Posted on 01/28/2005 6:45:30 AM PST by paudio
Daniel Carlock Jr. filed a lawsuit Thursday in Los Angeles Superior Court against Ocean Adventures Dive Co. and its employees, accusing them of negligence, inflicting emotional distress and fraud.
Carlock, 46, alleges Ocean Adventures left him off Santa Catalina Island on April 25, 2004, then lied about his location, delaying his rescue for five hours. He was eventually rescued by Boy Scouts in the area.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
Duh. Oops. I forgot to add "inspired". Me bad.
Actually, the entire premise was fiction. The couple could have met their demise in any number of ways within minutes of entering the water. Who's to tell?
A couple from Louisiana were left at sea by an Australian dive boat a couple years ago,,all that was found was a BC vest. Apparently the dive boat captain didn't do a count when leaving the site. I won't dive on a boat unless the operator is religious about doing a count.
A funny story about friends of ours who were diving and while they were down, their boat sank, yep, the sucker just sank. They went back to get on and looked up and there was no boat, then they looked down and there was their boat. They had to come back that afternoon and dive the sunk boat to get belongings.
I've also been diving for several decades and stories of lost divers are not at all uncommon. The last time I was in Cozumel, the week before a father and his daughter were swept away and lost. In an area, lke Cozumel, where there is a swift current, it is quite easy to become separated from the rest of the party, especially on the surface. If the current is combined with a stiff wind and chop, a diver will move away from the point where he surfaced at a fast walking pace, and will rapidly be lost among the waves. Even in areas where the clarity of the water is exceptional, dive boat opperators tend to follow a dive party by keeping track of thier bubbles on the surface. This is not a very exact method of tracking, and, again, it's easy to lose one or two members of a group, if not the entire group altogether. Combine these factors with litterally dozens of dive boats opperating over the same reef is some popular areas, and inexperienced divers in a careless holiday mood, and it's a wonder more divers aren't lost. And, BTW, lost divers are not the sort of thing that resort areas, like Cozumel, are going to want to give a lot of publicity to, so I'm reasonably sure that many of these incidents are suppressed.
Open Water = Blair Shark Project
Cozumel is also where two Philadelphians disappeared on their rented Hobie Cat.
...when you need a Boy Scout you can just never find one.
Just saw it last night....
Creepy, isn't it? And well-done.
Dan
Yep. Looked amazing on my new 51". Wifey had to leave the room...
but does anybody know if there is a book or article about the real event that inspired the movie?
Almost added that, should have. You're right: gratuitous. My son and I call those "Look at your knees scenes."
Otherwise, a very real-feeling relationship, sad movie.
I don't know about a book offhand. You can find out more about the movie (as usual) at www.imdb.com.
Dan
Ping.
Is this where the dead divers came from last year?
Remember the one off Florida and also New York?
I've been diving Cozumel every year at least twice since 1993. I haven't heard the story about the father and daughter. Do you know what reef they were on? Must have been one of the North reefs like San Juan or Bararracuda where the current is normally swift. Get lost there and the next stop is Cuba. I've logged over 130 dives in Cozumel and been in 3 knot currents and never been separated from the group or the boat. If they were on one of the reefs down south like Punta Tunich and got separated, I dont understand why someone didnt pick them up. There are literally scores of boats out there all the time and the reefs are no more than 3/4 mile mile from shore on average.Doesnt make sense to me. You do have to be careful who you dive with. I dive with Ricardo Madrigal. He operates Careyitos for Advanced Divers. But, we take newbies too. Cozumel is a lot safer than some places where I've been diving, like Honduras.Like any extreme sport, you have to be careful.
There was an excellent article about the two lost divers in Undercurrent Newsletter. It is a very interesting story and the movie only gives you about 10 % of what went on. Send me your fax. number on private mail and I'll be glad to send it to you.
Isn't this the guy whose story is in the current issue of Reader's Digest?
Did you hear the story about the divers being picked off the Santa Rosa Wall by elevator currents in '97? I expect that you didn't. Six divers dissappeared in two months off of Santa Rosa, and that was the same year that the father and daughter were lost. The mother came to San Miguel de Cozumel from Florida when I was there that season, and it created a little stir. Since Cozumel depends on the dive industry that sort of thing doesn't get much publicity except in the local Spanish-language papers, and it doen't get much mention there either. But, if you think I'm just spreading rumors, I'll tell you that in my last dive that year I surfaced beside a corpse that came up from Santa Rosa and floated over to Chankanab. Lipless, noseless, paper-white, bloated, and missing one leg at the hip, our dive boat circled around the body for more than an hour before anyone came out to pick it up. Unbelievably, the Mexican navy wouldn't send a boat out because it was Sunday, and no dive opperator wanted to own-up to the possibility that it was one of their divers, and so be stuck with the bad publicity.
Extremely busy now will respond later. Want to know more.
I was there in July of 97 and of course heard about the diver lost on Santa Rosa in June. What I heard was it was a group that did a night dive on Santa Rosa and they lost a woman who was recovered 3 days later after she floated. A Dive Operator down there, Felipe Quinones, told me that the divemaster who was with the group noticed that two women were lagging behind the rest of the group and he went back to signal them to keep up with the rest of the group. After turning around to rejoin the main group himself, he turned after several kicks to see where the other two were and saw a dive light tumbling down the wall into the abyss. To this day, I havent gotten the inside poop as to why the woman disappeared. My guess is a sudden downward current. The currents seem to get stronger at night in Cozumel. My first night dive on Paradise Reef was harrowing to say the least. Dropped into at least a 2.5 knot current that raked us over the reef for at least 30 minutes in total darkness before we aborted the dive. I heard that the woman who was lost on Santa Rosa not only lost a leg but was found to have her belly ripped open by a boat prop, apparently run over at night. This could have been the one you saw. I spoke with the crew that recovered the body and their thinking was that a shark or sharks took the leg at night before she came to the surface. I have also heard of two Navy Seals that were lost on Barracuda some years back. But, that is all I have heard in nearly 13 years now. I cant for the life of me understand why anyone, especially experienced divers would think that it is a good idea to do a night dive on Santa Rosa Wall. I got caught in an up current there in 1996 that pushed me to the surface just as I was about to enter a cave at 75 feet. NOTHING I did prevented me from going all the way up to the surface. I waited for about 30 seconds and then descended to 25 feet and did about a 20 minute safety stop with my buddy who had joined me. He had made it into the cave and missed the up current. ............ Your thoughts, please.
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