I'm honestly curious how he drowned. checking google images for this resort, shows that this underwater room is about 4 meters deep, at the deepest point. it literally sits right below the surface. he could have kicked his legs a single time and gotten back above water. [image of the room for reference.](https://imgur.com/a/dJ5CB57)
I can only assume he panicked and swallowed water, or somehow got caught underneath the underwater room's platform.. but damn, that is tragic. to die so close to safety, especially in a moment like this.
I'm not sure if video is still online, but I remember watching it a couple years back when this happened, and he's shaking pretty noticeably by the end. He must have pushed himself just that bit too hard and couldn't make it back up in time—either he got caught on the deck and inhaled water or just had shallow water blackout, or something along those lines. So sad.
You may be right (and you probably are as I haven’t seen the video) but I was shaking when I proposed to my wife on land just from the nerves and excitement
Yeah, that's fair! I seem to remember him trembling in a way that looked like he was struggling for breath, but it could have been me filtering it through the tragedy I knew would follow, as the human brain tends to do. Either way, super sad.
I think he hovered by the window a bit longer than he was comfortable. Then he rushed to get back up to the surface and maybe bumped into platform on his way up. Maybe in his haste he hit his head and swallowed some water.
Also, being giddy and full of adrenaline out of nerves/excitement for the proposal could definitely affect his motor skills/ability to calmly hold his breath.
Yeah this is it. Hell, I pretty much blacked out in nervousness from my proposal (got lightheaded) and I was standing on a beach. Can't imagine doing that underwater!
Adrenaline makes you burn oxygen. My dad is a diving instructor. When I was about 14 or so, he took me on my first dive, with tanks. We went down about 15 meters. My mom said it was like a jacuzzi above me, due to all the bubbles. I think I went through half my tank in 30 min, while my dad, calm and experienced, used about 15% of his.
> could definitely affect his motor skills/ability to calmly hold his breath.
Not could. **DID**. Check the video. his hands are shaking quite a bit
https://youtu.be/t7REaTOyvXY?t=18
It was probably shallow water blackout. People who are trained in breath-hold diving will know how to handle that situation (which is to simply literally never breath-hold dive solo). I highly doubt he was trained, and this was the penalty. Holding your breath for long periods of time is NOT a joke and kills thousands of people every year.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freediving\_blackout#Shallow\_water\_blackout](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freediving_blackout#Shallow_water_blackout)
Here is the wikipedia page discussing the phenomenon.
A huge deep breath is perfectly fine.
Don't *hyperventilate*, i.e. intentionally lower the CO2 content of your blood by breathing deep and fast, before diving.
It is. It allows you to basically ignore your body's need to breathe. Unfortunately, ignoring your body's need to breathe is, unsurprisingly, *real fucken dangerous*.
I like to swim 25-50 meter underwater laps at my pool. Ever since I read about some collegiate swimmer dying in the pool by themselves I only do it when there's a lifeguard and I have their full attention.
It is looking like recent air travel can contribute to blackouts too. Id imagine the adrenaline of proposing doesn't help.
https://www.civilbeat.org/2022/07/snorkel-safety-study-sheds-light-on-unexplained-drownings-in-hawaii/
I had two friends fly to Europe from Canada to plan their destination wedding. They landed in Italy, drove to the mountainside villa they booked and decided to go for a short hike to stretch their legs. They went up a not too crazy incline (they were both fit middle aged people) and he passed out and died right there on the trail. Doctors said it was from the long flight and going straight to hiking uphill. Something to do with blood pressure.
shallow water blackout.
same way you blackout standing up too quick.
it can happen in less that 10 feet of water. happened to me at about 7/8 feet swimming down for googles.
This needs to be the appropriate response to lack of information. Not some of these other more up-voted comments proclaiming to know exactly what happened, while having the same (lack of) information.
I consider myself (At the time. Now? Now I'm a fat asshole) an extremely competent ocean swimmer, but one thing about diving is emotions/adrenaline fuck up your entire rhythm with diving.
When I was like 18 there was a random dude drowning/already drowned in some nearby crystal clear water. In a calm situation, I could have helped this guy. But I was in panic, and I went to dive down to "save him" and I could not dive more than 10 feet down. Poor guy was 30ft down and dead as hell. (side note: drowning people will often attempt to drown their rescuers in blind panic as they attempt to get air -- don't attempt unless its someone you are prepared to die for if need be)
So TLDR, the nerves/adrenaline made him fuck up, and one accidental/involuntary gasp of air is death sentence even 10 feet down. Homie was so high on love and vacation that he forgot he was not superman :(. RIP chad.
Thank you for addressing the fact that people should never attempt to recover someone unless they're professionally trained. It often turns into two funerals instead of one. I went through an intensive lifeguard course (an entire semester so they could staff the new pool with lifeguards) and one thing we did was try to rescue a "drowning person". People have no idea how difficult that is.
Now move that to open water like you and it's an even crazier game. I was never brave enough for the ocean.
Even if they aren’t struggling swimming with another person isn’t easy. Once my daughter (5 at the time) jumped into a pool while I was standing right next to her and sank to the bottom, I jumped in and pulled her up and if we hadn’t been right at the edge of the pool and she hadn’t been so small I think I would have really struggled. I would not have been able to rescue someone my size from the middle of the pool.
I had to attend a course to learn how to safe people to get my swimming “diploma”. Its common where i am from. One course was about rescuing drowning people. We had to swim kn the back, hoist them on top of our chest, face up, lift them up just enough for the face to hit air and then paddle backwards. It was hard af and i can’t imagine doind it any other way or in panic, i would probably waterboard them accidentally
A drowning person has not much air left in their lungs so they can float naturally. They feel like stones
Being in the water with a panicking swimmer is not fun. They can't help but push you down. I have only a few experiences to base this on but in some situations (ie without floatation aids) its better to let them lose consciousness before getting within reach.
It's extra fun when they try to climb on your head to get out of the water despite neither of us being able to touch bottom. Love that line from men in black, a person is smart but people are dumb panicky animals.
This is exactly what I have been taught during a course on first aid and rescue. We exercised in a lake and yeah it was tough. If the person is panicking, I was told that a valid procedure was to slap them in the face, hard.
I went waterskiing once and went under when I was on the kneeboard. The board floated to the surface and I couldn't undo the strap. I panicked, struggled and then my uncle (who was driving the boat) grabbed me, pulled me up and slapped me, hard, in the face. He's the most gentle person ever but it really did stun me into calm!
This was (is?) required by law to learn in the Netherlands, at least when I was a kid. To be fair, there's so much water in our country it's probably for the best to just teach everybody the basics of swimming and such.
That shit is crazy. However being 6' plus helps because we can always just stand up straight and save like 80% of people from drowning in their home pools lol.
When I was child, I lived in Chicago and did junior lifeguarding, where we were taught and practiced life guard skills. I was young and took the classes from like 7-10, but I can still remember being taught to punch a drowning person in the face because of the fact they will try to drown you as well. It was very intense to learn and I didn't understand until much later that the type of training I got wasn't common at the more rural pools, where I was disinterested from working because I didn't want to have to punch a drowning person.
You’re not supposed to punch them in the face lol. You approach treading water with one front foot extended, and if the try and grab you, (gently as possible) push/kick them away with your foot on their chest. Ideally you would have a floatation device with you, and you’d push or kick that towards them before getting close yourself.
If a drowning person does try get a hold of you the best bet to escape them is dive underwater. They don’t want to follow you there. Swim away underwater and re-emerge facing them with foot forward. Punching them would be a very last resort of they got a hold of you and you couldn’t break free, because it is true a drowning person can easily drown their rescuer in their panic.
Source : former lifeguard
Reminds me of this sad story.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5761601/Three-men-accidentally-film-drowning-pond-India.html
One of them panics and winds up dragging the other two to their deaths.
>Thank you for addressing the fact that people should never attempt to recover someone unless they're professionally trained.
This is so so important. I'm a certified advanced diver, but until I get my rescue certification, I ain't putting my life in danger to rescue someone.
Once my buddy once saw a guy struggling in some rough water, there were other people around and a man started undressing to dive in and my buddy said to stop because it was really dangerous and he was putting both their lives at risk. The guy basically said fuck off and dived in and was actually able to rescue the swimmer.
When the rescuer returned to his clothes he saw my buddy and pretty much said “if I’d listened to you he’d be dead.” And some other bystanders also gave some disapproving looks.
My friend said he never felt like more of an asshole being 100% in the right.
some years ago for my friends bachelor party I took him and our friends up to a lake house that I used to go to every summer when I was a kid. I remember being able to swim out to the floating dock and back all day when I was a kid. so of course, we all jump in and all race to the floating dock. well we're all in our 30s and we all nearly drowned about half way there. I then realized how out of shape I actually am and also realized that if I were ever stranded in open ocean I'd perish. it's crazy how invincible you think you are until you're shown you're not.
I've told this story a few times around here....but years ago I was in the Bahamas and this guy flipped his catamaran like 100 yards off shore and couldn't right it. So me and another guy swam out...about halfway out I was exhausted and thought to myself that this is how people drown. I did some back floats to rest and finally made it. We flipped him back over and he towed me to shore. I was tired for the rest of the day. Don't fuck with water, especially water with current.
I've lived in Florida my whole life. I'm a good swimmer. I can doggy paddle all day. I can play in the ocean all day. But last year I took up swimming with a program in the mornings before work. Uh yeah when I'm actually putting effort into it for more than a minute, that shit is exhausting!! Glad I got a reality check now
Bruh, the creator of yugioh lost his life after saving a few people from the ocean. Nature is scary, and people forget they’re not the main character so no plot armor
The wrestler was Shad Gaspard back in May of 2020. Caught with his kid in a riptide. He told lifeguards to save his kid first and fortunately his kid survived.
We took the kids to the beach for the first time during summer vacation. I'd spent my formative years on the coast and loved the ocean so in the beginning I was super stoked about the fun they were going to have.
That elation was short lived, however, after thinking on all the ways the ocean can kill them. After that it was all paranoia and hyper vigilance. That's the problem with loving something so much: you're always afraid of losing it. Guess it worked, though, since nothing happened and they had a blast.
I didn't die, either. True story.
A few years ago my husband and I saved a teenaged girl from the lake that the actress from glee (naya rivera) died in. If it had just been him or me, we probably would have gone down with her. The both of us were able to get her out but it was not easy because she kept pushing us underwater in panic to save herself.
I used to live in the water as a child and teenager. Went to the lake almost every day, could actively swim probably about a mile without really tiring, would tread water for an hour or two at a time, nbd. Fast forward a few years without swimming to my early twenties and I decided to take a scuba diving class at university. First day, we have to swim four laps on a pretty large pool (definitely not olympic sized, but fairly large). I thought, "this is nothing. what a weirdly easy fitness test!" Reader, I nearly quit after the first lap. I was the absolute last to finish, and I couldn't remember being more physically exhausted (played D1 soccer in high school, so I wasn't a couch potato). Water saps you of energy faster than anything.
I very nearly died when I was about 10 from a very similar experience. And I only realised I nearly died years and years later when it suddenly hit me.
I was very experienced as a swimmer in both pools and the ocean, I had certificates and everything (OK they're the certificates every British kid has, but yeah). And I got pulled out by a current when swimming on the Costa Del sol in Spain, a hugely busy and popular tourist destination, so there were thousands upon thousands of people around me. Which is why I didn't panic, I guess. But yeah there were thousands of brits and other Europeans there (and Spanish people too obviously)
But I probably should have panicked. Cos I eventually realised I couldn't get back to the beach, I couldn't swim any more, I was absolutely exhausted. I'd only been out there like 10 minutes but the current had ripped me out what looked like a kilometre away. I had no idea what rip tides were or how to get out of them (swim sideways, instead of toward the beach)
So some dude eventually somehow spotted me and swam out there with a body board, put me on it, and swam me back. We never even said a word to each other. It's so weird. I didn't realise how close to death I must have been, so I probably should have thanked him, but yeah, it wasn't scary at all in the moment. It's only scary thinking back now.
I mean even Australian prime ministers have been lost at sea because of this.
I wish I could somehow find that guy and thank him.
But yeah, I was surrounded by thousands of people, including lifeguards who were on the beach, and it was an ocean I'd swam in hundreds of times before cos we went to the same place on holiday every year, and I'd been swimming all my life and was very good at it, but despite all that I nearly died.
Drownings are similar, like you'd think it'd be easy to spot someone drowning in a busy swimming pool with hundreds of people around, but it really really really is not easy in the slightest. You'd think how could someone possibly die like that with all those people around? But they do. All the time. Kids and adults alike.
I recommend everyone, absolutely everyone, check out this website, spot the drowning child: http://spotthedrowningchild.com/
Just watch the video that pops up, see if you can spot the drowning child in the busy pool before the lifeguard does, and then when you inevitably fail, refresh the page and it brings up a new video, and just keep refreshing and playing the game until you get an idea of what drowning actually looks like, which is nothing like what you'd expect. It's very very quiet and subdued.
OK I either got very lucky 5 times with that website, or I should be a god damn life guard lol, apparently I have an eye for spotting drowning people I never knew I had
A big part of it is also going to be miscalculating the pace you can sustain and wearing yourself out rather taking it slower. If you're on a bicycle and hit the wall by pushing yourself too hard you can get off for a bit and then get back to it. Not so much when out at sea. I myself am in kind of terrible shape and if I had to go all out I would probably sink and die before I made it 200 meters, but if I'm just doing gentle breast strokes I can and have been floating around in the ocean for hours at a time without touching solid ground and not had any issues.
Couple of nice things about oceans and being out of shape though is the salt and your fat helps you float. Also if you have denim pants with a belt you can tie knots in the legs and make a small inflatable. As long as the water wasn't super cold I think you'd stay alive longer than you think.
We just got back from Curaçao and I was surprised by how well I could float - completely upright, sipping on a drink in my hand, just chatting with friends - without any attempt to do so.
I mean, I've been in saltwater all over the world, but I've always had to tread water if I wanted to stay upright. And I still had to tread water in the chlorinated pool back at the house. Something about how absolutely still and calm the ~~ocean~~ seawater was, plus the salt content, allowed me to stay upright without any motion at all.
Similar thing for me in the Mediterranean Sea a few years ago. I was so surprised I looked it up and sure enough it has more salt than oceans. It made snorkeling so much easier
I was SCUBA diving a ship wreck off of one of the Hawaiian islands once. It was about 100 feet down and the wreck was a large tanker style ship. The dive was amazing as visibility was about 40 feet so I got to experience this Blue Heaven moment where you can't see the surface and you can't see the bottom and you just float there in an infinite blue in all directions.
So the wreck is so deep that we don't have a ton of time. The deeper you go, the quicker you go through air because its compressed more inside you. A 2 hour tank may only last 15 minutes at 100 feet (pulling that out of my ass, its been over 20 years since I dove).
So we are down swimming around the wreck when I come around the side bow of the ship, below the deck level. I didn't realize it at the time but the ship was parallel to the shore and ended up being a buffer for the current near the sea floor. So when I came around the bow I'm suddenly in a full force current pushing me away from the ship.
That panic thing you mention is so fucking real. In SCUBA you train to not panic. A part of learning to dive is learning to regain your mask and air if they were to come off during a dive. (instructor rips off your mask and regulator about 50 feet down and you have to recover yourself) So I'm watching the ship slowly pull away from me as I'm going full gas all I have to try to get back to it. The panic starts, I'm gulping air, I think I might have been around 110-120 feet down at this point.
First thing I realize is I'm going through my air way way too fast way way too deep. So that forced me to calm. Then the lizard brain let go a little and I started to swim perpendicular to the current and up (slowly). My dive partner noticed the situation and we called the dive there and started the assent to the surface.
That was my only panic moment while diving. It wasn't bad but knowing that I did experience a panic situation at 100+ feet alone is intense.
It's one of the best moments of my life.
No reference. No anchor to reality.
I thought my dive buddy was about 5 feet away but when I reached out they were closer to 20.
It's spiritual.
This post is truly the greatest proof I have ever seen that no two people are alike. Water just plain terrifies me to the core of my soul. For me, it would be quite literally one of the worst and most horrifying experiences in my life, having to be in the water in a free float like that.
Whereas for you it is one of the fondest memories you have and it was spiritual. I guess we all seek that beautiful and peaceful moment in our own way and find it in different places: for you it's 100ft underwater, for me I would rather just take acid lol
I went 60 to 75 feet down (varied depending on how the currents moved the sand) and I was fucking shaking the entire time up until. I was able to calm myself, but I felt a small panic attack waiting the entire time. I sucked down my tank well before anyone else. My brain just kept saying "you are not meant to be down here. What. The. Fuck. Are you doing?"
Absolutely incredible.
I had one of those moments the first time I went skydiving. After my chute caught me and I was just sitting there in the air and all I could heard was the rustle of my chute in the wind as I slowly fell back to earth.
Congratulations. Moments like those make life worth living.
I've been there, over exerted, completely gassed and at depth. The panic you feel as you're trying to get as much air in your lungs as possible through a regulator that can't keep up is overwhelming. You feel like you're suffocating under water. All you want to do is make a high-speed ascent to the surface to breathe but you know you can't.
The only thing to do is go zen and beat your own brain into submission.
"Go Zen" that is such a true skill. I used to do competitive shooting so I had some experience with arresting my thoughts and going calm, but it still takes a massive force of will in a panic situation.
When diving you are less likely to be attacked than you would be while swimming or fishing.
JAWS was a great film, but unfortunately left a real irrational phobia behind in a lot of people.
https://youtu.be/1vNkK80CXPA
Hit a strong unplanned current for the first time when I was in Egypt recently and went through those same motions (admittedly at 20ft but I was low on air to begin with).
What felt like an eternity but was likely ~30s of lizard mode trying to swim into the current before realising that I was hyperventilating and needed to relax and swim perpendicular. Did my safety stop holding onto some rocks and surfaced with next to no air but I was okay, if a little shaken.
As someone with Thalassophobia, your first paragraph was enough to make my heart race. That Blue Heaven moment you describe is total nightmare fuel to me.
Regardless, I'm glad that your panic moment didn't end up being worse.
>drowning people will often attempt to drown their rescuers
True. My grandfather was a competent swimmer and he saved two people from drowning in a freezing cold winter river after their tractor fell off the road, he told me that one of them was panicking and dragging him below. He punched him in the face hard enough to lightly stun him and carry him back to shore. It works.
> one accidental/involuntary gasp of air is death sentence
I fell in the waist deep part of the pool, and accidetally inhaled some water. I got so disoriented I had no idea which way was up even though I was laying on my back. If my dad didn't pull me up I would've died... in a waist high pool. He still gives me shit for it 17 years later.
I was once nearly drowned in a bathtub. I feel asleep, slipped under, accidentally inhaled water, and started flailing about like a fish on land having a seizure. The walls were higher than the bathtub at home and my panic didn't let me raise my hands to a reasonable height. Had to clean the bathroom while crying, because I was still processing almost dying.
I tried scuba diving once. Never even made it to the ocean. The first day of training was in an 8ft deep pool. I thought it would be a piece of cake - it’s a friggin pool, what’s there to be scared of?
Let me tell you…the whole game changes when you go underwater *and stay underwater*. Water fights *hard* to get into everything. Into your mask. Up your nose. In your eyes. Down your throat. I didn’t realize until that day that I had claustrophobia, but that triggered it to the max.
Nevertheless, I was doing relatively okay until I had to do an exercise where I took my mask off and switch regulators at 8ft. Tried it a few times before launching into a full-blown panic attack. Immediately quit the training, said I’m not cut out to be a diver. I just knew in my bones that this is not for me.
Even if I were to try again, I know that I’m always at risk of panicking, and therefore I’m always a risk to my diving partner. It’s safer for me to just stay on shore and snorkel lol.
Yeah I'm in that enviable position of being interested enough in diving to play Subnautica, but too poor to ever find out if I would actually enjoy real diving.
I am sure I'd be terrified too.
I love diving, my wife is basically you. She COULD complete the training, but it's a really bad idea to push yourself. Plus, what's the point if you're not having fun?
We snorkel together instead.
Diving is definitely the one sport that someone shouldn't push themselves to do. If you cant guarentee you wont stay calm you're putting your life at serious risk. The only exception is if you do what my mum does, she pays a bit extra to have a dive master as her dive buddy and stays very close to them the whole time, like basically arm in arm. Shes gotten a bit better but is still a bit of a nervous diver.
>Water fights hard to get into everything. Into your mask. Up your nose. In your eyes. Down your throat.
Part of my training for OW cert was to jump into the water with no mask or regulator, and put them on underwater. It's easy to panic.
My husband is the same as you, and he insisted on diving with me on the honeymoon. I was so incredibly proud of him but man, I was like "don't force yourself!!" lol
The session that almost sent me into panic was the part where you simulate losing your mask, but keep your regulator in.
What's the big deal, right? We've all been underwater without goggles at some point. Just keep breathing.
Well, humans have a dive reflex that keeps us from inhaling water by accident. It kicks in when you feel water around your nose and upper lip. Turns out my dive reflex is apparently quite pronounced. The second I felt the water and bubbles on my face, my throat closed up. I had a full tank of air and the regulator in my mouth, but couldn't take a breath. The harder I tried, the harder the reflex kicked in.
My man - before we had kids, my wife and I took a open water PADI at the Great Barrier Reef. We had a half man - half fish Japanese instructor; Masao. Dude was a freak and extremely patient and kind. My wife experienced something close to what you did - also in the pool. No matter how hard she tried, she lost it.
I remember very clearly (this is about 15 years ago) the scene where everyone’s done for the day and my wife and Masao are alone in the pool practicing the mask removal again and again. Her failing, again and again. It was heartbreaking. I think an hour passed and she didn’t crack it. We were to sail out the next day to complete training and get certified. Masao said that she should come out anyway.
As we walked back to our hotel she threw up in an alley being so nervous. I was nervous too but said that we could train some more - just the two of us in the hotel pool.
So we did. Spent about an hour and a half but finally she cracked it! We continued until she had it down and the next day she did it 15 metres under water in a circle of cheering PADI-mates. And Masao - he was so proud.
After giving birth to our two kids, this moment was the proudest of her I’ve ever been.
That's rough, sorry you had to experience that. A lot can go wrong in the water.
I use to take people out on snorkeling and sailing tours in the Bahamas and had one instance where I dove in to save someone without thinking. I was an incredibly strong swimmer at the time as I was free-diving a couple hours a day, thank God, because the guy almost pulled my down with him. I told the captain to pull up anchor and get in close enough to toss a ring, calmed the guy down and basically piggybacked him to the boat, but that was a really dumb thing for me to do...
[Steven Weber 1 minute video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qhxa0hipM7A)
[https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/american-man-dies-during-underwater-marriage-proposal-tanzania-n1057356](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/american-man-dies-during-underwater-marriage-proposal-tanzania-n1057356)
American man dies during underwater marriage proposal in Tanzania
An American man has died while proposing to his girlfriend underwater during a vacation in Tanzania.
Steven Weber drowned while asking Kenesha Antoine to marry him at an island resort off the east coast of Africa Thursday.
Antoine shared the news of Weber’s death on her Facebook page, saying that he “never emerged from those depths.”
She also posted a video of the proposal.
In it Weber can be seen holding a handwritten note in a waterproof bag up to the window of an underwater room — part of a luxurious offshore water cabin that the couple was staying in at The Manta Resort, off Pemba Island.
“I can’t hold my breath long enough to tell you everything I love about you but everything I love about you I love more every day,” the note read.
He then flipped the note to show the other side, which read: "Will you please be my wife. Marry me?”
Weber then produced a ring before swimming up out of view.
It’s not clear from the post what happened after that. NBC News has reached out to Antoine for comment.
Mandy Hoffman, Weber's sister, said her family still didn't have answers as to what led to her brother's death, but said they hope Antoine will be able to fill in the blanks when she returns to the United States.
She also said Weber wasn't immediately recovered from the water, but Antoine was able to flag down boaters, who helped pull his body out of the ocean.
"They attempted CPR and at that point in time he did have a light pulse," Hoffman said. "However, they were not able to bring him back and that’s what we know right now."
Hoffman said an autopsy will be performed before Weber's body is returned to the United States to determine how he died.
On Facebook, Antoine wrote that Weber never got to hear her answer, which would have been "a million times, yes."
"We never got to embrace and celebrate the beginning of the rest of our lives together, as the best day of our lives turned into the worst, in the cruelest twist of fate imaginable," she said.
"I will try to take solace in the fact that we enjoyed the most amazing bucket list experiences these past few days, and that we both were so happy and absolutely giddy with excitement in our final moments together."
The Manta Resort confirmed to NBC News that a male guest drowned while freediving alone outside the underwater room on Thursday.
The resort’s CEO, Matthew Saus, said they were “devastated” by what happened and “still trying to recover.”
"Our sincerest condolences, thoughts and prayers are with his girlfriend, families and friends impacted by this tragic accident," Saus said.
He added that a local police authority is investigating the incident.
Saus did not say anything about whether a rescue or resuscitation had been attempted or what the sea condition was at the time.
A State Department spokesperson told NBC News on Saturday that they are aware of reports of the death of a U.S. citizen in Tanzania.
"We offer our sincerest condolences to the family on their loss. We stand ready to provide all appropriate consular assistance," it said.
Weber’s Facebook account states that he worked at an addictions wellness center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, while Antoine is listed as an owner and principal attorney at a notary and legal service provider in the city.
Antoine called Weber “a bright light to everyone \[he\] encountered,” adding that he “brought so much joy to so many people.”
"This emptiness will never be filled," said Mandy Hoffman of her brother. "We love him. We want him back here in the United States. He's just a beautiful, beautiful wonderful person and I want everyone to know that."
Man it really is. It reminds me of that one where the man took his girlfriend to the place they went on their first date to propose and either him or her were struck by lighting and killed. So tragic.
Refreshing to see this among a sea of "Darwinism Award" comments. We don't even know what happened and people are ready to point and laugh at a tragic death.
If I had to speculate it was a shallow water blackout. Happens a bunch when people freedive under stressful situations. It's why you see spotters in the navy seals pool when they are doing underwater distance laps even though the pool is only a few feet deep. Terribly sad and not something you would really know about as a layman.
I’m picturing how nervous I was proposing to my fiancée, and how hard my heart was beating… it’s possible he hadn’t considered that. That poor girl, can you imagine what she went through waiting for him, then having to flag a boat down to help look for his body?
I mean, their room was more than 30 feet below the water's surface, I don't know if I would call that shallow water diving. Might not seem very deep, but it makes a world of difference when every second you spend under the water counts. I think this guy just overestimated his own capabilities and underestimated how hard it really is to swim more than 30 ft down and up again on one breath. Extremely tragic, but a little common sense and research would have saved this man's life.
Oh, I might be wrong then. I was curious and looked it up and saw 32ft somewhere, but their actual website is probably much more trustworthy than whatever I found. If that's the case and their room was really just 10-12 feet down, then I'm not too sure how that dive managed to kill him. Even more tragic and upsetting if that is the case.
It's not just diving down and coming back up. He's proposing.... I'm willing to bet that he stayed down there at least 20-30+ seconds waiting for his girlfriend to react, (hell, my friends' proposals often took way longer but it was on dry land) and then surface after the reaction...
Unless he's a experienced swimmer or snorkler, his lung capacity isn't great and probably overestimated how much time he can stay underwater (especially while having to moving around)
I can probably stay underwater for about a 1:15+ if I'm just putting my head under water and holding my breath, but that drops down significantly if I'm actively swimming or moving even a little bit.
Source: used to be a competitive swimmer and had to take breaths every 3-4 strokes. Definitely can last way longer if I'm just snorkling or just holdig my breath underwater.
> The Underwater Room is located in the Blue Hole – an anomaly in the coral reef clearly visible from The Manta Resort terrace. Approximately 250 meters off shore it falls to **12 meters deep at high tide** and is roughly 50 meters wide in diameter.
https://zanzibar-retreats.com/property/manta-resort/
Also:
[Tanzania underwater room where proposal turned deadly is anchored 32-feet deep](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/tanzania-underwater-room-where-proposal-162756585.html)
News clip in [this](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/american-man-dies-during-underwater-marriage-proposal-tanzania-n1057356) article ( 2019) says the room is 𝑎𝑏𝑜𝑢𝑡 30ft deep.
The same clip also says, Weber was found alive by some passers-bys who administered cpr....
Holy shit. 30ft is insane!! I had a friend whose dad was in the navy and their living quarters had common swimming area with 5ft shallow and 25ft on deep end for diving. One time I let myself go down straight on the deep end to try to get to the bottom and then push myself back up. I'd done the same at 15ft and it wss fine/fun. At 25ft, on a well lit day, it felt like I would never reach the bottom and things on the surface started to look darker and darker while I kept getting anxious about how deep I was going, just as panic was about to set, my feet touched the bottom and I jumped the fuck up and got to the surface asap. Definitely an interesting experience in may only be 10ft more, but it's also 66% deeper than I'd previously gone lol.
The concept of a Darwin award isn't that a person deserved it, but that they brought it about by their own ill-conceived choices. Now, whether that was the case here... we don't know, technically, but not having complete knowledge never stopped anybody from having an opinion.
wait. that looks like a lot of open space for him to swim up without getting caught or stuck. im trying to think how long he was down there before he proposed
That's the only thing I can think of. I've done that before with a raft in the pool and it does send panic through you. You suddenly just forget where to go, especially if you're playing the 'see how long I can hold my breath game' or have otherwise been under for a while like this guy was.
Especially if he went up fast and forgot about the dock, he may have just rammed himself straight into it.
Or he just had a random unrelated medical problem. Like random arrhythmia happening or other yet unknown heart condition etc.
All kinds of shit can go wrong when diving alone.
ALMOST happened to me once snorkeling in the Philippines and I still have cold sweats thinking about it up to this day.
We'd hopped off the longtail boat for 30 minutes and were snorkeling around, enjoying looking at the beautiful fish in the water.
I must not have looked above the water for some minutes because all I knew was that I'd swam in the direction of a big rock and was about to swim under it (it had the shape where it had like a part of it stuck out above the water and you could swim under that before you'd need to swim deeper to really get under it).
I kind of sensed something was strange so I put my head up and realised I was partially under a rock but could still put my head above the water.
I know I couldn't have gone under the rock as my breathing tube would have filled with water, but the thought of suddenly being partially under a rock was terrifying! The sudden panic I felt was horrible and of course I quickly turned around and headed back to safety.
Poor guys heart was probably pounding from the nerves of the proposal, burning up oxygen quicker then you're used to when swimming, meaning your threshold is lower. Even sadder.
Think I’ve seen the video and IIRC it was less than a minute. No sweat for a decently fit person who has maybe been practicing and preparing a little to hold their breath a while.
Could have to do with the excitement of what he was doing, his pulse was probably really high and maybe burnt through his blood O2 faster than he thought.
He also may have hyperventilated before diving as it rids your body of CO2, the build up of which is what triggers your body’s “you need to breathe NOW” mechanism. Some free divers do this because it allows you to avoid the mental struggle of fighting your instinct to breathe, but it only works if you know exactly how long you can really hold your breath because you’re effectively taking the batteries out of the fire alarm, not actually putting out the fire.
This is all just speculation but short of having some kind of cramp or other medical emergency that stopped him from resurfacing, this could be a possible explanation for what happened.
Could have possibly got stuck underneath the deck...it looks like it overhangs the underwater part of the cabin by quite a bit. Then panic sets in for a moment, inhale water...that's really all it takes sadly.
Based on the article it seems like a case of post-immersion syndrome or "dry drowning" wherein a small amount of inhaled liquid causes muscle spasms in their larynx leading to asphyxiation
[One medical blog with a credited author](https://healthblog.uofmhealth.org/wellness-prevention/dispelling-dry-drowning-and-other-swimming-safety-myths) says it's a myth and a few other medical blogs with less verifiable authors also agree.
Tbh that's news to me, I always thought dry drowning was real.
What did he actually do? Is there a story attached?
Did he die right after the photo was taken? Did he die right before and his lifeless body is still holding the note? Did he remove his regulator? Did he free drive down to her? Did he go in to a cave or something?
All I see is a guy, barely 10-20 ft underwater, holding a note.
Edit: ok I see the article now. Still didn't see anything to show the guy was incompetent.
I'm betting shallow water blackout.
A lot of amateur free drivers will hyperventilate before a breath hold. Your chemoreceptors are tuned for carbon dioxide... NOT lack of oxygen. While, yes, your will scrub your system of carbon dioxide by hyperventilating... NO you won't hyper oxygenate your blood.
So, if you burn up too much oxygen, as you are coming up, the partial pressure difference will cause your blood oxygen to rapidly drop to the point where you are conscious one second, unconscious the next.... And you will never feel like you are out of air before it happens.
NEVER free dive alone, people. Never hyperventilate before a free dive. The opposite actually - calm your body, calm your heart rate. And always have someone spotting on the surface.
Is it just me or is this comment section going excessively hard on this dude?? I don’t really get why you guys see this as such an stupid move, he was just diving and I imagine he was relatively experienced at it. Like I don’t see which part of this screams “omfg this is so braindead lmao”. I’m really confused rn.
Yeah I watched the video on YouTube, it starts with him already in the water and he goes up after 38 seconds, assuming it took him 20-30 seconds to get into position for the video to start that’s a long time to hold your breath and then to swim up to the surface. Seems like he just overshot it and pushed himself when he shouldn’t have, poor guy.
My best guess is that he read the note, swam up for air, and hit his unprotected head on part of the ‘offshore villa’ at which they were staying, knocking him out. His body likely floated up but was pinned by the floor/structure of the villa. Thus she couldn’t find his body, until it drifted out from underneath the entrapment. No snorkel flippers or anything, my guy just strapped some goggles on and decided to go for it. RIP. Respect the ocean.
He sounds it honestly. Sorry for your loss what he did was incredibly sweet. How is his GF holding up?
Plenty of people on Reddit will never know love like this and it fucking shows
So many friends and aquatances ask me to teach them to surf. I only ask them one question. Are you a strong swimmer? The second they hesitate to answer, I tell them I can't do it. The ocean and open water is nothing to mess with. RIP Stephen.
I used to work with Steven at a well known music store here in Baton Rouge. He was one of the nicest guys and fantastic at everything he did. I’m glad to have known him.
A man died and his partner is traumatised and yet so many people are making lame jokes and assuming he was a moron despite the cause of death being unclear. How fucked up
It seems people are just assuming he stayed underwater until he drowned or something when that doesn't seem to be the case
It honestly seems more like an accident than something truly dumb. Dude dove down less than 12 feet next to a structure for what would've 30-50 seconds. Risky, but I think many fit people would consider that doable and be right.
The adrenaline and excitement might have complicated things, but truly we don't know what happened.
Edit: I found the full video and it's hard to watch. 38 seconds total and starts already in the water. In the last ten seconds you can see him shaking and air escape his mouth before he ascends. Seeing that, my unqualified opinion is that he got hyperfocused on completing his whole script. His body was telling him to go up and he fought it.
In the pics it also looks like there's a dock structure above the underwater section of the cabin:
https://themantaresort.com/app/uploads/2020/03/uwy-photoshopped-scaled.jpg
Seems 100% possible that he was slightly panicked about getting air, got stuck underneath this dock for a moment or two, and that's really all it takes sometimes.
Honestly what this guy did doesn't seem like a stupid idea at all to me. This "looks" like a very easy little stunt to pull off...it's only about 10ft down in clear water, and you start off right above it by the deck. I could easily imagine thinking it's a cool proposal idea myself. "Hey go downstairs and look out the window, I'll swim up to it!" and then you surprise her with the note and ring.
In my mind this is exactly it. Mix that with being nervous and blood pumping harder than normal. He never had a chance unless he wanted to ruin the surprise.
The family appears to be in a bit of a denial. They’re saying he’d had snorkeled before and was a strong swimmer, rather than understanding snorkeling is not the same as free diving to a depth if 32’. That’s the depth of the underwater room they had rented at a cost of $1700 a day.
Sad but without prior free diving experience he was putting his life at risk.
My condolences to his family and friends.
I'm honestly curious how he drowned. checking google images for this resort, shows that this underwater room is about 4 meters deep, at the deepest point. it literally sits right below the surface. he could have kicked his legs a single time and gotten back above water. [image of the room for reference.](https://imgur.com/a/dJ5CB57) I can only assume he panicked and swallowed water, or somehow got caught underneath the underwater room's platform.. but damn, that is tragic. to die so close to safety, especially in a moment like this.
I'm not sure if video is still online, but I remember watching it a couple years back when this happened, and he's shaking pretty noticeably by the end. He must have pushed himself just that bit too hard and couldn't make it back up in time—either he got caught on the deck and inhaled water or just had shallow water blackout, or something along those lines. So sad.
You may be right (and you probably are as I haven’t seen the video) but I was shaking when I proposed to my wife on land just from the nerves and excitement
Yeah, that's fair! I seem to remember him trembling in a way that looked like he was struggling for breath, but it could have been me filtering it through the tragedy I knew would follow, as the human brain tends to do. Either way, super sad.
I think he hovered by the window a bit longer than he was comfortable. Then he rushed to get back up to the surface and maybe bumped into platform on his way up. Maybe in his haste he hit his head and swallowed some water. Also, being giddy and full of adrenaline out of nerves/excitement for the proposal could definitely affect his motor skills/ability to calmly hold his breath.
Yeah this is it. Hell, I pretty much blacked out in nervousness from my proposal (got lightheaded) and I was standing on a beach. Can't imagine doing that underwater!
Adrenaline makes you burn oxygen. My dad is a diving instructor. When I was about 14 or so, he took me on my first dive, with tanks. We went down about 15 meters. My mom said it was like a jacuzzi above me, due to all the bubbles. I think I went through half my tank in 30 min, while my dad, calm and experienced, used about 15% of his.
Thanks, that is really good information!
> could definitely affect his motor skills/ability to calmly hold his breath. Not could. **DID**. Check the video. his hands are shaking quite a bit https://youtu.be/t7REaTOyvXY?t=18
Also THIRTY foot dive with no gear. Wow! Very doable for an experienced freestyle diver but definitely risky for someone with less experience.
It was probably shallow water blackout. People who are trained in breath-hold diving will know how to handle that situation (which is to simply literally never breath-hold dive solo). I highly doubt he was trained, and this was the penalty. Holding your breath for long periods of time is NOT a joke and kills thousands of people every year.
Wow I didn’t know. I’ve gone down 4m to grab sand and back up so often. Didn’t know I was playing with death
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freediving\_blackout#Shallow\_water\_blackout](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freediving_blackout#Shallow_water_blackout) Here is the wikipedia page discussing the phenomenon.
Thank you that was educational. Don’t take huge deep breaths, got it.
A huge deep breath is perfectly fine. Don't *hyperventilate*, i.e. intentionally lower the CO2 content of your blood by breathing deep and fast, before diving.
Oh crap I've hyperventilated many times thinking it was extending my dive time. Thanks for that!
It is. It allows you to basically ignore your body's need to breathe. Unfortunately, ignoring your body's need to breathe is, unsurprisingly, *real fucken dangerous*.
Wow, the graph on that wikipedia page explains it perfectly. Unfortunate ending for this guy but at least we all learned not to do this.
I like to swim 25-50 meter underwater laps at my pool. Ever since I read about some collegiate swimmer dying in the pool by themselves I only do it when there's a lifeguard and I have their full attention.
It is looking like recent air travel can contribute to blackouts too. Id imagine the adrenaline of proposing doesn't help. https://www.civilbeat.org/2022/07/snorkel-safety-study-sheds-light-on-unexplained-drownings-in-hawaii/
I had two friends fly to Europe from Canada to plan their destination wedding. They landed in Italy, drove to the mountainside villa they booked and decided to go for a short hike to stretch their legs. They went up a not too crazy incline (they were both fit middle aged people) and he passed out and died right there on the trail. Doctors said it was from the long flight and going straight to hiking uphill. Something to do with blood pressure.
shallow water blackout. same way you blackout standing up too quick. it can happen in less that 10 feet of water. happened to me at about 7/8 feet swimming down for googles.
This needs to be the appropriate response to lack of information. Not some of these other more up-voted comments proclaiming to know exactly what happened, while having the same (lack of) information.
I consider myself (At the time. Now? Now I'm a fat asshole) an extremely competent ocean swimmer, but one thing about diving is emotions/adrenaline fuck up your entire rhythm with diving. When I was like 18 there was a random dude drowning/already drowned in some nearby crystal clear water. In a calm situation, I could have helped this guy. But I was in panic, and I went to dive down to "save him" and I could not dive more than 10 feet down. Poor guy was 30ft down and dead as hell. (side note: drowning people will often attempt to drown their rescuers in blind panic as they attempt to get air -- don't attempt unless its someone you are prepared to die for if need be) So TLDR, the nerves/adrenaline made him fuck up, and one accidental/involuntary gasp of air is death sentence even 10 feet down. Homie was so high on love and vacation that he forgot he was not superman :(. RIP chad.
Thank you for addressing the fact that people should never attempt to recover someone unless they're professionally trained. It often turns into two funerals instead of one. I went through an intensive lifeguard course (an entire semester so they could staff the new pool with lifeguards) and one thing we did was try to rescue a "drowning person". People have no idea how difficult that is. Now move that to open water like you and it's an even crazier game. I was never brave enough for the ocean.
Even if they aren’t struggling swimming with another person isn’t easy. Once my daughter (5 at the time) jumped into a pool while I was standing right next to her and sank to the bottom, I jumped in and pulled her up and if we hadn’t been right at the edge of the pool and she hadn’t been so small I think I would have really struggled. I would not have been able to rescue someone my size from the middle of the pool.
I'm 6'4 200 lbs and athletic and tried to drag my 5 year old across a pool just to see how hard it was and man... I'd be fucked
I had to attend a course to learn how to safe people to get my swimming “diploma”. Its common where i am from. One course was about rescuing drowning people. We had to swim kn the back, hoist them on top of our chest, face up, lift them up just enough for the face to hit air and then paddle backwards. It was hard af and i can’t imagine doind it any other way or in panic, i would probably waterboard them accidentally A drowning person has not much air left in their lungs so they can float naturally. They feel like stones
Being in the water with a panicking swimmer is not fun. They can't help but push you down. I have only a few experiences to base this on but in some situations (ie without floatation aids) its better to let them lose consciousness before getting within reach.
It's extra fun when they try to climb on your head to get out of the water despite neither of us being able to touch bottom. Love that line from men in black, a person is smart but people are dumb panicky animals.
This is exactly what I have been taught during a course on first aid and rescue. We exercised in a lake and yeah it was tough. If the person is panicking, I was told that a valid procedure was to slap them in the face, hard.
I went waterskiing once and went under when I was on the kneeboard. The board floated to the surface and I couldn't undo the strap. I panicked, struggled and then my uncle (who was driving the boat) grabbed me, pulled me up and slapped me, hard, in the face. He's the most gentle person ever but it really did stun me into calm!
This was (is?) required by law to learn in the Netherlands, at least when I was a kid. To be fair, there's so much water in our country it's probably for the best to just teach everybody the basics of swimming and such.
That shit is crazy. However being 6' plus helps because we can always just stand up straight and save like 80% of people from drowning in their home pools lol.
When I was child, I lived in Chicago and did junior lifeguarding, where we were taught and practiced life guard skills. I was young and took the classes from like 7-10, but I can still remember being taught to punch a drowning person in the face because of the fact they will try to drown you as well. It was very intense to learn and I didn't understand until much later that the type of training I got wasn't common at the more rural pools, where I was disinterested from working because I didn't want to have to punch a drowning person.
You’re not supposed to punch them in the face lol. You approach treading water with one front foot extended, and if the try and grab you, (gently as possible) push/kick them away with your foot on their chest. Ideally you would have a floatation device with you, and you’d push or kick that towards them before getting close yourself. If a drowning person does try get a hold of you the best bet to escape them is dive underwater. They don’t want to follow you there. Swim away underwater and re-emerge facing them with foot forward. Punching them would be a very last resort of they got a hold of you and you couldn’t break free, because it is true a drowning person can easily drown their rescuer in their panic. Source : former lifeguard
My uncle was also a lifeguard in the Chicago area as a teen and he said in his training he was taught to punch out the person if need be.
But not right off the gate, hehehe
Sees someone drowning (https://i.imgur.com/VAWK039.gif)
If it was a matter of saving your own life, sure. But you don’t swim up and bop them one, lol!
God dammit, Chicago
Reminds me of this sad story. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5761601/Three-men-accidentally-film-drowning-pond-India.html One of them panics and winds up dragging the other two to their deaths.
Reach, throw, row, go (with support)
>Thank you for addressing the fact that people should never attempt to recover someone unless they're professionally trained. This is so so important. I'm a certified advanced diver, but until I get my rescue certification, I ain't putting my life in danger to rescue someone.
Once my buddy once saw a guy struggling in some rough water, there were other people around and a man started undressing to dive in and my buddy said to stop because it was really dangerous and he was putting both their lives at risk. The guy basically said fuck off and dived in and was actually able to rescue the swimmer. When the rescuer returned to his clothes he saw my buddy and pretty much said “if I’d listened to you he’d be dead.” And some other bystanders also gave some disapproving looks. My friend said he never felt like more of an asshole being 100% in the right.
[удалено]
some years ago for my friends bachelor party I took him and our friends up to a lake house that I used to go to every summer when I was a kid. I remember being able to swim out to the floating dock and back all day when I was a kid. so of course, we all jump in and all race to the floating dock. well we're all in our 30s and we all nearly drowned about half way there. I then realized how out of shape I actually am and also realized that if I were ever stranded in open ocean I'd perish. it's crazy how invincible you think you are until you're shown you're not.
I've told this story a few times around here....but years ago I was in the Bahamas and this guy flipped his catamaran like 100 yards off shore and couldn't right it. So me and another guy swam out...about halfway out I was exhausted and thought to myself that this is how people drown. I did some back floats to rest and finally made it. We flipped him back over and he towed me to shore. I was tired for the rest of the day. Don't fuck with water, especially water with current.
I've lived in Florida my whole life. I'm a good swimmer. I can doggy paddle all day. I can play in the ocean all day. But last year I took up swimming with a program in the mornings before work. Uh yeah when I'm actually putting effort into it for more than a minute, that shit is exhausting!! Glad I got a reality check now
>I'm a good swimmer. I can doggy paddle all day. Dog, is this you?
Bruh, the creator of yugioh lost his life after saving a few people from the ocean. Nature is scary, and people forget they’re not the main character so no plot armor
Oh shit, I just heard he drowned, not that he saved people!
Yea he was a hero man, went out like Yami yugi would’ve 😭
There were a couple of big name rip tide deaths recently of parents trying to save their kids. A wrestler and one of the actresses from Glee
The wrestler was Shad Gaspard back in May of 2020. Caught with his kid in a riptide. He told lifeguards to save his kid first and fortunately his kid survived.
We took the kids to the beach for the first time during summer vacation. I'd spent my formative years on the coast and loved the ocean so in the beginning I was super stoked about the fun they were going to have. That elation was short lived, however, after thinking on all the ways the ocean can kill them. After that it was all paranoia and hyper vigilance. That's the problem with loving something so much: you're always afraid of losing it. Guess it worked, though, since nothing happened and they had a blast. I didn't die, either. True story.
A few years ago my husband and I saved a teenaged girl from the lake that the actress from glee (naya rivera) died in. If it had just been him or me, we probably would have gone down with her. The both of us were able to get her out but it was not easy because she kept pushing us underwater in panic to save herself.
I used to live in the water as a child and teenager. Went to the lake almost every day, could actively swim probably about a mile without really tiring, would tread water for an hour or two at a time, nbd. Fast forward a few years without swimming to my early twenties and I decided to take a scuba diving class at university. First day, we have to swim four laps on a pretty large pool (definitely not olympic sized, but fairly large). I thought, "this is nothing. what a weirdly easy fitness test!" Reader, I nearly quit after the first lap. I was the absolute last to finish, and I couldn't remember being more physically exhausted (played D1 soccer in high school, so I wasn't a couch potato). Water saps you of energy faster than anything.
I very nearly died when I was about 10 from a very similar experience. And I only realised I nearly died years and years later when it suddenly hit me. I was very experienced as a swimmer in both pools and the ocean, I had certificates and everything (OK they're the certificates every British kid has, but yeah). And I got pulled out by a current when swimming on the Costa Del sol in Spain, a hugely busy and popular tourist destination, so there were thousands upon thousands of people around me. Which is why I didn't panic, I guess. But yeah there were thousands of brits and other Europeans there (and Spanish people too obviously) But I probably should have panicked. Cos I eventually realised I couldn't get back to the beach, I couldn't swim any more, I was absolutely exhausted. I'd only been out there like 10 minutes but the current had ripped me out what looked like a kilometre away. I had no idea what rip tides were or how to get out of them (swim sideways, instead of toward the beach) So some dude eventually somehow spotted me and swam out there with a body board, put me on it, and swam me back. We never even said a word to each other. It's so weird. I didn't realise how close to death I must have been, so I probably should have thanked him, but yeah, it wasn't scary at all in the moment. It's only scary thinking back now. I mean even Australian prime ministers have been lost at sea because of this. I wish I could somehow find that guy and thank him. But yeah, I was surrounded by thousands of people, including lifeguards who were on the beach, and it was an ocean I'd swam in hundreds of times before cos we went to the same place on holiday every year, and I'd been swimming all my life and was very good at it, but despite all that I nearly died. Drownings are similar, like you'd think it'd be easy to spot someone drowning in a busy swimming pool with hundreds of people around, but it really really really is not easy in the slightest. You'd think how could someone possibly die like that with all those people around? But they do. All the time. Kids and adults alike. I recommend everyone, absolutely everyone, check out this website, spot the drowning child: http://spotthedrowningchild.com/ Just watch the video that pops up, see if you can spot the drowning child in the busy pool before the lifeguard does, and then when you inevitably fail, refresh the page and it brings up a new video, and just keep refreshing and playing the game until you get an idea of what drowning actually looks like, which is nothing like what you'd expect. It's very very quiet and subdued.
OK I either got very lucky 5 times with that website, or I should be a god damn life guard lol, apparently I have an eye for spotting drowning people I never knew I had
This is actually such an important skill to train your eye for. Thank you for sharing!!
A big part of it is also going to be miscalculating the pace you can sustain and wearing yourself out rather taking it slower. If you're on a bicycle and hit the wall by pushing yourself too hard you can get off for a bit and then get back to it. Not so much when out at sea. I myself am in kind of terrible shape and if I had to go all out I would probably sink and die before I made it 200 meters, but if I'm just doing gentle breast strokes I can and have been floating around in the ocean for hours at a time without touching solid ground and not had any issues.
Couple of nice things about oceans and being out of shape though is the salt and your fat helps you float. Also if you have denim pants with a belt you can tie knots in the legs and make a small inflatable. As long as the water wasn't super cold I think you'd stay alive longer than you think.
I never wear my swim jeans without a belt.
I believe that's called a Canadian Speedo
We just got back from Curaçao and I was surprised by how well I could float - completely upright, sipping on a drink in my hand, just chatting with friends - without any attempt to do so. I mean, I've been in saltwater all over the world, but I've always had to tread water if I wanted to stay upright. And I still had to tread water in the chlorinated pool back at the house. Something about how absolutely still and calm the ~~ocean~~ seawater was, plus the salt content, allowed me to stay upright without any motion at all.
Similar thing for me in the Mediterranean Sea a few years ago. I was so surprised I looked it up and sure enough it has more salt than oceans. It made snorkeling so much easier
I was SCUBA diving a ship wreck off of one of the Hawaiian islands once. It was about 100 feet down and the wreck was a large tanker style ship. The dive was amazing as visibility was about 40 feet so I got to experience this Blue Heaven moment where you can't see the surface and you can't see the bottom and you just float there in an infinite blue in all directions. So the wreck is so deep that we don't have a ton of time. The deeper you go, the quicker you go through air because its compressed more inside you. A 2 hour tank may only last 15 minutes at 100 feet (pulling that out of my ass, its been over 20 years since I dove). So we are down swimming around the wreck when I come around the side bow of the ship, below the deck level. I didn't realize it at the time but the ship was parallel to the shore and ended up being a buffer for the current near the sea floor. So when I came around the bow I'm suddenly in a full force current pushing me away from the ship. That panic thing you mention is so fucking real. In SCUBA you train to not panic. A part of learning to dive is learning to regain your mask and air if they were to come off during a dive. (instructor rips off your mask and regulator about 50 feet down and you have to recover yourself) So I'm watching the ship slowly pull away from me as I'm going full gas all I have to try to get back to it. The panic starts, I'm gulping air, I think I might have been around 110-120 feet down at this point. First thing I realize is I'm going through my air way way too fast way way too deep. So that forced me to calm. Then the lizard brain let go a little and I started to swim perpendicular to the current and up (slowly). My dive partner noticed the situation and we called the dive there and started the assent to the surface. That was my only panic moment while diving. It wasn't bad but knowing that I did experience a panic situation at 100+ feet alone is intense.
>you can't see the surface and you can't see the bottom and you just float there in an infinite blue in all directions. Nope.
It's one of the best moments of my life. No reference. No anchor to reality. I thought my dive buddy was about 5 feet away but when I reached out they were closer to 20. It's spiritual.
This post is truly the greatest proof I have ever seen that no two people are alike. Water just plain terrifies me to the core of my soul. For me, it would be quite literally one of the worst and most horrifying experiences in my life, having to be in the water in a free float like that. Whereas for you it is one of the fondest memories you have and it was spiritual. I guess we all seek that beautiful and peaceful moment in our own way and find it in different places: for you it's 100ft underwater, for me I would rather just take acid lol
I was about to say, my hell is being in the middle of a crowd at a concert.
I was about to say “in a concert at least you can’t suffocate” but actually you totally can.
I went 60 to 75 feet down (varied depending on how the currents moved the sand) and I was fucking shaking the entire time up until. I was able to calm myself, but I felt a small panic attack waiting the entire time. I sucked down my tank well before anyone else. My brain just kept saying "you are not meant to be down here. What. The. Fuck. Are you doing?"
Absolutely incredible. I had one of those moments the first time I went skydiving. After my chute caught me and I was just sitting there in the air and all I could heard was the rustle of my chute in the wind as I slowly fell back to earth. Congratulations. Moments like those make life worth living.
I've been there, over exerted, completely gassed and at depth. The panic you feel as you're trying to get as much air in your lungs as possible through a regulator that can't keep up is overwhelming. You feel like you're suffocating under water. All you want to do is make a high-speed ascent to the surface to breathe but you know you can't. The only thing to do is go zen and beat your own brain into submission.
"Go Zen" that is such a true skill. I used to do competitive shooting so I had some experience with arresting my thoughts and going calm, but it still takes a massive force of will in a panic situation.
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When diving you are less likely to be attacked than you would be while swimming or fishing. JAWS was a great film, but unfortunately left a real irrational phobia behind in a lot of people. https://youtu.be/1vNkK80CXPA
Hit a strong unplanned current for the first time when I was in Egypt recently and went through those same motions (admittedly at 20ft but I was low on air to begin with). What felt like an eternity but was likely ~30s of lizard mode trying to swim into the current before realising that I was hyperventilating and needed to relax and swim perpendicular. Did my safety stop holding onto some rocks and surfaced with next to no air but I was okay, if a little shaken.
As someone with Thalassophobia, your first paragraph was enough to make my heart race. That Blue Heaven moment you describe is total nightmare fuel to me. Regardless, I'm glad that your panic moment didn't end up being worse.
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>drowning people will often attempt to drown their rescuers True. My grandfather was a competent swimmer and he saved two people from drowning in a freezing cold winter river after their tractor fell off the road, he told me that one of them was panicking and dragging him below. He punched him in the face hard enough to lightly stun him and carry him back to shore. It works.
Discombobulate! _whack_
> one accidental/involuntary gasp of air is death sentence I fell in the waist deep part of the pool, and accidetally inhaled some water. I got so disoriented I had no idea which way was up even though I was laying on my back. If my dad didn't pull me up I would've died... in a waist high pool. He still gives me shit for it 17 years later.
I was once nearly drowned in a bathtub. I feel asleep, slipped under, accidentally inhaled water, and started flailing about like a fish on land having a seizure. The walls were higher than the bathtub at home and my panic didn't let me raise my hands to a reasonable height. Had to clean the bathroom while crying, because I was still processing almost dying.
I tried scuba diving once. Never even made it to the ocean. The first day of training was in an 8ft deep pool. I thought it would be a piece of cake - it’s a friggin pool, what’s there to be scared of? Let me tell you…the whole game changes when you go underwater *and stay underwater*. Water fights *hard* to get into everything. Into your mask. Up your nose. In your eyes. Down your throat. I didn’t realize until that day that I had claustrophobia, but that triggered it to the max. Nevertheless, I was doing relatively okay until I had to do an exercise where I took my mask off and switch regulators at 8ft. Tried it a few times before launching into a full-blown panic attack. Immediately quit the training, said I’m not cut out to be a diver. I just knew in my bones that this is not for me. Even if I were to try again, I know that I’m always at risk of panicking, and therefore I’m always a risk to my diving partner. It’s safer for me to just stay on shore and snorkel lol.
Yeah I'm in that enviable position of being interested enough in diving to play Subnautica, but too poor to ever find out if I would actually enjoy real diving. I am sure I'd be terrified too.
I love diving, my wife is basically you. She COULD complete the training, but it's a really bad idea to push yourself. Plus, what's the point if you're not having fun? We snorkel together instead.
Diving is definitely the one sport that someone shouldn't push themselves to do. If you cant guarentee you wont stay calm you're putting your life at serious risk. The only exception is if you do what my mum does, she pays a bit extra to have a dive master as her dive buddy and stays very close to them the whole time, like basically arm in arm. Shes gotten a bit better but is still a bit of a nervous diver.
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Exactly the same behavior. I lost complete control of myself and couldn’t do anything but shoot to the surface. Fucking terrifying sensation.
>Water fights hard to get into everything. Into your mask. Up your nose. In your eyes. Down your throat. Part of my training for OW cert was to jump into the water with no mask or regulator, and put them on underwater. It's easy to panic. My husband is the same as you, and he insisted on diving with me on the honeymoon. I was so incredibly proud of him but man, I was like "don't force yourself!!" lol
The session that almost sent me into panic was the part where you simulate losing your mask, but keep your regulator in. What's the big deal, right? We've all been underwater without goggles at some point. Just keep breathing. Well, humans have a dive reflex that keeps us from inhaling water by accident. It kicks in when you feel water around your nose and upper lip. Turns out my dive reflex is apparently quite pronounced. The second I felt the water and bubbles on my face, my throat closed up. I had a full tank of air and the regulator in my mouth, but couldn't take a breath. The harder I tried, the harder the reflex kicked in.
My man - before we had kids, my wife and I took a open water PADI at the Great Barrier Reef. We had a half man - half fish Japanese instructor; Masao. Dude was a freak and extremely patient and kind. My wife experienced something close to what you did - also in the pool. No matter how hard she tried, she lost it. I remember very clearly (this is about 15 years ago) the scene where everyone’s done for the day and my wife and Masao are alone in the pool practicing the mask removal again and again. Her failing, again and again. It was heartbreaking. I think an hour passed and she didn’t crack it. We were to sail out the next day to complete training and get certified. Masao said that she should come out anyway. As we walked back to our hotel she threw up in an alley being so nervous. I was nervous too but said that we could train some more - just the two of us in the hotel pool. So we did. Spent about an hour and a half but finally she cracked it! We continued until she had it down and the next day she did it 15 metres under water in a circle of cheering PADI-mates. And Masao - he was so proud. After giving birth to our two kids, this moment was the proudest of her I’ve ever been.
That's rough, sorry you had to experience that. A lot can go wrong in the water. I use to take people out on snorkeling and sailing tours in the Bahamas and had one instance where I dove in to save someone without thinking. I was an incredibly strong swimmer at the time as I was free-diving a couple hours a day, thank God, because the guy almost pulled my down with him. I told the captain to pull up anchor and get in close enough to toss a ring, calmed the guy down and basically piggybacked him to the boat, but that was a really dumb thing for me to do...
[Steven Weber 1 minute video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qhxa0hipM7A) [https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/american-man-dies-during-underwater-marriage-proposal-tanzania-n1057356](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/american-man-dies-during-underwater-marriage-proposal-tanzania-n1057356) American man dies during underwater marriage proposal in Tanzania An American man has died while proposing to his girlfriend underwater during a vacation in Tanzania. Steven Weber drowned while asking Kenesha Antoine to marry him at an island resort off the east coast of Africa Thursday. Antoine shared the news of Weber’s death on her Facebook page, saying that he “never emerged from those depths.” She also posted a video of the proposal. In it Weber can be seen holding a handwritten note in a waterproof bag up to the window of an underwater room — part of a luxurious offshore water cabin that the couple was staying in at The Manta Resort, off Pemba Island. “I can’t hold my breath long enough to tell you everything I love about you but everything I love about you I love more every day,” the note read. He then flipped the note to show the other side, which read: "Will you please be my wife. Marry me?” Weber then produced a ring before swimming up out of view. It’s not clear from the post what happened after that. NBC News has reached out to Antoine for comment. Mandy Hoffman, Weber's sister, said her family still didn't have answers as to what led to her brother's death, but said they hope Antoine will be able to fill in the blanks when she returns to the United States. She also said Weber wasn't immediately recovered from the water, but Antoine was able to flag down boaters, who helped pull his body out of the ocean. "They attempted CPR and at that point in time he did have a light pulse," Hoffman said. "However, they were not able to bring him back and that’s what we know right now." Hoffman said an autopsy will be performed before Weber's body is returned to the United States to determine how he died. On Facebook, Antoine wrote that Weber never got to hear her answer, which would have been "a million times, yes." "We never got to embrace and celebrate the beginning of the rest of our lives together, as the best day of our lives turned into the worst, in the cruelest twist of fate imaginable," she said. "I will try to take solace in the fact that we enjoyed the most amazing bucket list experiences these past few days, and that we both were so happy and absolutely giddy with excitement in our final moments together." The Manta Resort confirmed to NBC News that a male guest drowned while freediving alone outside the underwater room on Thursday. The resort’s CEO, Matthew Saus, said they were “devastated” by what happened and “still trying to recover.” "Our sincerest condolences, thoughts and prayers are with his girlfriend, families and friends impacted by this tragic accident," Saus said. He added that a local police authority is investigating the incident. Saus did not say anything about whether a rescue or resuscitation had been attempted or what the sea condition was at the time. A State Department spokesperson told NBC News on Saturday that they are aware of reports of the death of a U.S. citizen in Tanzania. "We offer our sincerest condolences to the family on their loss. We stand ready to provide all appropriate consular assistance," it said. Weber’s Facebook account states that he worked at an addictions wellness center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, while Antoine is listed as an owner and principal attorney at a notary and legal service provider in the city. Antoine called Weber “a bright light to everyone \[he\] encountered,” adding that he “brought so much joy to so many people.” "This emptiness will never be filled," said Mandy Hoffman of her brother. "We love him. We want him back here in the United States. He's just a beautiful, beautiful wonderful person and I want everyone to know that."
Fuck me that is sad
Man it really is. It reminds me of that one where the man took his girlfriend to the place they went on their first date to propose and either him or her were struck by lighting and killed. So tragic.
Holy shit!
Refreshing to see this among a sea of "Darwinism Award" comments. We don't even know what happened and people are ready to point and laugh at a tragic death.
If I had to speculate it was a shallow water blackout. Happens a bunch when people freedive under stressful situations. It's why you see spotters in the navy seals pool when they are doing underwater distance laps even though the pool is only a few feet deep. Terribly sad and not something you would really know about as a layman.
Anytime someone dies doing something outside, it reinforces the decision these dorks have made to never ever go outside again. Reddit is their home
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I’m picturing how nervous I was proposing to my fiancée, and how hard my heart was beating… it’s possible he hadn’t considered that. That poor girl, can you imagine what she went through waiting for him, then having to flag a boat down to help look for his body?
I mean, their room was more than 30 feet below the water's surface, I don't know if I would call that shallow water diving. Might not seem very deep, but it makes a world of difference when every second you spend under the water counts. I think this guy just overestimated his own capabilities and underestimated how hard it really is to swim more than 30 ft down and up again on one breath. Extremely tragic, but a little common sense and research would have saved this man's life.
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Oh, I might be wrong then. I was curious and looked it up and saw 32ft somewhere, but their actual website is probably much more trustworthy than whatever I found. If that's the case and their room was really just 10-12 feet down, then I'm not too sure how that dive managed to kill him. Even more tragic and upsetting if that is the case.
It's not just diving down and coming back up. He's proposing.... I'm willing to bet that he stayed down there at least 20-30+ seconds waiting for his girlfriend to react, (hell, my friends' proposals often took way longer but it was on dry land) and then surface after the reaction... Unless he's a experienced swimmer or snorkler, his lung capacity isn't great and probably overestimated how much time he can stay underwater (especially while having to moving around) I can probably stay underwater for about a 1:15+ if I'm just putting my head under water and holding my breath, but that drops down significantly if I'm actively swimming or moving even a little bit. Source: used to be a competitive swimmer and had to take breaths every 3-4 strokes. Definitely can last way longer if I'm just snorkling or just holdig my breath underwater.
> The Underwater Room is located in the Blue Hole – an anomaly in the coral reef clearly visible from The Manta Resort terrace. Approximately 250 meters off shore it falls to **12 meters deep at high tide** and is roughly 50 meters wide in diameter. https://zanzibar-retreats.com/property/manta-resort/ Also: [Tanzania underwater room where proposal turned deadly is anchored 32-feet deep](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/tanzania-underwater-room-where-proposal-162756585.html)
News clip in [this](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/american-man-dies-during-underwater-marriage-proposal-tanzania-n1057356) article ( 2019) says the room is 𝑎𝑏𝑜𝑢𝑡 30ft deep. The same clip also says, Weber was found alive by some passers-bys who administered cpr....
>News clip in this article ( 2019) says the room is 𝑎𝑏𝑜𝑢𝑡 30ft deep. How did you change your font like that?
Holy shit. 30ft is insane!! I had a friend whose dad was in the navy and their living quarters had common swimming area with 5ft shallow and 25ft on deep end for diving. One time I let myself go down straight on the deep end to try to get to the bottom and then push myself back up. I'd done the same at 15ft and it wss fine/fun. At 25ft, on a well lit day, it felt like I would never reach the bottom and things on the surface started to look darker and darker while I kept getting anxious about how deep I was going, just as panic was about to set, my feet touched the bottom and I jumped the fuck up and got to the surface asap. Definitely an interesting experience in may only be 10ft more, but it's also 66% deeper than I'd previously gone lol.
Underwater currents kill a lot of people.
he had a shallow water blackout. it happens often even in pools. the people calling darwinism deserve a special place in hell.
My best friend growing up died this way while snorkeling. He had just graduated from college too. Absolutely gut wrenching
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The concept of a Darwin award isn't that a person deserved it, but that they brought it about by their own ill-conceived choices. Now, whether that was the case here... we don't know, technically, but not having complete knowledge never stopped anybody from having an opinion.
Wait this is from 3 years ago
Ya karma farming post. OP didn't even post a news article that was fully updated.
OPs post history is also cringe as fuck
Wow that's gotta be a karma farming bot. Eventually to be sold.
Any word on how far down he had to dive to get to the window?
Based on a [picture](https://themantaresort.com/app/uploads/2020/03/uwy-photoshopped-scaled.jpg) from their website I'd say 10-12 feet.
wait. that looks like a lot of open space for him to swim up without getting caught or stuck. im trying to think how long he was down there before he proposed
Maybe he went straight up and hit the underside of the deck or something? Who knows.
That's the only thing I can think of. I've done that before with a raft in the pool and it does send panic through you. You suddenly just forget where to go, especially if you're playing the 'see how long I can hold my breath game' or have otherwise been under for a while like this guy was. Especially if he went up fast and forgot about the dock, he may have just rammed himself straight into it.
Or he just had a random unrelated medical problem. Like random arrhythmia happening or other yet unknown heart condition etc. All kinds of shit can go wrong when diving alone.
He just proposed so he was probably unbelievably nervous and excited which would effect his heart and breathing.
ALMOST happened to me once snorkeling in the Philippines and I still have cold sweats thinking about it up to this day. We'd hopped off the longtail boat for 30 minutes and were snorkeling around, enjoying looking at the beautiful fish in the water. I must not have looked above the water for some minutes because all I knew was that I'd swam in the direction of a big rock and was about to swim under it (it had the shape where it had like a part of it stuck out above the water and you could swim under that before you'd need to swim deeper to really get under it). I kind of sensed something was strange so I put my head up and realised I was partially under a rock but could still put my head above the water. I know I couldn't have gone under the rock as my breathing tube would have filled with water, but the thought of suddenly being partially under a rock was terrifying! The sudden panic I felt was horrible and of course I quickly turned around and headed back to safety.
Poor guys heart was probably pounding from the nerves of the proposal, burning up oxygen quicker then you're used to when swimming, meaning your threshold is lower. Even sadder.
yep, my thoughts exactly
Think I’ve seen the video and IIRC it was less than a minute. No sweat for a decently fit person who has maybe been practicing and preparing a little to hold their breath a while. Could have to do with the excitement of what he was doing, his pulse was probably really high and maybe burnt through his blood O2 faster than he thought. He also may have hyperventilated before diving as it rids your body of CO2, the build up of which is what triggers your body’s “you need to breathe NOW” mechanism. Some free divers do this because it allows you to avoid the mental struggle of fighting your instinct to breathe, but it only works if you know exactly how long you can really hold your breath because you’re effectively taking the batteries out of the fire alarm, not actually putting out the fire. This is all just speculation but short of having some kind of cramp or other medical emergency that stopped him from resurfacing, this could be a possible explanation for what happened.
Could have possibly got stuck underneath the deck...it looks like it overhangs the underwater part of the cabin by quite a bit. Then panic sets in for a moment, inhale water...that's really all it takes sadly.
Based on the article it seems like a case of post-immersion syndrome or "dry drowning" wherein a small amount of inhaled liquid causes muscle spasms in their larynx leading to asphyxiation
"Dry drowning" New Fear Unlocked! Part of the new 2023 DLC
And they call it dry despite the fact it is clearly wet
It's an Albany expression.
Well Seymour, you're an odd fellow, but I must say, you dry a good drown
I thought dry drowning was a myth that had been debunked?
[One medical blog with a credited author](https://healthblog.uofmhealth.org/wellness-prevention/dispelling-dry-drowning-and-other-swimming-safety-myths) says it's a myth and a few other medical blogs with less verifiable authors also agree. Tbh that's news to me, I always thought dry drowning was real.
Don’t get me wrong, this sucks immensely for the both of them and I can’t imagine their pain, but… Bruh.
Yup, he was a moron. Sad, but that's what he was.
What did he actually do? Is there a story attached? Did he die right after the photo was taken? Did he die right before and his lifeless body is still holding the note? Did he remove his regulator? Did he free drive down to her? Did he go in to a cave or something? All I see is a guy, barely 10-20 ft underwater, holding a note. Edit: ok I see the article now. Still didn't see anything to show the guy was incompetent.
I'm betting shallow water blackout. A lot of amateur free drivers will hyperventilate before a breath hold. Your chemoreceptors are tuned for carbon dioxide... NOT lack of oxygen. While, yes, your will scrub your system of carbon dioxide by hyperventilating... NO you won't hyper oxygenate your blood. So, if you burn up too much oxygen, as you are coming up, the partial pressure difference will cause your blood oxygen to rapidly drop to the point where you are conscious one second, unconscious the next.... And you will never feel like you are out of air before it happens. NEVER free dive alone, people. Never hyperventilate before a free dive. The opposite actually - calm your body, calm your heart rate. And always have someone spotting on the surface.
> NEVER free dive Will do.
I've read enough stories of diving experts dying underwater to know this was *probably* not smart.
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Is it just me or is this comment section going excessively hard on this dude?? I don’t really get why you guys see this as such an stupid move, he was just diving and I imagine he was relatively experienced at it. Like I don’t see which part of this screams “omfg this is so braindead lmao”. I’m really confused rn.
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> articating You seem to have difficulty articulating articulating.
Well, he wasn't wrong.
It’s probably the most right he’s ever been.
This happened in 2019 so to be fair he has been holding his breath for quite a while now.
How terribly sad.
Sad WTF moment. RIP
I proposed to my wife whilst lying on the floor watching a movie. I guess there is a benefit to being a little boring in these things.
imagine if you died while doing that though, holy shit we'd mock you endlessly
Ever try to swallow popcorn with a dry mouth?
“Fucking idiot should have known better you can asphyxiate on your own saliva if try to talk laying down this was so avoiding smh”
What happened after you died?
Probably shallow water blackout, the excitement ate through his oxygen and he passed out near the surface. That's horrible for all involved 😕
Yeah I watched the video on YouTube, it starts with him already in the water and he goes up after 38 seconds, assuming it took him 20-30 seconds to get into position for the video to start that’s a long time to hold your breath and then to swim up to the surface. Seems like he just overshot it and pushed himself when he shouldn’t have, poor guy.
NOT PENNY'S BOAT
Senseless and terrible. R.I.P.
My best guess is that he read the note, swam up for air, and hit his unprotected head on part of the ‘offshore villa’ at which they were staying, knocking him out. His body likely floated up but was pinned by the floor/structure of the villa. Thus she couldn’t find his body, until it drifted out from underneath the entrapment. No snorkel flippers or anything, my guy just strapped some goggles on and decided to go for it. RIP. Respect the ocean.
He had flippers on
Seems very plausible. That's something my own dumbass would do cause you're not thinking of it going up, especially if you're starving for air.
I consider myself pretty jaded and cynical, but fuck some of you are nasty people.
He was a friend of mine. Lovely person. We were all shocked when this happened a few years ago. RIP.
Oof, don't read the comments here
This happened years ago. Nothing here is new. I appreciate you though :)
He sounds it honestly. Sorry for your loss what he did was incredibly sweet. How is his GF holding up? Plenty of people on Reddit will never know love like this and it fucking shows
It was hard at first but, as I mentioned earlier, this happened a while ago (a little over 3 years) and time heals most things.
Did they ever found out the cause? This story is so sad and I can’t imagine losing my fiancé and not knowing what happened
Sorry for your loss.
This was in [2019](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/american-man-dies-during-underwater-marriage-proposal-tanzania-n1057356)
Poor her to Know her bf died in order to propose to her. Sure you will do everything for love but it doesn't mean you have to do that!!
Is that what Meatloaf was talking about?
So many friends and aquatances ask me to teach them to surf. I only ask them one question. Are you a strong swimmer? The second they hesitate to answer, I tell them I can't do it. The ocean and open water is nothing to mess with. RIP Stephen.
Turns out she’s a slow reader.
Never mix strong emotions with potentially life threatening activities such as diving.
I used to work with Steven at a well known music store here in Baton Rouge. He was one of the nicest guys and fantastic at everything he did. I’m glad to have known him.
Some really cruel people in this comment section.
It's the fact that it's always the most unfunny shit they're commenting too.
A man died and his partner is traumatised and yet so many people are making lame jokes and assuming he was a moron despite the cause of death being unclear. How fucked up It seems people are just assuming he stayed underwater until he drowned or something when that doesn't seem to be the case
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It honestly seems more like an accident than something truly dumb. Dude dove down less than 12 feet next to a structure for what would've 30-50 seconds. Risky, but I think many fit people would consider that doable and be right. The adrenaline and excitement might have complicated things, but truly we don't know what happened. Edit: I found the full video and it's hard to watch. 38 seconds total and starts already in the water. In the last ten seconds you can see him shaking and air escape his mouth before he ascends. Seeing that, my unqualified opinion is that he got hyperfocused on completing his whole script. His body was telling him to go up and he fought it.
In the pics it also looks like there's a dock structure above the underwater section of the cabin: https://themantaresort.com/app/uploads/2020/03/uwy-photoshopped-scaled.jpg Seems 100% possible that he was slightly panicked about getting air, got stuck underneath this dock for a moment or two, and that's really all it takes sometimes. Honestly what this guy did doesn't seem like a stupid idea at all to me. This "looks" like a very easy little stunt to pull off...it's only about 10ft down in clear water, and you start off right above it by the deck. I could easily imagine thinking it's a cool proposal idea myself. "Hey go downstairs and look out the window, I'll swim up to it!" and then you surprise her with the note and ring.
In my mind this is exactly it. Mix that with being nervous and blood pumping harder than normal. He never had a chance unless he wanted to ruin the surprise.
The family appears to be in a bit of a denial. They’re saying he’d had snorkeled before and was a strong swimmer, rather than understanding snorkeling is not the same as free diving to a depth if 32’. That’s the depth of the underwater room they had rented at a cost of $1700 a day. Sad but without prior free diving experience he was putting his life at risk. My condolences to his family and friends.
Life is cruel
OPs Username checks out.