In 1998
Tom and Eileen Lonergan went for a dive on Australia's Great Barrier
Reef. They never returned. The crew of the dive boat they were on
simply forgot about them, leaving them alone and lost in the vast
ocean. It took two days before anyone even reported them missing and
by the time the search was conducted nothing was found apart from a
torn piece of Eileen's rash vest. It is believed they either drowned
or were eaten by sharks. You may have read about the incident or if
you didn't, you may have seen the film Open Water that was based on
the whole tragic affair. Following this incident new rules were
introduced to ensure that dive charters carried out accurate head
counts, if 10 divers go in the water then 10 divers better come out
of the water. Not exactly rocket science is it. Alas it seems, the
art of counting is a skill that still evades Instructors and Dive
Masters (and we use that term really loosely) around the world.
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| Sundiver Express |
For
instance in 2004, a year after the release of the film, the dive
charter boat Sundiver Express left a diver behind following a dive
off Newport Beach, California. The Sundiver was carrying a group of
20 divers and was staged near the oil rig Eureka. The diver in
question Dan Carlock, experienced difficulty equalising, and was
suffering from ear pain when he surfaced about 120 metres from the
dive boat. Though he attempted to swim back to the boat, his legs
cramped, so he waved a yellow safety buoy and blew his whistle. No
one on the vessel noticed. A Dive Master working for
Venice-based Ocean Adventures marked Dan Carlock present on the dive
roster, even though he was absent when the remainder of the divers
returned. As strong currents were picking up, the crew decided to
move to a second dive site about seven miles away. When the divers
left the boat for their second dive, Carlock was once
again marked on the roster, even though he was on his own,
several miles away from the boat. Three hours after leaving Carlock
behind, the crew finally realised he was missing. The Sundiver’s
Captain called the Coast Guard to the second dive site – miles from
Carlock’s actual position.
The
Coast Guard never found Daniel. Instead, he was spotted by a
fifteen-year-old boy scout on board a tallship called the Argus. The
ship was taking the scouts on an excursion and had veered off course
to avoid a freighter. If not for the ship’s change in direction,
it's possible that Carlock would never have been found alive. We
suspect that Dan has been an ardent supporter of the boy scout
movement ever since.
6 Years
after the incident, Dan Carlock was awarded $1.68 Million in
compensation for post traumatic stress and the fact that he developed
skin cancer as a result of the sunburn he sustained while adrift. The
court originally awarded $2 Million, but this was reduced as the
judge considered that Carlock was partially to blame for surfacing so
far from the ship. A decision that we and I suspect a great many will
consider to be a harsh judgement at best and at worst, sheer bloody
lunacy. Carlock was already in distress, and was surfacing due to
that distress. It would be understandable then, that his orientation
might have been affected. Somewhat different we might add, from
failing to hear a whistle, failing to notice a diver waving a big
yellow sausage around and marking a missing man as present, not once,
but twice – some Judges eh!
Still
you'd imagine that the Sundiver Express team would have learnt their
lesson – never again would that happen! Err... Wrong. On 29th
December 2015 the Charter left another diver behind. That morning,
Laurel Silver-Valker, went diving for lobsters off the coast of
Catalina Island with Sundiver Express. The boat left the dive site
without realising Silver-Valker wasn’t on board. The boat returned
to search for Silver-Valker, but was unable to find her and notified
the Coast Guard. She has never been found. Press coverage of the
incident has suggested that although a competent and experienced
diver, Silver-Valker was not diving with a buddy at the time and that
as she had previously worked dive-boats to fund her diving, it is
unclear in what capacity she was aboard and may not have been on the
diver roster. Whatever answers, to how and why Silver-Valker was left
behind, might come to light during the investigation, the fact that
this is not the first time that the Sundiver has been involved in
such a tragedy means the whole experience is likely to be a very
painful and costly one for all involved. Not least because Sundiver
Express should not have been trading in the first place. According to
the Orange County Register the tour company Sundiver International
Inc. of Long Beach has unfiled tax returns and $3,991 in unpaid
taxes, according to the Franchise Tax Board. Records show the tax
board suspended Sundiver International on Feb. 1, 2012.
“When
a company is suspended, they are not supposed to be engaged in any
business,” Melissa Marsh, a Los Angeles attorney who helps revive
suspended companies told the Orange County Register. “They are not
allowed to collect any money. The banks have a right to close their
accounts.” Sundiver International previously operated as Sundiver
Inc., under owner Ray Arntz. Sundiver Inc. was also suspended
by the Franchise Tax Board on May 1, 2008, for unfiled tax returns,
state records show. So was Sundiver Charters LLC on March 3, 2014.
Arntz, who’s still registered
with the state as Sundiver’s president and CEO, did not respond to
Orange County Register's requests for comment on the story.
There
are of course some who will point out that these could be isolated
incidents, exceptions that prove the rule that dive charters are very
safe and that getting left behind, although a divers worst nightmare,
is as likely as being struck by lightening. Well, as the Sundiver
story shows lightening does strike twice, in fact it strikes an awful
lot. Take a cursory glance through the diving press and online and
you'll find that the diving world is surrounded by a smoky fog of
lightening strikes.
In
Antigua in 2007, that's nine years since the disappearance of Tom and
Eileen Lonergan, two British divers were abandoned for five hours
when the dive boat weighed anchor and left. The two Dive Masters and
one Instructor aboard seem to have miscounted and were only made
aware that 2 of the 13 divers who were supposed to be aboard were
missing when the divers wives inquired about their husbands
whereabouts when the boat returned to dock. Fortunately, both were
rescued, although they did suffer sunburn, cuts and stings during
their ordeal. The outcome however could have been very different with
rescuers of the two men slamming the dive crew as “breathtakingly
irresponsible”.
In
2008, and for the Dive Masters out there, that's ten years since the
Lonergan incident, a British man and his American girlfriend were
left stranded overnight off the Great Barrier Reef. The two divers
surfaced some 200 yards from the charter boat and despite waving
frantically the crew did not notice and sailed away – another
apparent head count gone wrong. The pair, adrift in the darkness,
clung to each other overnight. Hypothermia began to set in as did the
thought of what lurked in the darkness beneath. They were
rescued the following morning by helicopter, the pilot who winched
them to safety commenting that “they were in surprisingly good
humour”.
In
2011, and once again on the Great Barrier Reef an American Snorkeller
was stranded 30 miles offshore when his charter boat also sailed
away. Again the victim of a mistaken head count. Fortunately for Ian
Cole, he managed to swim for 15 minutes to reach a another boat that
was anchored nearby.
Later in 2011, Paul Kline and Fernando Garcia Puerta had to cling to a buoy
for two hours after surfacing from their late-afternoon dive in the
Atlantic Ocean three miles from Miami and finding no trace of their
boat.'We were in shock. We could easily have died,' Kline, 44,
told the Miami Herald.'If night had fallen, the situation would have
turned into panic.'He said they kept talking to each other throughout
their ordeal 'to try to keep up our high spirits'. Mr Kline said that
he initially thought there had been a medical emergency aboard the
boat, which is why it was not there when he and Mr Garcia surfaced 55
minutes into the first dive after studying coral reef. He said he
assumed another boat would be sent back for them. Instead, the other
divers on the trip had already boarded and the boat was en route to
the second dive site with the captain unaware he had left the two
behind. The captain of the dive boat, Mike Beach, refused to discuss
the incident with reporters, saying only: 'Everybody is OK, no one is
hurt, everybody is happy.' In 2005, British divers Louise Woodger and
Gordon Pratley were rescued in the same area after being missing for
four hours. They were found suffering from exposure and hypothermia
after currents forced them away from their boat.
Even
the most vociferous defender of “diving charters” would have to
admit that the examples above do not paint a very good picture but
such defenders would also no doubt reiterate that these incidents,
horrific and distressing as they are, are the exceptions. They would
probably also say that using diving charters is perfectly safe and
that more people die from road accidents, DIY accidents and falling
down stairs than on diving charters. This is absolutely true, but as
a defence it is pathetic. The examples above aren't a description of
some unusual unforeseen accident, they were the result of staggering
incompetence. In fact, and this is just our opinion, they are the
result of criminal negligence. All of them have one thing in common.
The people responsible, simply failed to count. They had no idea who
was in the water and who wasn't. In the case of Dan Carlock, he was
marked on the roster twice when he was clearly – unless you're a
mathematically challenged dive leader – not on board. Then there is
the fact that in 2015, when the Sundiver Express left yet another
diver behind, the company shouldn't even have been trading.
Time
after time, incident after incident the failure to carry out an
effective head count or roll call has left divers in danger or led
directly to deaths. How in all that is holy, can such incidents still
be happening? How are the so called Dive Masters, Dive Leaders and
Instructors throughout the world not utterly embarrassed that such
incidents have not only happened but continue to happen? And don't
think the blame lies just with the Instructors, Masters, et al. There
were a great many other divers aboard these ships, did they not
notice their numbers were a little short? Did none of these divers
think to themselves that it was odd that the blonde girl, the bald
bloke or the nice looking couple had suddenly vanished? Did none of
them have the wherewithal to speak up? What sort of training are
these divers receiving if responsibility for the safety of their
fellow divers can be abdicated so easily? The whole diving industry
should be ashamed of itself, it should get its head out of the sand
and start to accept that being left behind by your charter boat is a
very real and very present danger.
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| ID Tag System, simple and effective |
So what
can be done? Well, Dive Masters and Instructors the world over seem
to have a very rudimentary grasp of maths, so making sure that they
can count would be a start. But roll calls and head counts are
clearly not enough and should be backed up by a diver identification
system like the Divers Alert Network DIDs boards. Recreational divers
are given a tag they attach to their equipment, a tag missing from
the board means a diver is still in the water. The boat doesn't leave
until a roll call is carried out and all tags are back on the board.
It's not brain surgery is it? Still as we have said before, there are
a great many Instructors, Leaders and Jedi Masters (well they think
they are) out there with all the badges and all the certificates in
the world but not a brain cell between them. So relying on them alone
is not good enough. What is needed to back up the roll calls and
DIDs is ruthless prosecutions of those whose incompetence or
negligence leads to such events. People need to go to prison and
business need to be sued to destruction. But we would go further,
every diving association that issues the certificates that allows
people to run diving businesses need to be held to account as well.
If one of their members is found to be incompetent or negligent, then
that association should face heavy fines. Only when PADI, SSI, BSAC
and the plethora of other badge selling organisations out there are
made to face the consequences of their members actions will the
industry have a chance of getting rid of all the incompetents that
quite clearly infest it. The Associations would of course fight tooth
and nail to stop such a thing a happening, they're are in the
business of selling badges and certificates not safety so we won't
hold our breath (no pun intended).
So if
you thinking about going on a dive charter in 2016, we wish you luck
and hope that the boat is still there when you surface, because as
the examples above demonstrate, there's absolutely no guarantee it
will be. And that really is shaming.
Links
The Sundiver Express 2004 Incident
The Sundiver Express 2015 Incident
2007 Incident
2008 Incident
2011 First Incident
2011 Second Incident
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| Think It couldn't happen to you! Think again... |
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