Yet another senseless death

[amtrosie]

Below is a link to the report of another death in the Keys. The site this woman was diving has a max depth of about 40 feet (13 meters).


The point I want to emphasize is the level of discomfort experienced by this woman. She is obviously an inexperienced and an infrequent diver (these two all too often are synonymous). A diver MUST NEVER BE PRESSURED TO MAKE A DIVE THEY ARE UNCOMFORTABLE DOING!!! To do anything other than affirm the decision to abort a dive is totally irresponsible!!!

The other issue here is for the inexperienced or infrequent diver, and that is NEVER, NEVER, NEVER assume a dive is "easy" to do. I am seeing more posters here that are new to this wonderful sport. Take to heart the axiom "your certification is just a licence to learn". Never under-estimate the necessity of continued practise and training.

Let us not let yet another death pass us by without trying to learn from the many tragic mistakes (and there were many) of this accident



http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/loc...,6542357.story

[acelockco]

Thanks for posting the link to the story. I feel before we jump to conclusions and try to find a lesson that needs to be learned, we need to find out what actually happened.

From what the story implies, she drowned because she paniced. I never heard of anyone drowning because of panic. When we find out the real and entire story only then can we determine if there is a lesson to be learned.

[acelockco]

Was she even SCUBA diving or was she skin diving? I could understand how someone with too much weight and no SCUBA gear on could drown. If that is the case, I guess the lesson is don't be stupid.

[hbh2oguard]

I never heard of anyone drowning because of panic. When we find out the real and entire story only then can we determine if there is a lesson to be learned.

I fully agree that we need more details, but I believe it was Scuba diving because she was on a dive boat and was a certified Scuba diver. One thing I couldn't disagree with more is what you said about panic. The number one cause anyone drowns is due to panic from lack of expierence. Panic kills.

[acelockco]

I think you miss understood me. She may have paniced, but that did not kill her. She did something else that killed her. Maybe she paniced and then tried to inhale water, but she died from drowning not panic.

There is no such thing as cause of death "panic". There is such a thing as cause of death "drowning".

[hbh2oguard]

Yes that's very true, you can't directly die from panic. But panic indirectly kills. More than likely not the person would still be alive today if she didn't panic about the weight problem. Does anyone have more info about what happened?????

[lottie]

It's always terrible news to hear of a fellow diver's death under circumstances that could have been prevented.

I agree that we don't know enough about the story to make an informed choice as to what went wrong and know that if we were involved in a similar predicament to know what actions to take to rectify the situation.

The one part of the story that I didn't understand was her friend (i'm assuming he was also her buddy?) tried to help her drop her weights - which to me, seems the most obvious thing to do, especially if she was complaining she had too much weight - but then she paniced? That doesn't make sense.

As she was complaining of too much weight before entering the water, shouldn't/wouldn't another diver/DM/Instructor talk to her about the weight and make sure she had enough to maintain neutral buoyancy?

If she was diving in < 30ft of water (I know Amtrosie mentioned max depth of 40ft), she would have been within the limits to do a CESA (Controlled Emergency Swimming Ascent)???

[hbh2oguard]

The article was pretty short and lacking details, but it sounded like they weren't actually diving yet. I don't see how one could drown on the surface before a dive, with a buddy at their side. Drop weight, inflate BCD, or sink all 40ft with a reg in your mouth and then drop weight. Maybe I read the article the wrong way but if the case is what I think this is, her or her buddy had NO business being in the water. Is there a longer article somewhere bescides the one on the link?