Google who have mapped the coral reefs in Google Earth, but c’mon now, get up off the couch and do something real, for Pete’s sake.
Speaking of Los Angeles, there were some more older diver deaths this week. A 59 year-old woman died near Anacapa Island, which is about 150km North West of Santa Catalina Island where I dove several years ago. Also reported was a 55 year-old ex-Mountie who died in Alberta. The accident may have begun with an equipment failure. A 45 year-old diver in La Jolla, California died. It seems he was diving alone. Another 45 year-old diver from Wichita Falls died diving in the Roi-Namur, in the Marshall Islands Kwajalein Atoll.
A 35 year-old Oregon woman drowned after surfacing from a dive, only 50 feet from shore. She was out of air, but on the surface. We all have two options that don’t require air. One is to drop the weight belt, and the other is to orally inflate the buoyancy compensator. Maybe more training is needed on these skills. OK if you’re a tech diver you generally can’t drop a weight belt, but then again you shouldn’t run out of air, either.
I was somewhat shocked that a couple had to close their diving business in the Ozarks because of the planned dumping of mining waste containing lead in the pristine lake they used for dive training. What a shame. It says here that this was done under the direction of the Environmental Protection Agency.
Over the Atlantic in Cornwall, England, a diver found a camera underwater and discovered that the chip holding the photos was intact. The (non-waterproof) camera had 800 family photos and once the story got out, it was reunited with the owners. That story reminds me of how I was involved in connecting the underwater memorial for Maureen Matous with the family who’d lost it in Cozumel several years ago.
Justin Timberlake is afraid of sharks, but Jessica Biel helped him overcome his fear. She probably have that effect on me as well.’
That’s all for this week. Let’s be careful out there and don’t dive beyond your experience and training unless you’re with a qualified instructor.
Diving in the News, Week Ending September 22, 2012 September 22, 2012
Posted by Chris Sullivan in Miscellany.Tags: Adventure, Cape Breton, Diving, Diving Accident, Diving fatality, Fitness, Outdoors, SCUBA, Scuba Diving, Shipwreck, South Carolina, Sport, Wreck Diving
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I’ve been thinking that I’d like to dive some of the wrecks off the South Carolina coast some time. I’ll try to remember not to use Coastal Scuba, though, based on the articles I’ve read about a recent fatality. If it wasn’t so tragic some of this would be funny, especially the report of an employee throwing the only non-empty Oxygen bottle overboard because he thought it might blow up. While the reports of the company’s actions on board the boat allege they were frozen in inaction, they have been quick to send their clients threatening letters from their lawyers, according to one report. A pair of registered nurses who tried to revive the woman apparently had to “bark” at the boat captain to get him to call the Coast Guard.
A diver died in Cape Breton last Sunday, which was also reported by the CBC. Cape Breton is part of the Canadian province of Nova Scotia. He was part of a group of 10 and 56 years old, and was determined to be missing when they left the water. I wonder who his buddy was. It seems, although I don’t have stats, that deaths amount divers 50 years and older (like me) are due to medical problems.
Diving in the News, 2012/9/8 September 8, 2012
Posted by Chris Sullivan in Ecology, Emergencies.Tags: Adventure, Altitude Diving, Crater Lake, DAN, Diving, Diving Accident, Diving fatality, Dry Suit, embolism, Guiness Book, Lost Diver, Outdoors, Quagga Mussels, SMB, Sport, St. Lawrence River
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Coming up from dive in the open ocean and not finding your boat is a scary thought, and in the ocean and on most other dives I carry an orange SMB, a reel and even a regulation whistle in case this happens. If you don’t have an SMB, improvise with whatever you have. In this story, the intrepid diver used her yellow bikini top attached to her fin to get the attention of a passing boater. Now that would definitely work – especially if the passing boat were full of young male divers. There’s some recent additional discussion about SMBs in Scuba Diving Magazine (and if you want to know, I’m on the “con” side because equipment can’t replace judgement.
A Riviera Beach, Florida man surfaces too quickly and gets taken to hospital. Nothing is mentioned about symptoms in this video. Whilst it’s good to err on the side of caution, and yes, you can get an gas embolism by holding your breath and coming up just 4 feet, I think in the absence of symptoms I’d just watch this guy who bolted from 6-8 feet for a bit rather than rushing him to the emergency room. I’d be interested in what DAN would have to say, and of course you can call there hotline for no charge if you want to know what to do, even if you’re not a member. I liked the expression “taking on water”. I assume they mean some water got past his regulator and it panicked him. Happens sometimes.
A man in Ireland wants to break the cold water open ocean scuba diving bottom time record. There’s a record for everything these days (except deep air, due to the number of deaths, which is not good publicity for beer that’s good for you). What made me laugh in this article (other than the reason for aborting his first attempt) was the bit “when he will be exposed to temperatures of less than 15 degrees Celsius”. My goodness 15 degrees! Now I won’t scoff at how cold that is after 15 hours but it’s hardly the Arctic ocean kind of cold, or even the Georgian Bay kind of cold, or anything in Canada after mid-October. Having dived comfortably myself in 3 degree water it does sound a bit hyped.
I don’t know what to say about this article on the dead fish in Lake Erie, maybe because it’s not directly about diving. While the Ministry of the Environment says it might be from natural causes, I’m sure most people have suspicions that lay elsewhere. A follow up article confirms that it was caused by a temperature inversion, a natural phenomenon.
It should go without saying that scuba diving while high on cocaine is a bad idea. I don’t think I’m stepping out on a limb by saying cocaine itself is a bad idea. But scuba diving is enough fun all by itself, and is a lot safer when you have your wits about you.
Crater Lake, in Crater Lake National Park, Oregon is in the news this week, over a scuba diving closure due to fear of invading species. This article actually makes me want to dive there, but I understand the reasoning having first-hand experience with Zebra mussels and Quagga mussels on my own dives in the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River.
Back to the Florida Keys April 24, 2011
Posted by Chris Sullivan in Dive Log, Emergencies, Fitness and Nutrition.Tags: Diving fatality, Key Largo, Snorkeling, Sport
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It’s almost time to say goodbye to my 1996 Toyota Camry, which has been a delightful car to drive for the last 15 years but is now starting to really show its age. It’s mostly used for either getting around town, going to the occasional visit to my in-laws in London Ontario (about 200 km each way), or dive trips. The trunk (boot, for those of you reading outside of North America), has taken more than its fair share of abuse, having been subjected many times to wet dive gear, including a set of double steel tanks. It now takes some determination to make it latch shut.
So when the I signed up for the trip, I figured I’d drive it, if any one would want to come along with me. The advantage of driving is money saved and the ability to take more gear, especially tanks. Due to a medical condition of one of our group, we didn’t know if there would be 2 or 3 of us, and the Camry would really only fit 2 people plus gear. It turned out to be just 2, so on Tuesday night we packed the Camry with more gear than one could reasonably expect it to hold, ready for the drive the following day.
The trunk held Matt’s twin LP steel 125s (insanely huge) and my twin steel 95s (just huge). To my surprise Matt had another set of 95s in his garage belonging to our local dive shop owner, so we brought them as well. We also squeezed 2 AL80s and some luggage, including one of the other club member’s backplate and wings. Behind the driver seats we stuffed 2 more AL80s, 2 LP steel 50s, and an LP steel 45. On the back seat we had all our dive gear, laptops, and other sundry equipment.
All this meant the rear tires were almost scraping the wheel wells, despite trying to put some of the load forward of the rear axle.
At 5AM I headed over to Matt’s and we set the GPS for the Keys. With the early departure traffic was building but light, so we avoided highway 407 (North America’s most expensive toll road) and had no problems clearing the Greater Toronto Area. Amazingly there was no line-up to customs and they didn’t question our heavily loaded vehicle. Traffic was pretty light the whole way, with the worst being perhaps Charlotte, North Carolina – a bit heavy but no delays.
On the way we discussed driving through the night but figured that we wouldn’t be able to schedule any Thursday diving so we opted to stay the night in Southern Georgia with about 800km left to go. The following day was an uneventful drive down the coast of Florida and we arrived in Key Largo and went straight to Silent World, where we’d arrange a dive charter for the following day.
We needed deco mix for the dive (EAN50) as our shop couldn’t get any Oxygen for our fills prior to leaving. We found them closed, but their sign said open. As we were leaving we asked a guy who was driving in if he knew where the owner was, and he took us to the Garden Cove Marina where they were unloading from an afternoon dive charter. We waited for them to unload in the Shipwreck Bar and got everything sorted out.
Unfortunately there was also a commotion at the end of the dock where paramedics were attended to a 69 year-old doctor from Michigan who had died while snorkeling. The cause of death isn’t known at this time but heart attacks are common during periods of unusually strenuous activity in older people. A sobering thought as I continue my technical diving pursuits as I get older.
We went back to the shop and got everything sorted out for the next day, expecting to dive the Duane. The car now had about 2,600 more kilometres (1,650 miles) on the odometer than it had a couple of days before.
Beware the Man O’War March 1, 2011
Posted by Chris Sullivan in Emergencies.Tags: Diving, Diving Accident, Diving fatality, SCUBA, Scuba Diving, Sport
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My next trip is to the Florida Keys to dive the deep wrecks there. Two divers just died there. Watch out for those Portuguese Men o’War, divers. Fortunately death is rare when stung by one.
Hard to imagine February 28, 2011
Posted by Chris Sullivan in Training.Tags: CPR, Dive Training, Diving, Diving Accident, Diving fatality, Fiji, SCUBA, Scuba Diving, Scuba Instructor, Scuba Training, Training
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This story of a the death of a 28 year-old woman is troubling. As with most stories like this, there aren’t enough facts to really form an opinion. The woman was with an instructor in Fiji, but the instructor surfaced without her. She was later recovered and her boyfriend tried to revive her. It doesn’t mention what she was doing with the instructor or how many other divers were with them. Based on the article, one might wonder:
- How could an instructor lose track of a student in the clear waters of Fiji?
- Why wasn’t the EFR trained instructor involved in the resuscitation?
PADI is investigating and well they should, at least based on this story.
After writing this I noticed another story this time describing the instructor as a “dive master”, and that he surfaced to change cylinders. If she was with a buddy, and was sufficiently experienced, that just might have been reasonable if conditions were good. But the article goes on to describe strong currents. This one also reports that the boyfriend gave CPR rather than the “dive master”, which is odd.
Goes to show that precision reporting on dive accidents doesn’t occur in the mainstream press.
Chronicle of an older diver 