Diver Left Stranded

[Freedive WI]

I don't think this is a proper venue to discuss DIR. THis really has nothing to do with DIR. Any boat captain should have taken responsabitly for this, just as Dean said.

To start calling people strokes for this just drives a wedge and doesn't add anything positive to this conversation- and this comes from a huge DIR advocate. Deep air and solo divers are strokes, this was just a snafu.

From other articles that I have since read on this incident, it appears that it was a larger charter boat, not just the 4 divers. It also seems that the divemaster (Zacharias Araneta) really dropped the ball on this one- signing a diver in on one dive and out on another when he never got on the boat. :

As far as the DIR buddy team goes, well, let's just say there are no "solo-diver" C-cards in the DIR roster. Divers are also taught to make eye-contact with their buddy at least once a minute while underwater, or more. When doing gas switches at deco divers are to have face-to-face eye contact while one diver switches at a time to make sure that the buddies are on the right mix. That doesn't mean other agencies don't teach that, it's just not stressed to the same magnitude.

In the end this was more the fault of the buddy who called out a name, and the divemasters, as there was more than one, who failed to do a proper head count. I can understand how hard this can be on a packed boat with lots of divers, much more so than on any little 6-pack, but that doesn't mean there's ever an excuse for it.

In the end, I guess that's another reason to borrow money from the captain before you dive- to make sure he'll come back for you.

Jon