Posted on 09/21/2022 3:12:38 PM PDT by nickcarraway
A Newcastle woman says an Australian cruise company should have been better prepared for adverse weather after a holiday scuba dive in Fiji almost ended in disaster when a dive boat disappeared.
When Justine Clark and her sons Felix, 18, and Max, 20, surfaced from an offshore dive in Fiji on August 14, their dive boat was nowhere to be seen.
A diver with more than 30 years’ experience, Clark had booked an afternoon dive at an offshore site called The Supermarket.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Two American divers died in 1998 after their Australian dive boat left them behind. As a diver myself, I remember that incident quite well. I also dove on the Great Barrier Reef, but fortunately my boat didn’t leave me behind.
The movie about it was absolutely horrifying.
The film ‘Open Water’ is based on that event.
You are faster.
:)
There’s trouble in the hills of Fiji.
I went snorkeling in Mexico once and they had a boat that would shuttle people to/from an offshore platform more or less continuously. The trouble was, there was absolutely no accounting of how many people had been taken to the platform and how many had been taken back to land. It turned out OK, but I wouldn’t do it again.
Happened to me TWICE. A dive boat left me several miles offshore from La Jolla, alone. As I started kicking toward shore, the boat realized I was missing and turned around. Another time, night diving off Tinian, our “guide” fell asleep and the boat drifted a mile or so into the darkness. Now THAT was a lonely feeling as the two of us blew our whistles as loud as we could. Barely hearing the boat engine start waaay off in the distance was one of the best sounds I ever heard.
They bought their tickets, they knew what they were getting into. I say, let ‘em die!
Seriously, this must have been terrifying.
Scuba diving.
Flying small airplanes.
Flying gliders.
Blue water cruising.
Canning low-acid vegetables.
Skydiving.
Mountain climbing.
Please add to this if you can think of any more.
The dive boat captain knew who it was since he heard of another dive service had lost someone the prior week. They called the Mexican Coast Guard and the local rescue service, but both declined to come out since it was Sunday afternoon and everyone was having lunch with their family. Mexicans put family above everything. Finally, they called the dive service they knew had lost a swimmer and shamed them into coming out to retrieve their client, which they did with a large canvas tarp. The service was called Dive With Pedro (not the real name) and our skipper kept laughing and joking that it should be Die With Pedro instead. The speculation was that the diver went too deep, or passed out for some reason, and the current tangled him in the wall until his leg separated and he came to the surface.
I believe this sort of thing happens a lot in Cozumel, with its strong currents and other hazards, but no one there talks about it for fear of discouraging tourists.
Marrying Carole Baskin
Hanggliding. Their monthly rag has an obituary column (actually it’s a safety column but same difference).
I am years from my last open water dive on the Bahamas Wall so I know the hobby and the danger. What I now wonder about is the EPRB/EPIRB* device and is it usable by an individual diver? If so, while expensive for low usage, it would seem logical for rental from a dive boat / company. No sure idea of response time to activation but bound to be better than a course plot as it is with the diver and is wherever the wind and currents put them. Another thought is that the new iPhone 14 has satellite ability and can be in a water-resistant pouch as well. That might be an option as well.
* EPRB - (Emergency Position Radio Beacons) use a reserved frequency of 406 MHz emergency signal to orbiting COSPAS/SARSAT satellites.
Evening walks in NYC, DC, Baltimore, New Orleans, SF, Portland, Seattle?
What on earth would it take to count noses before going out to sea and counting them again before going back to shore?
Okay, I have to ask. Canning low acid vegetable?
The water in Tinian is like looking thru good vodka.
Maybe eating them?
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