Diver Missing

Pataman

According to Todays Indo, Saturaday, there is a Dublin based diver missing off Donegal. Anyone anymore info?

ka

Update from Indo....

"Missing diver found safe "

"A 32-YEAR-old diver was found safe last night after a seven-hour sea search off Malin Head, Co Donegal.

The Dublin man, an experienced diver, had been out with a group. All of the group came up from the seabed, including the missing man, but he suddenly disappeared. "


No other info up here.

Ka:-)

Anemone

This bloke was interviewed on RTE Radio 1 (Marian Finucane) this morning. He had been on a 60m dive and was in the water for 7 or 8 hours. He spent a lot of that time swimming and covered quite a few miles (an impressive feat, imho) until he found a pot line to hold onto. Turned out the pot was a few hundred meters from a pier and somebody there with binoculars spotted him waving the buoy around. At one stage things were looking grim for him as fog came down around him and he had to resort to observing wave direction, for navigation. He didn't give much detail on why he got seperated from the boat after surfacing.

Borzoi

Very good interview with the diver. He was a bit vague on how he had become seperated form the group as they waited to get on the boat after diving the Cartheganian.

I think he was in the water for about 9 hours, from a starting point he claimed was about 5 miles off shore, fighting the currernt untill it changed and he could make progress inland. As Anemone he was eventually spotted just 300mtr offshore by watchers from the pier using binoculars,as he waved a lobster pot bouy to get attention.

Repeatedly he made reference to the 5K worth of kit that he jettisoned to make swimming easier, which obviously didn't include any (visual) signal devices.

But the biggest question would have to be about the boat crew and dive master leaving someone in the water. Reading between the lines it seemed to be a bunch of friends rather than a dive centre per se, but I would like to know who they all were.

NordicDiver

5K worth of equipment dropped, hmm inspiration rebreather?

Any one up for search&recovery course in donegal ? Peace?

SMB is an inexpensive lifesaver.

Pataman

Great interview. Are smb's expensive?

Peace

Does anyone have a link or an MP3 of the interview? I checked out the show from today on the RTE website but didn't hear the interview.... admittedly i skipped parts as its 80 minutes long.

ka

Didnt hear the interview....not sure about the group. But swimming ashore prolonged his stay in the water. The original Lat/Long given to the MRCC would have been entered into software which calculates tide/wind/current/drift and gives an approximate search pattern.

This guy swam 8 or 9 miles across tide to a visible land mass. This left the search being coordinated and directed to the predicted location. One of the rules of Sea Survival is to conserve energy and stay put!! Unless you are very capable and in a position to wade ashore. This allows for maximum survival probability and ineed a better chance of being found.

Viz was poor and the search had been stood down at 8pm, he was found at 9pm. Aparently he dropped twin set and associated equipment. Also apparently he did have SMB when he surfaced but had passed it into the boat before he became separated.


Ka:-)

Anemone

Originally posted by ka
This guy swam 8 or 9 miles across tide to a visible land mass. This left the search being coordinated and directed to the predicted location. One of the rules of Sea Survival is to conserve energy and stay put!! Unless you are very capable and in a position to wade ashore. This allows for maximum survival probability and ineed a better chance of being found.

Bit of a dilemma this, from the point of view of a diver stranded a few miles offshore. Even assuming you know about the prediction software, if you're out there with a limited amount of survival time, you would be placing a huge amount of trust in the SAR system, if you decided to stay put. You would have to believe that A) the correct time & position was reported, the software was reliable for the particular area you were in, C) the users of the software knew what they were doing, and D) the available SAR resources were sufficient to properly cover the area indicated by the software, within the survival time. Oh yeah, and I forgot E) that the computer concerned wasn't offline / borked on the day in question.

Contrast this against knowing that your strength & endurance is only going to deteriorate, so if you are going to swim for it, the sooner you start the better. Putting this another way, am I going to bob around for 6 hours while I wait to see if all the SAR pieces fall into place, or am I going to make an effort to save myself while I still have the strength to do so?

I take your point about staying still to conserve heat and energy, but presumably this diver had a drysuit & undersuit on (60m dive!) so it's probably not a big issue in this case. I'm not saying that swimming for it is the right decision in every case, but I think it probably gives a good chance of survival in many situations, all other factors (fitness, distance, clothing, type of coast etc.) being equal.

Pataman

http://www.rte.ie/radio1/morning/marianfinucane/index.html
Mondays show

bigfeller

From what I heard (and I may be wrong) when the diver surfaced he handed in his gear to the boat, but was having a problem with a side mounted bottle (catch wouldn't release)

There was another 2 divers waiting to go, both in drysuits. The day was sweltering and the cox said that he would drop these in and then come back for the original diver. When he came back the other guy was gone.

On the radio interview above the interview begins about 3:50 into the file.

ka

Anemone

Perhaps all divers boaters etc should do a PST (personal survival techniques course). As divers and leisure boaters and users of the sea in general we must have confidence in our system with our MRCC, a trip to Mailin Head CRS will confirm to you the capability and experience of the individuals involved. So not matter how big and strong you may feel the ocean is a bigger place!!

Divers/Boaters have an obligation to themselves and fellow users to be aware of situations and procedures in place while using the sea. Training is essential, we cannot leave it to chance or to someone else.

I recommend that everyone should have basic navigation, radio certification, sea survival and powerboating certification before they set foot near water....since that is unlikely to happen in Ireland....it cannot be too much to ask that those involved in offshore activities should take responsibility for safety.

I take your point, and everyone will react differently in different situations. But as far as I am concerned I have great respect and confidcence in the MRCC and SAR operations in this country. I dive and boat safely and expect others to do the same. It is not difficult to learn about GPS positions and Radio procedures. BTW it is not all computer based - navigation and search patterns were all done on paper charts long before computers existed. This is still accurate :-)

I am sure if Derek is looking in he will add to this.....

Just my 2c, I can see your point. But training and awareness is the way to go.

Ka:-)

Evil Phil

They're some good points ka. I'll have a google but do you know of places that do PST courses?

Apache01

Originally posted by Anemone
Bit of a dilemma this, from the point of view of a diver stranded a few miles offshore. Even assuming you know about the prediction software, if you're out there with a limited amount of survival time, you would be placing a huge amount of trust in the SAR system, if you decided to stay put. You would have to believe that A) the correct time & position was reported, the software was reliable for the particular area you were in, C) the users of the software knew what they were doing, and D) the available SAR resources were sufficient to properly cover the area indicated by the software, within the survival time. Oh yeah, and I forgot E) that the computer concerned wasn't offline / borked on the day in question.

Hi Anemone,

You don't have much confidence in the skills of the Coast Guard, Marine Rescue Coordination Centres or RNLI people.

Let me go through the points you make:

You would have to believe that A) the correct time & position was reported

The divers were diving a wreck in 55 27N about 5 miles north of Malin Head, If the boat skipper got the divers to the wreck, then he must be using some type of reliable navigation system such as GPS and must have known the position of the wreck, so an accurate position of the diver could have being reported unless the dive boat was not fitted with communications equipment such as a VHF. If the vessel did not have a VHF or navigation system or the boat skipper did not know how to use this equipment then this is incompetent and its foolish of people to go to sea in a badly equipped vessel.

the software was reliable for the particular area you were in

The Irish Coast Guard have a highly trained staff in Global Maritime Distress and Safety Systems and Search and Rescue procedures. The software used for SAR in Ireland by Malin Head, Dublin and Valentia coast guards has been written specifically for Irish waters, tide is calculated automatically my the program, wind and other parameters for entered by the user once a missing diver or MOB is reported along with the time, a search area can be reported to the on scene vessels and aircraft in less than a minute as the search continues the search area is updated to reflect changing conditions.

C) the users of the software knew what they were doing
Ask one of the many hundreds of people or divers that end up being rescued each year by the coast guard

D) the available SAR resources were sufficient to properly cover the area indicated by the software, within the survival time

Initially the search area is quite small but as time progresses the search area becomes bigger. Vessels and aircraft use a number of search patterns such as sector search expending square etc. to find survivors. Survival time depends on many factors, but for the diver in question was well kitted out to survive and the SAR resources are more than sufficient for this type of search, unfortunately visibility and the divers own actions produced a negative result until the diver was spotted close inshore many hours later.

E) that the computer concerned wasn't offline / borked on the day in question
The Coast Guard have a number of emergency procedures, If power fails there is an emergency generator, if computer problems arise the search area can be plotted on a chart, if one coast guard station goes down then Dublin or Valentia can Coordinate SAR and traffic for downed stations. All Radio traffic around the coast can be controlled from one station if the other two have problems.

The questions you should be asking instead of bashing the professionals are:

A) What were they doing diving a very tidal area over spring tides
Did they dive at slack water?
C) Did they use a shotline and deco trapeze?
D) Who was watching the divers when they surfaced?
E) Did they file a Dive TR?
F) How long did they wait before calling the MRCC
G) Did they conduct an initial sector search or know how too?

Ka mentioned that training is important and I agree too many people and not only divers go to sea with the attitude It will never happen to me

How wrong and egotistical they are.

Apache

Anemone

Ka,

I fully agree with you about the need for training and the responsible use of proper procedures by water users. I also have no doubt that the vast majority of individuals and groups that make up the SAR system are properly skilled, efficient and well equipped (in fact I'm seriously impressed with the ones I know). However the chain of events I outlined in my last post has a lot of links in it. Any long chain like this (no matter how well it is constructed & supported) is vulnerable to a weak link.

If I found myself in a similar situation to the guy who is the subject of this thread, and I judged that I had a good chance of swimming to a safe shore (taking into account my own capabilities and the conditions), I know that waiting around to see if all the links in the SAR chain are working today would become the second-best option in my mind. I accept that not everybody has the experience to objectively make this decision, and that for those people 'staying put' is good advice. But I don't think that most experienced/active divers fall into this novice category.

To paraphrase a famous pilot's cliche, any dive you get back onshore from, is a good dive . The objective of the excersise in this case was for the guy to survive the incident. I assume he made a judgement that he could swim the distance, and he was right. I know that several hours of SAR time were probably wasted, and that he didn't conform with what many believe to be acceptable 'stay put in an emergency' practice. But that pales into insignificance when you stand it up beside the fact that the guy survived.

Anemone

Apache,

Didn't see your post till after I had posted the reply to Ka. First of all let me make it completely clear that I have the utmost respect for and confidence in the SAR agencies. I am certainly not 'bashing the professionals'. I have been involved with RNLI fundraising for several years, and a number of life boat crew members and a station secretary are respected friends of mine.

The point I am trying to make is that it is a fact of life that any system which relies on the correct operation of several different elements and inputs (even one as professionally organised as the Irish SAR agencies are) is vulnerable to inaccuracy or breakdown. Where such a system applies to a life or death situation, and another viable (and possibly more robust) option presents itself, surely the more robust (ie less vulnerable) option is the one to take.

I presented a number of possible weakness in the chain. I certainly didn't suggest they were present either on the day in question, or generally within the SAR system. The are reasonable possibilities however, and the lost diver making a course-of-action decision would be well advised to keep them in mind.

Thanks for your reply, it made very interesting reading, and only serves to copperfasten my confidence in the Irish SAR services. I agree with your points about the sea being no place for ill-prepared people. I would also be interested to hear answers to the questions you posed at the end of your post, in particular the reason why contact between the diver and the boat was lost after it apparently had been established.

Your point about people going to sea with an it'll never happen to me attitude is of course unfortunately true. Although I'm not sure that divers are the worst culprits here, as they tend to be well trained in the main. This pitfall seems to be part of the human condition, as we see it all the time with drivers on the roads. Perhaps there is scope for more active public sea-safety awareness campaigns. Large signs at slip-ways and harbours, TV adverts, coast guard presence at popular sites etc. Funding might be a problem though. I'm getting a bit off topic here...

I trust I've re-assured you that I'm not attacking the SAR community ?

Anemone

Peace

Originally posted by NordicDiver
5K worth of equipment dropped, hmm inspiration rebreather?

Any one up for search&recovery course in donegal ? Peace?

SMB is an inexpensive lifesaver.

Hey man, you konw i'm up for it....

I don't think its correct for a bunch of us say "nonono he should have sat there and done nothing" so i'm not going to say it. Both courses of action hold equal risk IMO... sit there and wait relying on other people to save you or take action yourself and hope you got the gusto to get out of the water.

Personally i would have sat there in the tide and waited for them to come to me... The first technical course i went on it was drilled into me that 'the boat comes to you, not the other way around'.... its got foundation in the fact that after a deco dive if you are excerting yourself by swimming after a boat you increase your risk of DCS.

Another point is that i'm not sure he was full aware of how the process goes when somone is reported missing at sea..... I know from reading divernet etc etc that the coast guard use tide prediction software (or whatever) to generate a search area... the better a fix/gps & time they are given the more likely they are to find you. Also i know the SAR helicopter has thermal/night vis. . As previously pointed out after all that swimming he wasn't where the search was being directed....

I'm just saying.... personally unless land was very close... i'm sitting there enjoying the ride.

Okay i've rambled a little here but this is something else i'm gonna say. Something went tits up when if he was closed enough to the boat to hand them an SMB and then oh no wait... wheres the boat gone. Alarm bells are ringing....

Also, the guys on a 60m dive with 5k worth of kit on his back.... i'm presuming he has either a strobe or a torch, personally i have both. The strobe is an excellent life saver, they run for extended periods of time (i'm talking more than 8-12hours) and they flash as you konw. This is important because the human eye is attracted to both light and movement. You should try it sometime when you out and about... just watchj a scene and see how you eyes are attracted to movement/flashes of light.. you won't conciously do it but it will happen. So a flashing strobe out at see can be seen from a long way off. Same with the torch... just point and click and the chances are you'll be seen.

I'm still going here... the guy mentioned that most of his gear was dark colored.... now i can't really touch this as almost all of my kit is black EXCEPT for my hood... which is luminous green... anyone who has seen it will remember it ... i can even be spotted doing deco at 6m below the surface! Luminous green with light reflectors on it ffs.... if you can't see it then get Helen Keller away from the controls of that helicopter. Remember folks, its only your head thats sticking out of the water, and if its a cool black scoba pro hood then yeah, your navy seal material but your also almost invisible.... You'll be kicking yourself when its backfiring!

Nuff said...

ka

Evil Phil

BIM www.bim.ie do PST courses in both Cork and Greencastle, as do their Coastal Training Units which travel the coast. Some private operators do the course - Seatec in Westport springs to mind. PM me if you want a mobile number.

Ka:-)

Evil Phil

Thanks ka, I'll wait till I'm home from my holidays.

NordicDiver

I tuned in to RTE, THX for the link.

Great storyteller, when is the book coming out ?
He must be payed by Hollywood to promote this movie : www.openwatermovie.com

This must be standard equipment for divers using Malin Head dive operators and add this you can bring it down to 150 meters safely.

Evil Phil

Open water movie. I suppose with the success of Touching the Void we're going to be flooded with these. Would anybody be interested in doing a PST course some time after October?

GlennaMaddy

I listened to the interview, diver suggests that all divers should be equiped with an EPIRB (PLB).
Before I do that I'm going to;
1. change my hood to something luminous
2. buy a whistle.
3. replace the batteries on my strobe

Apache01

Anemone,

I am re-assured that you are not bashing the SAR services. Its always a difficult one to call, "should I stay or Should I go" and not until the situation actually presents itself can each one of us say how we would react in a similar situation.

You are right Divers are not the worst culprits, but there is an increasing amount of callouts around Malin over the last number of years for missing divers.

I would suggest the following for divers planning to dive this area:

Dive on the slack tide,
Try and avoid diving on spring tides,
SMB's are a must,
Once contact is made with the boat on surfacing stay in contact even if this means clipping on;
Peace has an excellent Dry Suit Hood, these are very good in the water, anything that makes the diver, Bigger, Brighter and Different than the surrounding sea helps Rescue.
The Day and Night Signal Flare with a dive canister is a great piece of kit and cheaper than and EPIRB.
Whistle and Strobe /torch as suggest are valuable
Can't say I know to much about deco diving because I don't do deep diving, 40 meters is my max, but keeping divers together on a stage would be good, safety in numbers.

There should be forum, for divers to report near misses, mariners learn a lot from reading the accident investigation reports, and in the UK dive related accidents seem to be reported widely in the press such as diver. This forum should be anonymous and only used to post reports not comment, analyse or pass judgment simply away of learning from the mistakes others have made and avoiding these ourselves, because none of us no mater how experienced are infallible.

Sorry for rambling on just my 2 cents

Apache

Anemone

Taking up the PST sub-thread, here's an interesting site I found that has extensive information about personal survival in all kinds of situations. In particular have a look at Chapter 16 which covers sea survival. It seems to be written from the perspective of a downed pilot, but has lots of info relevant to divers.

Anemone

Originally posted by Apache
There should be forum, for divers to report near misses, mariners learn a lot from reading the accident investigation reports, and in the UK dive related accidents seem to be reported widely in the press such as diver. This forum should be anonymous and only used to post reports not comment, analyse or pass judgment simply away of learning from the mistakes others have made and avoiding these ourselves, because none of us no mater how experienced are infallible.

A quick Google reveals that there are some sites that include this kind of information, but there doesn't seem to be any site dedicated to it. I run a web server, and would certainly be willing to build and host such a site, without expecting payment of any kind.

I'd be interested to hear the opinions of other divers on this board, if they think it's a good idea, and what form it should take. I agree that it should not allow any comment on posted incident reports, and also I think posts should be subject to review/moderation by the admin(s) before the go live on the site. The reason for the review would be to remove any information the might be defamatory or could identify people / places. The reviewer could also add search categorisation (keywords) to the posting, to help with it's retrieval.

Peace

All that hullabaloo isn't required... they could just allow people to post unregistered in this forumn..

Heathen

yea i heard the interview on monday nite (re - run)
lucky man to survive

Peace

Originally posted by Apache
Anemone,
The Day and Night Signal Flare with a dive canister is a great piece of kit and cheaper than and EPIRB.

Do you have a site that actually sells these products... its looks good to me and would be good to have on the rig just incase... after all noone believes it will every be them until it is.

I did some google'ing but came up with not much... Cost/Places to buy?

Apache01

Anemone,

Cool, it would be worth a try to see how it takes, this link for the MARS site is an example of this system working well in the merchant navy world, learning from experience and mistakes.

The link you posted on sea survival is interesting, although the method of immersing the head in the water during the survival phase is no longer recommended. Most PST courses still teach the HELP (Heat Escape Lessening Position), for a detailed insight into cold-water survival and survival at sea I would recommend "Essentials Of Sea Survival" by Frank Golden and Michael Tipton, the conclusions they draw are very good apart from their refusal to admit that the will to survive can prolong survival time.



Apache

Anemone

Originally posted by Apache
Anemone,

Cool, it would be worth a try to see how it takes, this link for the MARS site is an example of this system working well in the merchant navy world, learning from experience and mistakes.

I think the key to getting it to work in the early stages is contacting every dive club, school, shop, centre and publication we can can think of, to ask that they make thier members aware of it. Later on, as the number of reports on it increase, it will hopefully be more or less self-publicising. If I'm developing the site, I might need volunteers to publicise it.

The MARS site looks quite like the kind of thing I had in mind.

I can see the merit in Peace's suggestion that it would be simpler just to encourage posts to this forum. However I think we stand a better chance of getting your average diver to participate if it has a distinctive domain name of it's own, and is set up to be really simple to use for the non-techie. A novice who comes to Boards to make a dive report is going to have to spend some time figuring out where the scuba board is and how to post. A lot of them might just give up.

I have a few ideas on how it should work, and when I get a bit of free time (in a few weeks after my hols) I'll put my thoughts together and post them here for peer review. In the meantime I'd welcome comments or suggestions here (if that's OK with the mods) from anybody who is interested.

Evil Phil

If you're going to setup such a website then I'd recommend talking to the Coast Gaurd and the RNLI first. They may have something similar in place already. At the very least they'll have standardised reporting proceedures that could and probably should be followed.

Organistions like CMAS and PADI should also be involved in such a project as well as any professional bodies associated with diving.

Also, IMHO, incident reports would have to be followed up. What I mean is somebody would have to speak to them in person so the correct information is gathered. Random reports gathered via a website can be confusing and not very informative.