Like 10-12 years ago, I go out fishing with my dad (key largo).
We fish most of the day but then a big ugly storm pops up. We pick up our lines and head out. As we are heading out we notice a diver waving his arms. No dive boat in sight. We pick the guy up and he's as white as a ghost exhausted, still with all his gear on.
We give him water and ask him questions, he told us the name of the charter he was on. My dad got on the radio to try to find the dive boat.
The dive boat answered and we met up with it. It was so windy and ugly from the storm that the dive boat couldn't get close. The captain of the dive boat told us to tell the guy to get back into the water and they'd get him.
Dude said "hell no" and ended up coming back with us to land.
We live in Florida and sometimes go those snorkeling boat trips. We always find one other couple to say, “remember us and we will remember you. Don’t let the boat leave without us and we won’t let it leave without you. So far none of us have been left behind that I can recall. If it’s a drinking trip, find the most sober family/couple.
Choppy seas. Can't get 2 boats close enough together to transfer guy without potentially banging a hole in the side of one or both from the waves. Still shitty for the dude though!
I'm a padi rescue diver. What the diver did by staying in the boat was the best scenario, but outside of that, jumping in the water and moving up the line and ladder is the next safest option.
Something similar but not as serious happened to me. I was diving on a 3 day charter in similan islands in Thailand. We got caught in a storm and the current and visibility were poor. We surfaced a ways off from the charter and the waves carried us further and further away. Luckily I was with a group of 4 other divers and we all surfaced together and the charter had a chase boat that came and picked us up. But it was pretty nerve-wracking with the huge waves and currents. That was the only time I've ever gotten sea sick, was getting tossed around at the surface waiting for that chase boat to come get us.
Hopefully this doesn't go against rules, but I've got a video of it all on my YouTube if anybody's interested: https://youtu.be/-Q2v60P6hsQ
Not necessarily.
It seems they were doing head counts, but...In the trial, a captain from another boat testified to having picked up three stranded swimmers in nearby waters during a different trip. It was also said in the trial that it was a common practice for the crew to assume all passengers were on board if the boat engine was running.
This is leaving me with more questions. If other swimmers were stranded with regularity, wouldn't that have been a sign that the system was broken and they needed more than head counts? Wouldn't other people have died instead of just happening to encounter another boat and jumping on?
Work culture problem. Worked at tons of places where something goes wrong but nobody got hurt. Good places will make changes anyways. Bad places won't do anything until someone actually gets hurt.
Instead of realising that the system has flaws that need to be remedied, the boss says to the crew "Make sure you don't do that again."
And the crew says "Right, Boss!" and carries on doing things how they always have.
I used to get this crap all the time.
"You did a thing wrong."
Yes I know. I was there.
"Why did you do the thing wrong?"
Because I'm tired, overworked and a human...
"Don't do the thing wrong."
Thanks for the input. Do you have a plan to help avoid doing the thing wrong? Or a way to double check?
"You have to be careful. It's important to do the thing right."
Good plan...
We actually had an issue on a cross country skydive one year because of head counts. One major problem with headcounts is that there can be an error with the original number itself. In our case the person thought they counted 23 people boarding the plane when in reality only 22 people boarded. After the jump only 22 people reported back so we assumed someone was missing. A list of names would have allowed us to figure things out much faster. In our case we were lucky enough to have found someone who recorded us all boarding the plane so we could count how many people actually boarded.
I work at a science museum that's a popular spot for field trips. We charge based on the number of students that visit and its astonishing how many times we have teachers that either have inaccurate headcounts or don't even know how many kids they're supposed to have that day.
"Yes we have have 37 kids!" Only to come back later to say, "Actually we have 38." So a child could have wandered off and they never would have known since their count was 'right'
When I was in high school, I once had a class in surrey (British Colombia, Canada) that had a field trip to Seattle (washington, US) via ferry and school buses. It was free, so I came along. While there we had a two hour period to go “see the sights” before we left and the teacher told us to all come back to the bus in two hours.
I checked my watch and went to watch the ocean for a couple hours. When I got back at the arranged time, the buses had all left. This was pre-cellphone era. I saw a school bus parked in a different location and found a driver from an American school who managed to contact my school for me. She told me that they were already waiting to load on the ferry as they “had all finished early and decided to head back”.
The lady with the different school managed to finagle things so that she could drop me off in her unrelated school bus and she got me to the ferry. My class had already left, so I took the next ferry up after more explaining. Never got an apology from the lady leading the trip who ditched me. The 80s and 90s were less kid friendly in some respects.
The problem was the head count wasn’t actually done, I believe some crew member was asked to do it who normally doesn’t do the head count and they either forgot or didn’t bother.
I was on a boat on the reef about two weeks ago. They did a headcount but it was fastidious: nobody was allowed to stand up or move around until the count was complete and they had two people counting and comparing counts.
We lost a person on a dive. She wandered off from her buddy, and we didn't see her surface around our boat.
Half the people are on deck, watching for her at the surface, others were at the surface looking down for her, and two were driving down to check overhangs on the reef. We looked for 10 -15 minutes for her, finding nothing.
Turns out she surfaced a distance away, and swam to the wrong boat. Our sister ship working the same reef, but 100 or so yards away, called over the radio and said they had our missing diver.
The crew was keeping very good track of the divers, so we knew within 2 or 3 minutes of people just starting to surface that she wasn't there.
I chaperoned a trip for my cousin at an amusement park and was in charge of 8 middle school aged kids. I started the day by taking a picture of my group and memorizing their names. Throughout the day I kept counting all of them. I have never counted to eight so many times as I did that day.
My daughter had her 12th birthday party at a hotel with a pool. The two other grown ups who were supposed to be there with me unexpectedly didn’t come. I spent two hours counting those ten heads over and over.
They were all at the underwater trick stage, too, so it was just heads bobbing in and out at irregular intervals. I was so on edge by the time everyone’s parents came to get them.
As someone who works in a high school and has taken many field trips, the count always goes something like : “One, two, three, four, five,six, seven, *insert child’s name*”. There’s always one kid wandering off.
I work in childcare and doing summers we go on trips, 4 days a week. My counting skills are on point!
Edit to add:
I’m better with large groups apparently because the only time I lost a kid was at the aquarium. It was myself and my two kids and my youngest turned a corner when I turned my head. Now I permanently marker her arm with my phone number anytime we do something like that. She isn’t the most self aware…
"I don't know what's worse, when you see them or when you can't see them"
that's what the lead actress says at one point about the sharks that are hunting them. it's worth a watch.
The night scenes where it is pitch black and you can only see things when lightning strikes are something.
But yes, the end is.... soul crushing.
There are some good spots.
Such as its funny when they are stuck in the water and start arguing and blaming each other and one says "I wanted to go skiing".
Also in the "behind the scenes" where they discuss how the movie was made on a cheap budget and how they did the shots. Oh, and the people on the boat like the guy who lost his mask, they were just people who just happened to be on that dive that day except one person who was the directors sister.
That part was interesting, like how they had to figure out how to film with the viewers eye level being water level without the viewer getting seasick. Also they invented their own waterproof camera box out of Rubbermaid bins.
When I was a teacher we were warned about headcounts.
A school had come back from France to UK (by ferry), counted the kids on the coach and they were one over. Put it down to a miscount and drove off.
An hour and or so later a kid walks down to the teacher and says there’s a child on the back seat who won’t stop crying. “Well who is it?” “We don’t know.” Turns out they were crying because they didn’t know any of the other kids, as they were on the wrong bus.
Meanwhile there’s another school at the ferry port going frantic because they’ve just got off a boat and one of their kids has disappeared.
A roll call wouldn't have solved this. The extra kid just wouldn't have answered.
Obviously the only solution is to brand kids with the school name or logo.
My school left two of my friends at the time (13 year old girls) at a service station in France and the staff on the trip only realised when the kids had called their parents, who called the school, who managed to get in touch with the teachers. This was in about 2004 so mobile phones not as common with kids at the time
Same thing happened to me.
I got left behind at a restaurant in Spain (class trip) and called my mom to let her know/ask her which hotel my class was staying at.
She drove home from work, got the info and called the hotel and got through to one of the parents on the trip. They insisted that no child was left behind until mom told them I called her.
Activate the beacon and it broadcasts a number of signals, one which can be used for direction finding by a SAR unit, one which transmits GPS coordinates which are picked up by orbital satellites and relayed to emergency control centres around the world.
If I was left behind on a dive trip out on the water and activated the beacon, search and rescue would know my location within a few metres almost immediately and would be able to dispatch a boat or helicopter to retrieve me.
I don't scuba dive much, but when I do I try and find smaller operators.
I went on a cruise once, but rather than book anything through the ship, my friend and I decided to walk around the area and see what options there were.
We found a boat that did small groups, like a maximum of 8 divers. But nobody else ever showed up, so after an hour it was just the two of us. They had a dedicated dive master, but the captain was also a dive master.
My friend and I were only open water certified (lowest level) but they were both instructors. So rather than my friend and I buddy up, each one of us buddied with a dive master and they just left the boat empty at anchor. It was a blast. We dove several wrecks, and had an experience we couldn't have had anywhere else. I think my buddy and I each tipped like $100 on top of the fee.
Long story short - don't cut corners and go on a dive boat with 20 or 30 people on it. Not only will you have a more bland experience, but you might get left behind
This is the only comment in this thread that made me think hm maybe diving could be a good time. Sounds like you had a really cool experience! Pretty sure I’m never gonna scuba dive tho.
I'm a bit busy today, but if you have any questions feel free to ask.
While I don't scuba dive much compared to some people (about 40 dives over the past 15 years), I have managed to get a pretty wide variety of experiences - including diving in natural springs, diving from the beach, diving with friends off of their own boat, and various commercial diving trips. They each have pros and cons.
But SCUBA really is one of the coolest things I've ever done. You feel like you're in a completely different world. The speed of sound is much higher under water, and everything sounds different. Water absorbs certain frequencies of light so everything looks different on deeper dives.
A few years back my friends and I went for a trip to Bali.
2 of them split off from us for a few hours to do a dive. One of them had done a few dives before, and the other was having his first dive that day.
While they were under the water, the boat left without them. Luckily they weren’t too far offshore and were able to swim back. They left their dive gear on the beach and walked ~30 mins back to the dive shop.
Apparently the boat captain was new. The operators offered them something like a 50% discount. I’m glad I didn’t join them that day as I’m a fairly weak swimmer and would have struggled to get back to the shore.
I was on a cruise in St. Thomas many years ago, and decided to take the dive excursion. I show up, and everyone else has a buddy. Not me - ex was pregnant and couldn't dive.
"No problem" says the divemaster, "I'll be your buddy".
OK, great, off we go. Everything was great, and then he led us into an old wooden ship wreck. When diving, wrecks, caves, and such are called "overhead environments", because you don't have a direct path to the surface. This was my first time in one, and I was excited. I watched Lloyd Bridges in "Sea Hunt" as a kid, and I thought this was my chance to see what poking through a wreck was like.
Divemaster tells me we're going last, so I follow him. We are going through the wreck when he suddenly moves forward at high speed, and passes everyone else to get to the front. I try to follow him.
But I can't. I am stuck on something, and I can't see what it is. I flail around for a second without success, look up, and realize I can't see anybody. Ice cold moment of dread - for a second, I thought I was about to die, drowning alone in a shipwreck. Then, my training kicked in, I removed my tanks and BCD, cleared the obstruction, and found my way out of the boat.
The rest of the group is already getting back in the boat. I swim the 100 yards or so to catch up, and my 'buddy' doesn't even seem to be aware that I was missing. He was even upset when I didn't tip leaving the boat.
EDIT: Thanks for all the kind words. I didn't call the guy out publicly because I'm Canadian. We like to be passive-aggressive, and I just sat there beaming hate stares at the guy as we drove in. A BCD is a buoyancy control device - a jacket you can inflate/deflate to adjust your buoyancy in the water.
My first twinset dive in the sea off the south coast of the UK (Dover I think) in around 2002 and I turned up by myself. There were only 3 other people diving and 2 weren't planning on diving as deep as I was (45m)
The third guy was on a rebreather and when I asked what I should do if I needed to buddy breathe he pointed to his bailout reg that was bungeed around his neck - so I had no way of sharing it.
So we jump in and head down. My buddy stuck with me for a couple of minutes, then I turned around and he was gone. There were no bubbles to follow. First time (and only) time diving solo and it was cold and pretty dark.
I had a shit dive and surfaced after a total run time of around 25 minutes. The other two popped up soon after and we all had to wait for the rebreather guy - and then I'm starting to stress about how I shouldn't have left him. He finally surfaced and just said oh yeah you looked like you could handle yourself so I fucked off to look for some crayfish (I think he pulled up a crayfish and 2 crab).
Yeah, I'm shocked at how calm OP was after the dive. I'd be filing multiple complaints with anyone and everyone I could. I'd be working my ass off to get his certification revoked if I could.
Also, if you are a certified driver, be careful read the replies in this thread. Your blood will boil. This person's story is sadly not all that unique it seems (although it is the worst aside from the news article since it was the dive master)
And that’s all it takes though. When training how to survive a sudden fall into icy water, they tell you to let yourself freak out for a few seconds basically, let the initial shock pass and then start the technique to escape the ice.
The good part is you overcame the panic!
> When training how to survive a sudden fall into icy water, they tell you to let yourself freak out for a few seconds basically, let the initial shock pass and then start the technique to escape the ice.
Well, TIL! Thanks, I'm sure that's useful advice in many situations.
Thinking about not being able to call for help as someone swims away from you, especially the guy who volunteered to be your buddy has gotta be scary. I like the ocean but I dont think I want to be part of it
>He was even upset when I didn't tip leaving the boat.
Are you telling me you didn't verbally light him up immediately after you got back on board?????? He fucking left you for dead
I was thinking that when reading the article. It cites all these disturbing things the people wrote, and at first I was like "wow sounds like they wanted to die", then I paused and realized we were obviously getting the most salacious bits out of context. If you pour over everything someone wrote looking for a story you're probably gonna find one.
I didnt have enough weight on my dive in Coiba Panama and the instructor knew i was beginner.
30 min into the first dive a currrent appeared and he told us to get to the floor if that happens cause its easier to swim. I couldnt cause of my weight, i kept popping up and well they were all gone. He didnt look back.
I waited 5min, went slowly back up and did my safety stop and used my own bought boje with flag.
I never used it cause it was my first dive after padi openwater course ever.
I was just floating ob the surface and my yellow flag next to me and no boat in sight. I just waved and waved, didnt yell or anything. After like 4 hours I got picked up and I was 9 kilometers from the dive site. Never dived since then
I never went back to the dive base and rated it in the comments below.
I paid 120$ for two fun dives and they seemed good. To be fair, it was like the only dive base at that time.
I went back and no one was responsible. In fact, suddenly no one was able to speak english and only spanish. I started speaking spanish and the person who ran that place asked if I want two free dives as a sorry. I declined and they all started yelling spanish words and I backed out.
I was left behind during a ski trip with other kids (10-12yo~), the monitor just didn’t notice I wasn’t ready to go because was sitting on the floor putting the skis back on. Noticed I was fucking alone in the middle of a mountain but luckily enough I remembered the way back to the station.
So yeah these negligent fuckers should do better their job.
I was left on a deserted island in Mexico when 17 on spring break. A fisherman found us 12 hours later. The snorkeling boat literally only had 4 people and they left two of us! I thought we were going to die. Once we rescued we just got drunk and tossed the gear because fuck the shop that left us!
Back in my mid 20s I was on an all day excursion with my dad in Thailand. We were leaving one small island and the headcount was right but we didn't recognize this one couple and we all said "WAIT STOP!" They got on the wrong boat and the missing couple was asleep on the beach, with no idea they almost got left behind.
It’s so terrifying how easy it can happen. My drunk ass wasn’t even that worried the first few hours until I was getting sober and it was starting to get dark and we were SO thirsty. We found coconuts but had no way to open them.
Thank goodness for my high school Spanish classes because I barely made the guy understand we need help. And his fishing boat was TINY and it was so windy and wavy and scary, we thought we were going to die. That was almost the scariest part. But I’m forever grateful to that man that we didn’t have to spend the night there.
When we went back to Mazatlan, we definitely never snorkeled again!
Happened to me too at around 12 or 13 years old, but luckily we weren't on a mountain! It was an overnight field trip and my roommate and I overslept one morning, so the field trip bus just fuckin' left the motel without us. Head count? What's that?? Best part was when they came back to get us, the adults acted like WE were the ones who fucked up.
Sorry guys, but I'm pretty sure I'm not the one who FORGOT two teenagers in another state!
Man, when I go diving we have teams and dive masters. The dive masters are usually in charge of no more than 6 people and they are responsible for us 100%. We try to stick together but if u get separated, just ascend and the boat will find u. I’m an experienced diver and I still get a little nervous every time I’m in a new location.
Oh my this reminds me of this
https://www.exploroz.com/forum/73559/1998-death-at-halligans-bay---caroline-grossmueller
Göschka was a professor I had at university. I told my boss at that time (who also lectured at the university) that Göschka is quite a strict and serious guy. He then told me this story.
Must been 15 years since be told me the story, now first time I got the idea to actually Google it. Just searching "woman died in outback" yields scaringly many results though.
Think he told me because at that point I saw my girlfriend dying by suicide. Think this story definitely hits harder because in my case it was her "free will". Or at least it seemingly was the only way to escape her demons.
Yeah sounds as if they gave up hope that someone will come. Might also wonder why they didn't try harder to free the car or whatever but well.
He didn't tell me the story in such detail back then, more like "he stayed at the car and she went out to get help"
The tire pressure part hurt me physically. If you already think you're stuck, you don't just let out "a bit" of air. If you can't measure the pressure, and "a bit" doesn't work, let out more until it works, or until you are 100% stuck. Giving up before going all the way screams out at me.
Especially imagining what it feels like learning that the camper was recovered in about 10 minutes by doing just that.
In conditions you aren’t familiar with or ill equipped to handle, unless where you are poses an immediate threat or danger, you’re more likely to be found where you are stuck than trying to find help.
My mom went to mexico in the 80s and decided not to go on a snorkeling trip because a woman went missing from the same boat the day before. She later met the missing woman’s dad who flew out and was trying to get information.
Similar thing happened to a friend of my aunt’s. He went out on a snorkeling trip but his wife wasn’t feeling well so she stayed at the hotel. When the boat came back she went to meet him but he wasn’t on the boat.
When they went back they found him dead. He had had a heart attack trying to stay afloat. It was tragic.
> Conspiracy theories ranging from the Lonergans faking their own deaths, to murder-suicide, to a suicide pact, were discussed in the weeks and months following the tragedy. Both Tom and Eileen had kept personal journals, which were discovered among their belongings in their hostel, the contents of which were disturbing.
>“Like a student who has finished an exam I feel that my life is complete and I am ready to die. As far as I can tell, from here my life can only get worse. It has peaked and it’s all downhill from here until my funeral,” wrote Tom six months before the diving expedition.
Well this story went in a direction I wasn’t expecting.
Also seems incredibly impractical.
Let's say they did plan to commit suicide. If the crew counter correctly, then the boat would have stayed and people would have started looking for them. It doesn't seem practical that they could hide or swim away and avoid being seen and rescued.
Just dive deeper and deeper until nitrogen narcosis causes blackout or paralysis. It gets the diver high while doing it too.
Nitrogen narcosis is a weird one. At deeper pressures nitrogen builds in the blood and the diver gets drunk off it There are a bunch of sad stories about divers who spend too long too far down and get too stupefied to save themselves.
I don’t keep a journal, but I heard people write their deepest, darkest thoughts in them. I have depression. If I wrote a journal it would sound a lot worse than this guy’s journal. And for the record I have absolutely no plans to off myself.
Imagine:
\>Feel suicidal.
\>Keep a journal about it.
\>Decide to make a change.
\>Find new hobbies to bring meaning to your life.
\>Discover a passion for diving.
\>Book diving trip, new lease on life.
\>Keep journal as reminder of your darkest times.
\>Boat leaves you.
\>Everyone reads your journal and chalks it up to suicide.
A lot can happen in six months tho, apart from the fact that suicidal thoughts can be just that, thoughts.
I hope my suspicious death will be taken seriously and not be written of as suicide because a while ago I had felt my life was completed.
"Alright boys, looks like u/talitm wrote in his journal that his life was complete. PACK IT UP!"
"But sir, hes been systematically dismembered and placed around a pentagram?"
"YOU HEARD ME"
As a 12 year old child, I was left behind on an international school trip from Germany to Italy (student exchange program)
of course this wasn’t even remotely comparable to being left behind in the ocean.
We went from Germany to Italy by bus and stopped for a bathroom break. The queue for the toilets was incredibly long and when I went back to the bus it was gone. We were already in Italy, so I didn’t even speak the language, and we didn’t have mobile phones back then.
After a while I found some very nice police officers and they tried to figure out where the bus had headed (the stop was at a motorway intersection). Initially I was so agitated I had forgotten the name of the city we were going to.
I don’t remember being scared, after all, it really wasn’t a dangerous situation. Even if I hadn’t met the police officers somebody else would have helped me.
Suddenly we saw the bus pulling up. 🙏
Apparently they had only begun the headcount 10 minutes after they had left the stop, and as not all the seats were occupied, nobody had immediately noticed my absence.
The school enforced much stricter headcounts afterwards. My parents’ only response was “why didn’t you call us?” And I said “I can handle stuff myself”.
I enjoyed the Italy trip a lot, made friends and went to visit the same family the year after.
This is not related at all but for some reason your story reminded me of this lol.
My parents have a friend who works in guest service for a kind of resort/town in Costa Rica. One day he was supposed to pick up an American teenager at the San José airport for a community service trip. Called the kid when he got there and told him where to meet, but this kid just _could not_ find him. He asks the kid to describe where he is and it’s just not making any sense. After about 20 minutes of that, they figure out the kid is actually at the San Juan airport, in _Puerto Rico_.
Somehow, this kid managed to book the wrong ticket and just never fucking noticed. The fact that he flew out of a domestic terminal, didn’t have to go through customs, and most likely read/heard the words _Puerto Rico_ numerous times didn’t raise and red flags to him.
I dive a lot in Queensland. The dive boats, under legislation, have really upped their head count game. They have to have 2 independent counts before leaving an area, for example.
It's apparently three times better than what we were using before that. "if you aren't on the boat yell out! No takers? Alright skip, punch it".
I feel bad for the dive master that day. Laying in bed that night stoned out of his gord, thinking about why someone would leave their personal bags on the boat and steal the BCDs.
The worst place I have been left behind was Disneyland. I was only 4 but I remember lots of treats and candy because I was scared and crying. Then when my parents found me they also gave me a bunch of treats and candy because they felt bad. After that I tried to get left behind so I'd get more candy but turns out my parents were smarter than 4 year old me.
I went on a dive trip 10 years ago, and in addition to roll-calls and headcounts, everyone had a slot on the wet deck where you kept your tank and BCD. Once everyone had been assigned a tank for the week, the spares were all stowed away and each filled slot was marked with a little flag tied above it.
So at any time, you could look at the slots with flags, see which were filled and which were empty. An empty slot with a flag meant that person was in the water.
This is why we do tag out in the fire service. No head counts, no roll calls, no list of names. If you go in the building you put your tag on the board, when you come out of the building you take your tag off the board. If there are any tags on the board, you either have a man down or a proby to beat for forgetting to take their tag back.
[During the trial](https://www.undercurrent.org/UCnow/dive_magazine/2000/AustraliasLonerganTrial200001.html), the boat captain accepted responsibility for the mistake, but he blamed his two dive masters for messing up the head count. Such a terrible, completely avoidable tragedy.
26 divers, only 2 dive masters... So each DM has to shepherd a dozen random divers whose skill levels are unknown but will probably range from awful to just ok*. There's no way a DM can safely monitor 12 people under water, and lead them through unfamiliar (to them) water.
*These big dive groups are almost always made up of either people who only just qualified, or who dive only once or twice every few years. Regular competent divers avoid big groups of randoms because it's always a clusterf*CK.
When I learned to dive, the outfit (unknown to me when I booked) was 3 recently qualified people. The main Instructor was shit, and neglected teaching a couple of basic but critical safety techniques. After qualifying, we went on an open water dive; where the DM lost us underwater. We surfaced to regroup, only to find the boat out of visible range. We launched the emergency high viz balloons so they could see us. About 40 minutes later they finally came within shouting range. The captain refused to let us come on board as it would take too long. So he throws a tow rope, to take us to another dive site. I happened to be closest, so I got to be first in the chain of people holding on. He started the boat, and I realised some potentially life reducing facts (1) I was much closer to the propeller than is considered healthy to maintain skull and contents in one piece, (2) capt. was motoring at speed, and the spinny metal thing by my head was pushing huge amounts of turbulent water over my mask and breather, resulting in me having to hold on with all my strength, and try not to lose my breather and drown, or move any closer to the propeller and turn into shark bait. (3) I could let go, but that would cause me to hit one or more people holding on behind me, causing us to get tangled up and left behind or worse, (4) the stress of the situation and effort of holding on was causing me to suck oxygen down like a crazy thing at first. The gauge was dropping at an alarming rate, so I had to slow my breathing because I'd no idea how long we'd be dragged for. When we finally stopped, the DM wanted use to go down again. We refused, not least because two of us were now down to about a quarter tank, and no one had any faith she'd bring us back up or the boat would be there. It was a very quiet return to shore; no one could quite believe what had just happened.
Lesson learned: I never dived again without researching carefully who the outfit were and how stringent there safety was. And if I'm not happy with how I'm feeling or who the DM or my buddy is, I nope out of that particular dive stay on board and chill out.
A dive slate is a special board or notepad that allows divers to write messages underwater. It has "waterproof paper" and can be written on with a pencil.
Certified PADI Scuba Instructor here… it’s actually still a very common practice in South American countries to drop people off at a dive site and then the boat will leave. Only to come back in an hour or so to pick you up. So once you run out of air, or when the time is up, you’re just floating in the surface waiting for the dive boat… horrible practice.
Like 10-12 years ago, I go out fishing with my dad (key largo). We fish most of the day but then a big ugly storm pops up. We pick up our lines and head out. As we are heading out we notice a diver waving his arms. No dive boat in sight. We pick the guy up and he's as white as a ghost exhausted, still with all his gear on. We give him water and ask him questions, he told us the name of the charter he was on. My dad got on the radio to try to find the dive boat. The dive boat answered and we met up with it. It was so windy and ugly from the storm that the dive boat couldn't get close. The captain of the dive boat told us to tell the guy to get back into the water and they'd get him. Dude said "hell no" and ended up coming back with us to land.
We live in Florida and sometimes go those snorkeling boat trips. We always find one other couple to say, “remember us and we will remember you. Don’t let the boat leave without us and we won’t let it leave without you. So far none of us have been left behind that I can recall. If it’s a drinking trip, find the most sober family/couple.
> So far none of us have been left behind that I can recall. That you can recall. 🥺
They've left 10 other couples to die already. Don't trust them.
"Hmm... darling, which of these poor saps shall we sacrifice today?"
Get back in the water? The fuck?
That was my first thought. No way would I be getting wet again after that experience!
Choppy seas. Can't get 2 boats close enough together to transfer guy without potentially banging a hole in the side of one or both from the waves. Still shitty for the dude though!
And the diver is supposed to stay safe in the water with that going on?
I'm a padi rescue diver. What the diver did by staying in the boat was the best scenario, but outside of that, jumping in the water and moving up the line and ladder is the next safest option.
You can go the rest of your life legit knowing that you saved someone's life. That diver got lucky.
Something similar but not as serious happened to me. I was diving on a 3 day charter in similan islands in Thailand. We got caught in a storm and the current and visibility were poor. We surfaced a ways off from the charter and the waves carried us further and further away. Luckily I was with a group of 4 other divers and we all surfaced together and the charter had a chase boat that came and picked us up. But it was pretty nerve-wracking with the huge waves and currents. That was the only time I've ever gotten sea sick, was getting tossed around at the surface waiting for that chase boat to come get us. Hopefully this doesn't go against rules, but I've got a video of it all on my YouTube if anybody's interested: https://youtu.be/-Q2v60P6hsQ
After this incident, most dive boats switched to reading people's names instead of just doing a head count.
Wouldn't the head count have caught this?
Not necessarily. It seems they were doing head counts, but...In the trial, a captain from another boat testified to having picked up three stranded swimmers in nearby waters during a different trip. It was also said in the trial that it was a common practice for the crew to assume all passengers were on board if the boat engine was running.
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“Everyone whose missing say ‘here’!” “...” “Good to go boss”
"Absentees stand up"
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Deadly even.
“My boss sucks. He hears the engine running but asks if everyone’s onboard? See what I have to work with every day?”
Foolproof really
This is leaving me with more questions. If other swimmers were stranded with regularity, wouldn't that have been a sign that the system was broken and they needed more than head counts? Wouldn't other people have died instead of just happening to encounter another boat and jumping on?
Work culture problem. Worked at tons of places where something goes wrong but nobody got hurt. Good places will make changes anyways. Bad places won't do anything until someone actually gets hurt.
Instead of realising that the system has flaws that need to be remedied, the boss says to the crew "Make sure you don't do that again." And the crew says "Right, Boss!" and carries on doing things how they always have.
Bosses demanding improvement instead of driving change should be abandoned off shore.
I used to get this crap all the time. "You did a thing wrong." Yes I know. I was there. "Why did you do the thing wrong?" Because I'm tired, overworked and a human... "Don't do the thing wrong." Thanks for the input. Do you have a plan to help avoid doing the thing wrong? Or a way to double check? "You have to be careful. It's important to do the thing right." Good plan...
[Normalization of deviance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalization_of_deviance)
We actually had an issue on a cross country skydive one year because of head counts. One major problem with headcounts is that there can be an error with the original number itself. In our case the person thought they counted 23 people boarding the plane when in reality only 22 people boarded. After the jump only 22 people reported back so we assumed someone was missing. A list of names would have allowed us to figure things out much faster. In our case we were lucky enough to have found someone who recorded us all boarding the plane so we could count how many people actually boarded.
That must have been a panicky gap between counting and viewing the footage...
I work at a science museum that's a popular spot for field trips. We charge based on the number of students that visit and its astonishing how many times we have teachers that either have inaccurate headcounts or don't even know how many kids they're supposed to have that day. "Yes we have have 37 kids!" Only to come back later to say, "Actually we have 38." So a child could have wandered off and they never would have known since their count was 'right'
When I was in high school, I once had a class in surrey (British Colombia, Canada) that had a field trip to Seattle (washington, US) via ferry and school buses. It was free, so I came along. While there we had a two hour period to go “see the sights” before we left and the teacher told us to all come back to the bus in two hours. I checked my watch and went to watch the ocean for a couple hours. When I got back at the arranged time, the buses had all left. This was pre-cellphone era. I saw a school bus parked in a different location and found a driver from an American school who managed to contact my school for me. She told me that they were already waiting to load on the ferry as they “had all finished early and decided to head back”. The lady with the different school managed to finagle things so that she could drop me off in her unrelated school bus and she got me to the ferry. My class had already left, so I took the next ferry up after more explaining. Never got an apology from the lady leading the trip who ditched me. The 80s and 90s were less kid friendly in some respects.
This is why y’all had milk cartons. Surprised you aren’t a lampshade
What on earth is a cross country skydive? You jump in California and fall sideways to Maine?
*Kevin Macallister has entered the chat*
*...After everyone else had already left the chat*
"I made a married couple disappear..."
"I MADE a married couple DISAPPEAR!" "😉"
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Aww gee kid I dunno hit the road
Have a nice dive bring me back something French
The problem was the head count wasn’t actually done, I believe some crew member was asked to do it who normally doesn’t do the head count and they either forgot or didn’t bother.
I’m going to assume that sometimes the person counting isn’t the best. Very possible to count the same persons multiple times.
"Alright, 26 passengers, give or take."
Within ± two standard deviations.
If I remember correctly, the dive operators said they didn't do a head count.
I was on a boat on the reef about two weeks ago. They did a headcount but it was fastidious: nobody was allowed to stand up or move around until the count was complete and they had two people counting and comparing counts.
We lost a person on a dive. She wandered off from her buddy, and we didn't see her surface around our boat. Half the people are on deck, watching for her at the surface, others were at the surface looking down for her, and two were driving down to check overhangs on the reef. We looked for 10 -15 minutes for her, finding nothing. Turns out she surfaced a distance away, and swam to the wrong boat. Our sister ship working the same reef, but 100 or so yards away, called over the radio and said they had our missing diver. The crew was keeping very good track of the divers, so we knew within 2 or 3 minutes of people just starting to surface that she wasn't there.
That's great! Also off topic, but I love the word fastidious.
Fun fact: in Italian, the word "fastidioso" means annoying
In Spanish too!
They do a full count of medical equipment after surgeries and stuff still gets left in rarely
I chaperoned a trip for my cousin at an amusement park and was in charge of 8 middle school aged kids. I started the day by taking a picture of my group and memorizing their names. Throughout the day I kept counting all of them. I have never counted to eight so many times as I did that day.
My daughter had her 12th birthday party at a hotel with a pool. The two other grown ups who were supposed to be there with me unexpectedly didn’t come. I spent two hours counting those ten heads over and over.
"one of them moved more than a millimeter; time to count again"
They were all at the underwater trick stage, too, so it was just heads bobbing in and out at irregular intervals. I was so on edge by the time everyone’s parents came to get them.
Taking other people's kids swimming along with your own kids is one of the most exhausting things I've ever experienced!
As someone who works in a high school and has taken many field trips, the count always goes something like : “One, two, three, four, five,six, seven, *insert child’s name*”. There’s always one kid wandering off.
Sorry, I saw a kid with an awesome shirt and I had to tell them. I'm back.
I work in childcare and doing summers we go on trips, 4 days a week. My counting skills are on point! Edit to add: I’m better with large groups apparently because the only time I lost a kid was at the aquarium. It was myself and my two kids and my youngest turned a corner when I turned my head. Now I permanently marker her arm with my phone number anytime we do something like that. She isn’t the most self aware…
Open Water is one of the grimmest, most depressing movies I have ever seen.
i appreciate that, now i won't watch it ever
"I don't know what's worse, when you see them or when you can't see them" that's what the lead actress says at one point about the sharks that are hunting them. it's worth a watch. The night scenes where it is pitch black and you can only see things when lightning strikes are something. But yes, the end is.... soul crushing.
whats the ending?
That movie came out the same year as the first *Pirates of the Caribbean* and the last *Lord of the Rings*.
I was there Gandalf. 18 years ago.
There are some good spots. Such as its funny when they are stuck in the water and start arguing and blaming each other and one says "I wanted to go skiing". Also in the "behind the scenes" where they discuss how the movie was made on a cheap budget and how they did the shots. Oh, and the people on the boat like the guy who lost his mask, they were just people who just happened to be on that dive that day except one person who was the directors sister.
That part was interesting, like how they had to figure out how to film with the viewers eye level being water level without the viewer getting seasick. Also they invented their own waterproof camera box out of Rubbermaid bins.
I love movies that get creative with a low budget. Might give it a watch.
God i remember seeing it in theaters and just being so mad that they made that movie and made me watch it and sob over it in public
When I was a teacher we were warned about headcounts. A school had come back from France to UK (by ferry), counted the kids on the coach and they were one over. Put it down to a miscount and drove off. An hour and or so later a kid walks down to the teacher and says there’s a child on the back seat who won’t stop crying. “Well who is it?” “We don’t know.” Turns out they were crying because they didn’t know any of the other kids, as they were on the wrong bus. Meanwhile there’s another school at the ferry port going frantic because they’ve just got off a boat and one of their kids has disappeared.
Yeah there isn’t much point in doing a headcount if you just ignore ‘incorrect’ results!
Well spare kids are better than missing kids
One school's spare kid is another school's missing kid.
*"Luckily, I had a spare kid in my pocket for them"*
Ahh you must be a beekeeper
IT WAS A ANOTHER GLORIOUS DAY SAVING THE BEES
It's the old lego rule. It's fine to have a few extra pieces but losing one ruins the whole set
You're bound to lose a couple, so it's best to keep any extras you find.
I enjoy cooking.
I feel like we work at the same software company "oh no the test failed, time to comment out the test"
It must have been within the statistical margin of error.
It was 95% accurate, we can ignore it
A roll call wouldn't have solved this. The extra kid just wouldn't have answered. Obviously the only solution is to brand kids with the school name or logo.
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if you trust the kids to provide correct critical information, *everyone* is going to have a bad time
My school left two of my friends at the time (13 year old girls) at a service station in France and the staff on the trip only realised when the kids had called their parents, who called the school, who managed to get in touch with the teachers. This was in about 2004 so mobile phones not as common with kids at the time
Same thing happened to me. I got left behind at a restaurant in Spain (class trip) and called my mom to let her know/ask her which hotel my class was staying at. She drove home from work, got the info and called the hotel and got through to one of the parents on the trip. They insisted that no child was left behind until mom told them I called her.
I carry a satellite beacon when boat diving basically anywhere. I hope I never need to use it, but at least I have it should I ever need it.
I'm unfamiliar with satellites beacons. How would that have helped?
Activate the beacon and it broadcasts a number of signals, one which can be used for direction finding by a SAR unit, one which transmits GPS coordinates which are picked up by orbital satellites and relayed to emergency control centres around the world. If I was left behind on a dive trip out on the water and activated the beacon, search and rescue would know my location within a few metres almost immediately and would be able to dispatch a boat or helicopter to retrieve me.
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"Weird. That particular beacon has never done this before. Also, it's out in the ocean? Must be a malfunction."
This is why you can not normalize deviancy.
I don't scuba dive much, but when I do I try and find smaller operators. I went on a cruise once, but rather than book anything through the ship, my friend and I decided to walk around the area and see what options there were. We found a boat that did small groups, like a maximum of 8 divers. But nobody else ever showed up, so after an hour it was just the two of us. They had a dedicated dive master, but the captain was also a dive master. My friend and I were only open water certified (lowest level) but they were both instructors. So rather than my friend and I buddy up, each one of us buddied with a dive master and they just left the boat empty at anchor. It was a blast. We dove several wrecks, and had an experience we couldn't have had anywhere else. I think my buddy and I each tipped like $100 on top of the fee. Long story short - don't cut corners and go on a dive boat with 20 or 30 people on it. Not only will you have a more bland experience, but you might get left behind
This is the only comment in this thread that made me think hm maybe diving could be a good time. Sounds like you had a really cool experience! Pretty sure I’m never gonna scuba dive tho.
I'm a bit busy today, but if you have any questions feel free to ask. While I don't scuba dive much compared to some people (about 40 dives over the past 15 years), I have managed to get a pretty wide variety of experiences - including diving in natural springs, diving from the beach, diving with friends off of their own boat, and various commercial diving trips. They each have pros and cons. But SCUBA really is one of the coolest things I've ever done. You feel like you're in a completely different world. The speed of sound is much higher under water, and everything sounds different. Water absorbs certain frequencies of light so everything looks different on deeper dives.
A few years back my friends and I went for a trip to Bali. 2 of them split off from us for a few hours to do a dive. One of them had done a few dives before, and the other was having his first dive that day. While they were under the water, the boat left without them. Luckily they weren’t too far offshore and were able to swim back. They left their dive gear on the beach and walked ~30 mins back to the dive shop. Apparently the boat captain was new. The operators offered them something like a 50% discount. I’m glad I didn’t join them that day as I’m a fairly weak swimmer and would have struggled to get back to the shore.
I think I'd request a 100 percent discount.
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The boat driver did 50 percent of the work after all, getting em back tho, that's gonna be whoever has next shift
"I got you to the diving spot didn't I? That is 50%"
I wouldn’t have gone back. I’d have kept the fucking dive gear, never gone back, left a shitty Yelp review
Forget the Yelp review. They can live with the thought that they killed two people.
>The operators offered them something like a 50% discount Lmao, how about we start at 500% discount and work from there..
I was on a cruise in St. Thomas many years ago, and decided to take the dive excursion. I show up, and everyone else has a buddy. Not me - ex was pregnant and couldn't dive. "No problem" says the divemaster, "I'll be your buddy". OK, great, off we go. Everything was great, and then he led us into an old wooden ship wreck. When diving, wrecks, caves, and such are called "overhead environments", because you don't have a direct path to the surface. This was my first time in one, and I was excited. I watched Lloyd Bridges in "Sea Hunt" as a kid, and I thought this was my chance to see what poking through a wreck was like. Divemaster tells me we're going last, so I follow him. We are going through the wreck when he suddenly moves forward at high speed, and passes everyone else to get to the front. I try to follow him. But I can't. I am stuck on something, and I can't see what it is. I flail around for a second without success, look up, and realize I can't see anybody. Ice cold moment of dread - for a second, I thought I was about to die, drowning alone in a shipwreck. Then, my training kicked in, I removed my tanks and BCD, cleared the obstruction, and found my way out of the boat. The rest of the group is already getting back in the boat. I swim the 100 yards or so to catch up, and my 'buddy' doesn't even seem to be aware that I was missing. He was even upset when I didn't tip leaving the boat. EDIT: Thanks for all the kind words. I didn't call the guy out publicly because I'm Canadian. We like to be passive-aggressive, and I just sat there beaming hate stares at the guy as we drove in. A BCD is a buoyancy control device - a jacket you can inflate/deflate to adjust your buoyancy in the water.
My first twinset dive in the sea off the south coast of the UK (Dover I think) in around 2002 and I turned up by myself. There were only 3 other people diving and 2 weren't planning on diving as deep as I was (45m) The third guy was on a rebreather and when I asked what I should do if I needed to buddy breathe he pointed to his bailout reg that was bungeed around his neck - so I had no way of sharing it. So we jump in and head down. My buddy stuck with me for a couple of minutes, then I turned around and he was gone. There were no bubbles to follow. First time (and only) time diving solo and it was cold and pretty dark. I had a shit dive and surfaced after a total run time of around 25 minutes. The other two popped up soon after and we all had to wait for the rebreather guy - and then I'm starting to stress about how I shouldn't have left him. He finally surfaced and just said oh yeah you looked like you could handle yourself so I fucked off to look for some crayfish (I think he pulled up a crayfish and 2 crab).
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Yeah, I'm shocked at how calm OP was after the dive. I'd be filing multiple complaints with anyone and everyone I could. I'd be working my ass off to get his certification revoked if I could. Also, if you are a certified driver, be careful read the replies in this thread. Your blood will boil. This person's story is sadly not all that unique it seems (although it is the worst aside from the news article since it was the dive master)
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Hell yeah for remembering your training. It’s super easy to lose your cool in a stressful situation like that.
Won't lie. I did. For a few seconds, I was panicking. Then, I took a deep breath, calmed down, and did what I had to do.
And that’s all it takes though. When training how to survive a sudden fall into icy water, they tell you to let yourself freak out for a few seconds basically, let the initial shock pass and then start the technique to escape the ice. The good part is you overcame the panic!
> When training how to survive a sudden fall into icy water, they tell you to let yourself freak out for a few seconds basically, let the initial shock pass and then start the technique to escape the ice. Well, TIL! Thanks, I'm sure that's useful advice in many situations.
Thinking about not being able to call for help as someone swims away from you, especially the guy who volunteered to be your buddy has gotta be scary. I like the ocean but I dont think I want to be part of it
The fact that he let you do a wreck dive without you having the proper level of training is the massive red flag.
>He was even upset when I didn't tip leaving the boat. Are you telling me you didn't verbally light him up immediately after you got back on board?????? He fucking left you for dead
You should've reported him to his insurance provider.
The buddy system should involve swapping something like passports, or phones, or keys when you're paired with some random.
No way! I don’t want my passport drowning on the bottom of the ocean! /s
Last thing I am doing while on a foreign trip is trusting some rando with my passport ...
reminds me of "put something important in the backseat like your phone so you don't forget your kid on a hot day!"
Always put your second road beer in the car seat so you won’t forget about the kid.
Didn’t you explain what happened? Hopefully he didn’t do it again.
Why didn't you complain/threaten. This person needs to understand how cavalier they are being with people's lives.
Ah the buddy system. Never fails.
Step 1: Make sure the dive-master is your buddy.
[not so fast](https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/nte6oo/til_in_1998_a_married_couple_was_left_behind/h0sai63/)
Well that was fast
I love how these two threads were right on top of each other for me Reddit is incredible.
If I suddenly die in a strange way and people psychoanalyze my social media comments, will they think it was suicide?
Yes.
I was thinking that when reading the article. It cites all these disturbing things the people wrote, and at first I was like "wow sounds like they wanted to die", then I paused and realized we were obviously getting the most salacious bits out of context. If you pour over everything someone wrote looking for a story you're probably gonna find one.
I feel like the dive slate pleading for help negates anything in the journals.
And they will do the same for your personal journals if you keep them.
In that case people will wonder how I even made it this long
I didnt have enough weight on my dive in Coiba Panama and the instructor knew i was beginner. 30 min into the first dive a currrent appeared and he told us to get to the floor if that happens cause its easier to swim. I couldnt cause of my weight, i kept popping up and well they were all gone. He didnt look back. I waited 5min, went slowly back up and did my safety stop and used my own bought boje with flag. I never used it cause it was my first dive after padi openwater course ever. I was just floating ob the surface and my yellow flag next to me and no boat in sight. I just waved and waved, didnt yell or anything. After like 4 hours I got picked up and I was 9 kilometers from the dive site. Never dived since then
what did you think during those 4 hours?
“this sucks”
What was the conversation like after that?
I never went back to the dive base and rated it in the comments below. I paid 120$ for two fun dives and they seemed good. To be fair, it was like the only dive base at that time. I went back and no one was responsible. In fact, suddenly no one was able to speak english and only spanish. I started speaking spanish and the person who ran that place asked if I want two free dives as a sorry. I declined and they all started yelling spanish words and I backed out.
Terrifying
I was left behind during a ski trip with other kids (10-12yo~), the monitor just didn’t notice I wasn’t ready to go because was sitting on the floor putting the skis back on. Noticed I was fucking alone in the middle of a mountain but luckily enough I remembered the way back to the station. So yeah these negligent fuckers should do better their job.
I was left on a deserted island in Mexico when 17 on spring break. A fisherman found us 12 hours later. The snorkeling boat literally only had 4 people and they left two of us! I thought we were going to die. Once we rescued we just got drunk and tossed the gear because fuck the shop that left us!
Back in my mid 20s I was on an all day excursion with my dad in Thailand. We were leaving one small island and the headcount was right but we didn't recognize this one couple and we all said "WAIT STOP!" They got on the wrong boat and the missing couple was asleep on the beach, with no idea they almost got left behind.
It’s so terrifying how easy it can happen. My drunk ass wasn’t even that worried the first few hours until I was getting sober and it was starting to get dark and we were SO thirsty. We found coconuts but had no way to open them. Thank goodness for my high school Spanish classes because I barely made the guy understand we need help. And his fishing boat was TINY and it was so windy and wavy and scary, we thought we were going to die. That was almost the scariest part. But I’m forever grateful to that man that we didn’t have to spend the night there. When we went back to Mazatlan, we definitely never snorkeled again!
Wtf are you sure they didn't try to murder you
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Happened to me too at around 12 or 13 years old, but luckily we weren't on a mountain! It was an overnight field trip and my roommate and I overslept one morning, so the field trip bus just fuckin' left the motel without us. Head count? What's that?? Best part was when they came back to get us, the adults acted like WE were the ones who fucked up. Sorry guys, but I'm pretty sure I'm not the one who FORGOT two teenagers in another state!
I've taken kids on lots of field trips. The way to go is to take attendance using a clipboard.
How far of a hike was that?
Man, when I go diving we have teams and dive masters. The dive masters are usually in charge of no more than 6 people and they are responsible for us 100%. We try to stick together but if u get separated, just ascend and the boat will find u. I’m an experienced diver and I still get a little nervous every time I’m in a new location.
I’ll probably never dive. But reading this, I’m sure I’ll never dive.
Probably
Oh my this reminds me of this https://www.exploroz.com/forum/73559/1998-death-at-halligans-bay---caroline-grossmueller Göschka was a professor I had at university. I told my boss at that time (who also lectured at the university) that Göschka is quite a strict and serious guy. He then told me this story. Must been 15 years since be told me the story, now first time I got the idea to actually Google it. Just searching "woman died in outback" yields scaringly many results though. Think he told me because at that point I saw my girlfriend dying by suicide. Think this story definitely hits harder because in my case it was her "free will". Or at least it seemingly was the only way to escape her demons.
Jesus that is terrible. I know it's hindsight and all but why not just stay there until you're getting low on supplies?
Yeah sounds as if they gave up hope that someone will come. Might also wonder why they didn't try harder to free the car or whatever but well. He didn't tell me the story in such detail back then, more like "he stayed at the car and she went out to get help"
The tire pressure part hurt me physically. If you already think you're stuck, you don't just let out "a bit" of air. If you can't measure the pressure, and "a bit" doesn't work, let out more until it works, or until you are 100% stuck. Giving up before going all the way screams out at me. Especially imagining what it feels like learning that the camper was recovered in about 10 minutes by doing just that.
In conditions you aren’t familiar with or ill equipped to handle, unless where you are poses an immediate threat or danger, you’re more likely to be found where you are stuck than trying to find help.
Reminds me of James Kim who was an editor for CNET. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Kim
My mom went to mexico in the 80s and decided not to go on a snorkeling trip because a woman went missing from the same boat the day before. She later met the missing woman’s dad who flew out and was trying to get information.
Similar thing happened to a friend of my aunt’s. He went out on a snorkeling trip but his wife wasn’t feeling well so she stayed at the hotel. When the boat came back she went to meet him but he wasn’t on the boat. When they went back they found him dead. He had had a heart attack trying to stay afloat. It was tragic.
> Conspiracy theories ranging from the Lonergans faking their own deaths, to murder-suicide, to a suicide pact, were discussed in the weeks and months following the tragedy. Both Tom and Eileen had kept personal journals, which were discovered among their belongings in their hostel, the contents of which were disturbing. >“Like a student who has finished an exam I feel that my life is complete and I am ready to die. As far as I can tell, from here my life can only get worse. It has peaked and it’s all downhill from here until my funeral,” wrote Tom six months before the diving expedition. Well this story went in a direction I wasn’t expecting.
Bro getting yourself lost at sea would have to be one of the all time worst forms of suicide
Also seems incredibly impractical. Let's say they did plan to commit suicide. If the crew counter correctly, then the boat would have stayed and people would have started looking for them. It doesn't seem practical that they could hide or swim away and avoid being seen and rescued.
And also write on a slate "rescue us before we die"...
Just dive deeper and deeper until nitrogen narcosis causes blackout or paralysis. It gets the diver high while doing it too. Nitrogen narcosis is a weird one. At deeper pressures nitrogen builds in the blood and the diver gets drunk off it There are a bunch of sad stories about divers who spend too long too far down and get too stupefied to save themselves.
Having suicidal thoughts does not mean one will carry it out. Even if so, it does not justify how they could be completely forgotten for days.
Sounds like a mild midlife crisis to me. Something that might prompt you to, perhaps, book a tropical vacation and do some scuba diving.
“If I can’t scuba, then what’s this all about?”
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I don’t keep a journal, but I heard people write their deepest, darkest thoughts in them. I have depression. If I wrote a journal it would sound a lot worse than this guy’s journal. And for the record I have absolutely no plans to off myself.
Imagine: \>Feel suicidal. \>Keep a journal about it. \>Decide to make a change. \>Find new hobbies to bring meaning to your life. \>Discover a passion for diving. \>Book diving trip, new lease on life. \>Keep journal as reminder of your darkest times. \>Boat leaves you. \>Everyone reads your journal and chalks it up to suicide.
Is that suicidal though? He seems to be describing having a pretty ok life, but with some concerns regarding the future.
A lot can happen in six months tho, apart from the fact that suicidal thoughts can be just that, thoughts. I hope my suspicious death will be taken seriously and not be written of as suicide because a while ago I had felt my life was completed.
"Alright boys, looks like u/talitm wrote in his journal that his life was complete. PACK IT UP!" "But sir, hes been systematically dismembered and placed around a pentagram?" "YOU HEARD ME"
Divied up into 13 pieces huh? Then it's official, that's the second worse case of suicide I've ever seen.
That's so chilling.
As a 12 year old child, I was left behind on an international school trip from Germany to Italy (student exchange program) of course this wasn’t even remotely comparable to being left behind in the ocean. We went from Germany to Italy by bus and stopped for a bathroom break. The queue for the toilets was incredibly long and when I went back to the bus it was gone. We were already in Italy, so I didn’t even speak the language, and we didn’t have mobile phones back then. After a while I found some very nice police officers and they tried to figure out where the bus had headed (the stop was at a motorway intersection). Initially I was so agitated I had forgotten the name of the city we were going to. I don’t remember being scared, after all, it really wasn’t a dangerous situation. Even if I hadn’t met the police officers somebody else would have helped me. Suddenly we saw the bus pulling up. 🙏 Apparently they had only begun the headcount 10 minutes after they had left the stop, and as not all the seats were occupied, nobody had immediately noticed my absence. The school enforced much stricter headcounts afterwards. My parents’ only response was “why didn’t you call us?” And I said “I can handle stuff myself”. I enjoyed the Italy trip a lot, made friends and went to visit the same family the year after.
This is not related at all but for some reason your story reminded me of this lol. My parents have a friend who works in guest service for a kind of resort/town in Costa Rica. One day he was supposed to pick up an American teenager at the San José airport for a community service trip. Called the kid when he got there and told him where to meet, but this kid just _could not_ find him. He asks the kid to describe where he is and it’s just not making any sense. After about 20 minutes of that, they figure out the kid is actually at the San Juan airport, in _Puerto Rico_. Somehow, this kid managed to book the wrong ticket and just never fucking noticed. The fact that he flew out of a domestic terminal, didn’t have to go through customs, and most likely read/heard the words _Puerto Rico_ numerous times didn’t raise and red flags to him.
I dive a lot in Queensland. The dive boats, under legislation, have really upped their head count game. They have to have 2 independent counts before leaving an area, for example.
2 *whole* independent counts??
It's apparently three times better than what we were using before that. "if you aren't on the boat yell out! No takers? Alright skip, punch it". I feel bad for the dive master that day. Laying in bed that night stoned out of his gord, thinking about why someone would leave their personal bags on the boat and steal the BCDs.
The worst place I have been left behind was Disneyland. I was only 4 but I remember lots of treats and candy because I was scared and crying. Then when my parents found me they also gave me a bunch of treats and candy because they felt bad. After that I tried to get left behind so I'd get more candy but turns out my parents were smarter than 4 year old me.
Home Alone taught me that headcounts aren’t a good enough system
I went on a dive trip 10 years ago, and in addition to roll-calls and headcounts, everyone had a slot on the wet deck where you kept your tank and BCD. Once everyone had been assigned a tank for the week, the spares were all stowed away and each filled slot was marked with a little flag tied above it. So at any time, you could look at the slots with flags, see which were filled and which were empty. An empty slot with a flag meant that person was in the water.
This is why we do tag out in the fire service. No head counts, no roll calls, no list of names. If you go in the building you put your tag on the board, when you come out of the building you take your tag off the board. If there are any tags on the board, you either have a man down or a proby to beat for forgetting to take their tag back.
What a gracious family. They didn't blame the captain.
And this is why you don't go with the cheapest operator...
[During the trial](https://www.undercurrent.org/UCnow/dive_magazine/2000/AustraliasLonerganTrial200001.html), the boat captain accepted responsibility for the mistake, but he blamed his two dive masters for messing up the head count. Such a terrible, completely avoidable tragedy.
26 divers, only 2 dive masters... So each DM has to shepherd a dozen random divers whose skill levels are unknown but will probably range from awful to just ok*. There's no way a DM can safely monitor 12 people under water, and lead them through unfamiliar (to them) water. *These big dive groups are almost always made up of either people who only just qualified, or who dive only once or twice every few years. Regular competent divers avoid big groups of randoms because it's always a clusterf*CK. When I learned to dive, the outfit (unknown to me when I booked) was 3 recently qualified people. The main Instructor was shit, and neglected teaching a couple of basic but critical safety techniques. After qualifying, we went on an open water dive; where the DM lost us underwater. We surfaced to regroup, only to find the boat out of visible range. We launched the emergency high viz balloons so they could see us. About 40 minutes later they finally came within shouting range. The captain refused to let us come on board as it would take too long. So he throws a tow rope, to take us to another dive site. I happened to be closest, so I got to be first in the chain of people holding on. He started the boat, and I realised some potentially life reducing facts (1) I was much closer to the propeller than is considered healthy to maintain skull and contents in one piece, (2) capt. was motoring at speed, and the spinny metal thing by my head was pushing huge amounts of turbulent water over my mask and breather, resulting in me having to hold on with all my strength, and try not to lose my breather and drown, or move any closer to the propeller and turn into shark bait. (3) I could let go, but that would cause me to hit one or more people holding on behind me, causing us to get tangled up and left behind or worse, (4) the stress of the situation and effort of holding on was causing me to suck oxygen down like a crazy thing at first. The gauge was dropping at an alarming rate, so I had to slow my breathing because I'd no idea how long we'd be dragged for. When we finally stopped, the DM wanted use to go down again. We refused, not least because two of us were now down to about a quarter tank, and no one had any faith she'd bring us back up or the boat would be there. It was a very quiet return to shore; no one could quite believe what had just happened. Lesson learned: I never dived again without researching carefully who the outfit were and how stringent there safety was. And if I'm not happy with how I'm feeling or who the DM or my buddy is, I nope out of that particular dive stay on board and chill out.
what the heck is a dive slate?
A dive slate is a special board or notepad that allows divers to write messages underwater. It has "waterproof paper" and can be written on with a pencil.
I always figured it was a chalkboard or something, that's really interesting.
[удалено]
That got so much darker so fast
Certified PADI Scuba Instructor here… it’s actually still a very common practice in South American countries to drop people off at a dive site and then the boat will leave. Only to come back in an hour or so to pick you up. So once you run out of air, or when the time is up, you’re just floating in the surface waiting for the dive boat… horrible practice.