Lessons for Life: Wounded Grouper Strikes Back, Fatally

kirkscubagear is publishing this article as a learning/teaching experience for divers. My condolences to Danny's Mother/Family.

Danny was having one of the greatest days of his short dive career. Conditions were perfect. Visibility seemed to go on forever. Big fish circled the oil rig where he and his mom were diving, and he had just shot a big grouper with his spear gun.

Now he had the large fish dangling from a stringer that he had connected to his buoyancy compensator. Its weight was slowing him down some, so he looked around for his mom before he headed back to the boat. Danny moved toward one of the steel rig supports, looking for his mother, when he felt a sharp jerk on his BC jacket. He turned to see what caused it, when something knocked his regulator out of his mouth and his mask askew on his face.

Suddenly he couldn’t see what was going on, he couldn’t breathe, and he was in trouble.

THE DIVER

Danny had wanted to dive for several years, and finally convinced his parents to give him lessons for his 15th birthday. He loved to fish and swim in the ocean not far from his house, and he wanted to spearfish. He joked with his friends that spearfishing on scuba gave him the chance to get on the same level as the fish. He could chase them down where they lived.

The trip to dive the oil rigs and spearfish was a present for his 16th birthday. He had made a few dives — including a few spearfishing dives — since earning his certification, but not as many as he would have liked. He was diving with his mom, but Danny thought she was pretty cool, and they enjoyed being together. She wasn’t interested in spearfishing, but she went everywhere he did on the dive, although she stayed apart from him so she wouldn’t spook the fish he was chasing.

THE DIVE

Danny and his mom were diving from a local charter dive boat that regularly ran spearfishing charters to offshore oil rigs. Fish of all types congregate around the rigs. Divers could find everything from smaller reef fish to bigger pelagic animals patrolling the structures.

The bottom was more than 500 feet below them. They were 50 miles from the shore and had boarded the boat early that morning for the two-hour ride to the dive site. They had great visibility, and Danny felt at ease going deep in search of fish. Danny didn’t have a dive computer of his own, but his mom had one. Her computer recorded depths of more than 200 feet on the first dive, and they went back to the same area on the second. She spent her time looking at smaller fish and crustaceans clinging to the steel supports of the rig while Danny hunted.

He saw what he was looking for: a large grouper hovering calmly by a steel support. Danny lined up a perfect shot, spearing the fish through its side. The barbed head on his spear was stuck in the fish, so he tied the line off to his BC and looked around for his mom to show her his prize.

THE ACCIDENT

Everything was going fine until the stunned fish attempted to get free. It flailed around, charging to the end of the stringer line, and then changing course and going in another direction. When it bolted back on its own tail, the grouper collided with Danny’s face, knocking his mask askew and pulling his regulator out of his mouth. Danny frantically searched for his regulator, but the fish took off in another direction, jerking him once again. Panic set in quickly, and Danny’s actions and reactions failed to do him any good. The fish struck Danny again in the body and then in the face as it attempted to make its escape, finally breaking the stringer loose from Danny’s BC before it took off for the bottom of the ocean.

Danny’s mother first realized that there was a problem when she heard her dive computer beeping. They had maxed out their bottom time and were going into mandatory decompression status. She looked around for her son to tell him it was time to go to the surface when she saw Danny struggling with the fish. She arrived just as the grouper broke free and took off.

She grabbed Danny, only to realize he was unconscious. She attempted to straighten his mask and put his regulator in his mouth, but she couldn’t get him to inhale. She immediately began swimming with him to the surface while inflating Danny’s BC.

Danny and his mother surfaced close to the boat, and the crew quickly responded to her cries for help. They dragged Danny on board the boat and began resuscitation efforts, but they were unsuccessful. Danny never regained consciousness.

ANALYSIS

This fatal accident occurred for several reasons, both dive related and general-safety related. Danny was not a very experienced diver and didn’t follow the general rules of dive safety. He was well beyond recreational diving limits, but was more focused on the fish he could catch than on his own safety. He was not tracking his own dive profile, either with a depth gauge and a watch or with a computer. Instead, he relied on his dive buddy to do it for him. That is never a good idea. In this case, the two divers weren’t even staying together. (It didn’t have any direct bearing on the accident, but when police inspected Danny’s regulator afterward, they found it to be in marginal working condition.)

Danny wasn’t a very experienced diver. He should have gained more experience in the water, enough to be completely comfortable, before he began spearfishing.

He should have practiced the emergency procedures that he learned in his open-water diving course before he picked up another task. This is true for any secondary activity underwater. Anytime you add more equipment and more mental tasks to an already task laden activity, you increase your risk.

The large fish attached to Danny’s dive gear wasn’t dead, only stunned. The fish didn’t intend to hit Danny in the face, but it did, and Danny was unable to respond to losing his mask and regulator underwater. Because Danny and his mother had different goals for the dive, they weren’t close enough to each other to be able to help each other.

If Danny’s mom had been within five to 10 feet, she could have quickly helped him find his regulator, or given him her alternate to get him under control before the problem got worse. As it was, she didn’t even know there was a problem until it was too late.

Drowning doesn’t have to be a long, slow process, and it doesn’t require the person to inhale large amounts of water. Often, just a teaspoon or two inhaled into the airway will cause the airway to shut off. This is called a laryngospasm. Danny’s larynx probably closed off with his first inhalation of water and he suffocated, losing consciousness fairly quickly.

Thanks to Scuba Diving and Eric Douglas
Kathy Dowsett
www.kirkscubagear.com
NB picture is from net---not related to story.

Lessons for Life: Death in the Shallows

Thanks to Eric Douglas and Scuba Diving

Jolie kept hoping things would get better. She had been certified a year earlier, but had been in the water only once since then. Her first dive of the day had been shaky, but she got through it. She just couldn’t get the hang of her buoyancy, and felt like she was either banging off the bottom or floating to the surface. During the surface interval, her buddy told her she just needed practice and it would get better. She kept reminding herself to relax and breathe slowly and easily.

Visibility was poor on her second dive. She felt like she was looking down a tunnel and everything got dark. All she could think of was getting to the surface and breathing air. She was breathing faster and faster, but nothing seemed to be coming from the regulator. She spit it out and looked around wildly for her buddy.

THE DIVER

In her mid-20s, Jolie was in good shape and enjoyed being outside. She thought learning to dive sounded like fun, and she enjoyed the classes. She dreamed of diving somewhere warm and sunny in clear water, but she hadn’t been able to make a trip to the ocean yet. Her friends went to a local quarry regularly, but Jolie never got used to it. She didn’t like the heavy wetsuits, and while everyone said visibility wasn’t bad, it made her feel uncomfortable and closed-in. She had had problems with claustrophobia when younger, and the dark water brought those feelings back.

THE DIVE

Jolie was using some borrowed gear and had rented other pieces. She was reluctant to invest in equipment until she felt comfortable. When she got to the quarry, she realized that the low-pressure hose on her borrowed reg didn’t match the inflator connector on her rented BCD. She had learned how to orally inflate her BCD in her certification class, so her dive buddy convinced her to make the dives anyway. He reasoned that they were going to stay in the shallow end of the quarry where the open-water students practiced, a maximum depth of 10 feet. The one piece of equipment she forgot to bring was her weight belt. She ended up placing her weights in her BCD pockets.

Throughout the first dive, Jolie struggled with her buoyancy control. When she began letting air out of her BCD on the surface, she dropped quickly to the bottom. She orally inflated her BCD, and then found herself on the surface again. She felt like that was all she did the entire dive. She spent so much time working on her buoyancy that she never really looked around or had time to relax. The dive ended relatively quickly when she noticed she had breathed through her entire tank. Her buddy told her that was no problem, but asked her to try to relax and breathe more slowly on the second dive. He also told her to descend to the bottom and add in a little air into her BCD, not an entire breath every time.

THE ACCIDENT

Jolie’s panic began early in her -second dive. She was uncomfortable on the surface, trying to remember everything her buddy had told her and the lessons she had learned in class a year before. As soon as the water closed over her head, she began breathing quickly. Her buddy said later that it looked like a constant stream of air bubbles coming out of her regulator. She descended quickly and hit the rocky bottom on her knees. A group of students had just cleared the area and silt had been stirred up, reducing visibility to less than normal. Jolie stayed on her knees for a moment. She took the regulator out of her mouth and began scrambling for the disconnected inflator so she could add air into her BCD. She never found it. Her panic escalated. The only thought that reached her mind was that she needed to be on the -surface. Air.

Jolie’s buddy grabbed her alternate air-source regulator and tried to give it to her. When she refused it, he tried to give her his own, but she refused it as well. Without warning, she bolted for the surface. Resuscitation efforts on the beach and at a nearby hospital were unsuccessful.

ANALYSIS

This is a classic case of panic leading to a dive fatality. Jolie wasn’t thinking clearly in the water. She took out her regulator before she found her inflator hose. Just those few seconds without an air supply were enough to tip her over the edge.

There is very little you can do for someone in a panic state, aside from removing them from the situation and allowing them time to calm down. This is extremely difficult and dangerous underwater. But while the panic ultimately killed Jolie, the triggers on the dive caused the panic in the first place.

Jolie had latent problems with claustrophobia. Struggling with her buoyancy got her agitated to the point that she wasn’t thinking clearly. A root cause of this issue was the disconnected low-pressure inflator. She entered the water on the second dive with the same problems, now even more agitated.

An ascent from 10 feet was more than enough of a pressure change to cause a lung overexpansion injury and cause an arterial gas embolism, or AGE. This causes strokelike symptoms as a large air bubble is introduced to the brain, cutting off blood supply. It can also cause death rapidly. This is the reason scuba divers are trained to never hold their breath.

Lessons for Life

1 Don’t make dives you aren’t comfortable making. Don’t allow peer pressure to goad you into a dive you aren’t ready for.

2 If you feel panicked or have trouble catching your breath underwater, stop on the bottom or hold onto something stable and attempt to relax. Wait for your breathing to settle before you attempt to swim on. If that fails, abort the dive.

3 Be properly equipped for the dives you are making. Making do with improper equipment is unsafe.

4 Seek additional training and experience in a situation supervised by a dive instructor.

Eric Douglas co-authored the book Scuba Diving Safety, and has written a series of dive-adventure novels and short stories. Check out his website, booksbyeric.com

Kathy Dowsett

www.kirkscubagear.com

Diving with a buddy - are you liable if anything goes wrong?

Thanks to:::
Andrew Tonge is qualified as a Solicitor and a Barrister. He has been practising law for over 15 years. He is also a PADI Instructor, experienced technical diver and a director at Odyssey Dive Centre Limited, based in Stockport and Wigan. Andrew can be contacted at Nexus Solicitors, Manchester, where he is a partner.

Diving with a buddy is one of the best ways of exploring the underwater water world. No instructors, no knowledge reviews. Just diving!

For most of us, our buddy is a close friend and someone we trust. Someone we know to be a properly trained diver, someone who understands the way we dive. But year after year, divers, in buddy teams, get into difficulty. Year after year, many divers are seriously injured or killed at home in the UK and abroad.

So what happens in these cases? There is no dive school to point the finger at. No instructor or divemaster who was ‘in charge’. If anything happens to your buddy, who carries the can?

If you (or anyone else diving with you and your buddy) take certain steps either before or during or even after the dive, then the law sees that you have assumed responsibility and will impose a duty of care on you.

This means that the law expects you to behave in a particular way. In other words, you must act so as to make sure that you do what is required in any of the circumstances that arise on the dive so as not to harm those with you.

Whether and when the law imposes a duty on a dive buddy is a very complex area of law and it is easier than you think to find yourself on the hook.

For example, if you ‘lead the dive’ you may have assumed responsibility for the welfare of your buddy. This is not only where you are a more experienced or better qualified diver. This does not mean that everyone who ‘leads the way’ underwater becomes responsible in law for their buddies but it is easy to overstep the mark and become so.

Where, say, you are familiar with a wreck and your buddy isn’t, then the law is likely to require you to lead in a way that keeps your less-familiarised buddy safe. This may mean briefing him properly, possibly to the standard required of a wreck qualified dive leader, because in the eyes of the law, that is what you have said you will do.

It’s a little like a car driver, taking a friend for a ride in an articulated heavy goods vehicle. The driver must drive not simply like a car driver or ordinary road user, but as an HGV driver.

It is also very easy to fall foul of this legal conundrum in much less obvious circumstances. A buddy check means that you must do that buddy check as a reasonable diver would. As soon as you take the job on, you assume the duty of care. Maybe not for your buddy’s safety on the whole dive, but as far as checking his kit is concerned.

A loose weight pouch that drops out or a loose cylinder band, that should have been checked by you and which causes injury (or worse) to your buddy, will mean that you have not discharged your duty of care and may be liable in civil law to your buddy or his estate after death.

The same applies to everything you do, during and after the dive.The legal duties of care do not always end when the dive does.

If for example, you are unable to render assistance to your buddy because your alternate air source is not serviceable, then you may be liable for some or all of his injuries, because a reasonable buddy would have had kit that would have been useable by a buddy in trouble.

This is where the rules of diving as set out by organisations such as PADI would be used to assess whether you have behaved in the right way. The PADI diving rules are not the law, but the court, in deciding on how you should have behaved will look to the current reasonable practice of other divers and diver training agencies, in the same way as the court may look to the Highway Code.

Of course, whilst you may not, in certain circumstances, be obliged to attempt a rescue of your buddy, you may, by simply diving with your buddy have impliedly accepted that he can use your alternate air source or that you will dive in particular way (e.g. close enough for him to use your octo) so as not to put him at risk.

If you do attempt a rescue during the dive, or say administer first aid after the dive, you must of course do so, as the reasonable diver or first aider would do. To make the situation worse may leave you liable.

It is worth noting that simply being an instructor or divemaster does not in itself give rise to a duty of care towards the people you dive with, but it may be harder to guard against assuming a duty of care especially if those diving with you are less experienced and qualified than you,
They may be asking questions which you answer in a way that causes you to assume a duty, either in the answers you give, say on how to safely enter the water, or how to configure kit or which route to take to the wreck, right through to a need to closely supervise the divers in the water.
It may not be enough to simply state, at the waters edge, “…it’s every man for himself by the way!” Once a duty of care has been assumed it is legally very difficult to exclude or limit it in cases of personal injury or death resulting from the negligence (behaviour falling below the standard required) of the person with the duty.

The standard of the reasonable diver is an objective standard and is irrespective of a lack or training or expertise. To say that you were not qualified to lead a particular dive or give particular advice is not enough. And where you are better qualified and more experienced than the ordinary, reasonable diver, you may in certain cases be assessed against that higher standard.

In a world where legal action is commonplace and diving as a sport is expanding, with the growth of areas such as deep, mixed gas, technical diving, the dive buddy is taking on a responsibility that must be properly managed.

Check your insurance. Does it pay your legal fees if your buddy (or his relatives) sues you?
Get proper diver training. Dive with a recognised organisation such as a PADI Dive Centre and make sure that you and your buddy know what you are getting into. If you have any doubts, speak to a specialist solicitor.

Kathy Dowsett
www.kirkscubagear.com