missing diver?

[DiverDown]

KOMO 4 news just reported a female diver missing in the deception pass area? Hope everything is OK.

[Pez7378]

http://www.kirotv.com/news/16331926/detail.html

[CaptnJack]

Crap. That's not a very challenging area, current-wise etc. intermediate experience/skills are generally fine. Hope she's just stuck on a rock somewhere waiting for the boats or helo to get her.

[lamont]

more links, but no additional information:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/l ... cation=rss
http://www.pnwlocalnews.com/news/19082674.html
http://www.heraldnet.com/article/200805 ... news01ad=1
http://www.komoradio.com/news/19080094.html
http://www.tri-cityherald.com/1154/story/188772.html

[mattwave]

we were on the lake last night and on the radio the securitay bulletin kept repeating till dark. I hope she is ok!

[Joshua Smith]

It doesn't sound good- she's been missing for close to 24 hours, now.

[Jan K]

Not good :
Search called off for missing diver
By Brian Kelly | May 20, 2008
The Coast Guard suspended its search for a diver who went missing near Deception Pass Park at about 9:45 p.m. Monday.
Coast Guard officials said the decision to suspend the search was made after an eight-hour search of a 20-mile-square area came up empty.

[whatevah]

The Coast Guard suspended their search but other agencies resumed their efforts this morning.

[Ken G]

This really sucks. I hope there is some good news on this sometime soon.

[ppharman]

Additional information in the Seattle Times. "Missing diver is Walla Walla university student" see full article at:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/l ... er20m.html

It is always difficult to read about someone who disappears while practicing our sport. My thoughts go out to her family, friends and classmates.

Does anyone know who the "professional diving business" is?

Pat Harman

[lamont]

http://www.columbian.com/news/localNews ... pended.cfm

"Skagit County sheriff’s investigators, the initial responders, said Booth’s diving partner reported that Booth was nearby when the school’s diving group dipped 120 feet below the surface on Monday. But the partner couldn’t find her after surfacing."

I thought this was basically an AOW course? 120 is pretty deep to be taking newer divers on al80s -- particularly around here where its cold and dark down there....

[ppharman]

Assuming it was a beach dive 100ft is about 1/4 mi offshore from Roserio Beach. This area normally has fairly benign currents. It is also fairly shallow.

It was Spring Tides that day so near maximum currents during the day. I doubt they were in deep water though. I would like to know how many instructors and Dive Masters were with the group and the students experience levels.

Pat Harman

[Sounder]

"Skagit County sheriff’s investigators, the initial responders, said Booth’s diving partner reported that Booth was nearby when the school’s diving group dipped 120 feet below the surface on Monday. But the partner couldn’t find her after surfacing."

I thought this was basically an AOW course? 120 is pretty deep to be taking newer divers on al80s -- particularly around here where its cold and dark down there....

Everytime I start to write something here, I'm getting more and more upset. This kind of shit doesn't have to happen, yet we hear about it again and again.

Edit: My judgement was based on a few assumptions that haven't been reported yet.

[Nwbrewer]

As much as I'd like to agree with Doug and Lamont, let's please wait until we have some information other than what we're getting from the typical news media outlets. You know, the ones who say we all dive with Oxygen tanks. Nowhere have I seen anything that says they were on al80's, that they had unreasonable student to intructor ratio, or anything else.

I'm aware (and often guilty) of the desire to start speculating, but as sketchy as the information we have at this point is, can we please defer the speculation until we have a few facts?

Jake

[Tom Nic]

I'm aware (and often guilty) of the desire to start speculating, but as sketchy as the information we have at this point is, can we please defer the speculation until we have a few facts?

Jake

Always good advice... let's keep the rants offline and amongst friends for the time being (which has been the case so far! ) until we know more...

[Sounder]

I'm aware (and often guilty) of the desire to start speculating, but as sketchy as the information we have at this point is, can we please defer the speculation until we have a few facts?

Jake

Always good advice... let's keep the rants offline and amongst friends for the time being (which has been the case so far! ) until we know more...

Very true - edited where I made my assumption.

It's extremely frustrating to me to hear about people having problems, especially during classes where, based on the reports of it being a class, I think it IS safe to assume there was at least 1 instructor there.

[lamont]

As much as I'd like to agree with Doug and Lamont, let's please wait until we have some information other than what we're getting from the typical news media outlets.

Are you going to hold your breath until we get more information? Because I'm not.

The "120 foot" detail seems both plausible and unlikely to be a mistake for something else. Rosario beach also has a wall on the left side that goes down to about 120. Being part of a class seems entirely reasonable and unlikely to be an "oxygen tank" mistake.

[gcbryan]

Assuming it was a beach dive 100ft is about 1/4 mi offshore from Roserio Beach. This area normally has fairly benign currents. It is also fairly shallow.

It was Spring Tides that day so near maximum currents during the day. I doubt they were in deep water though. I would like to know how many instructors and Dive Masters were with the group and the students experience levels.

Pat Harman

Additional background info: http://www.wallawalla.edu/academics/dep ... scuba.html

[Tom Nic]

As much as I'd like to agree with Doug and Lamont, let's please wait until we have some information other than what we're getting from the typical news media outlets.

Are you going to hold your breath until we get more information? Because I'm not.

Hold breath no. Hold keyboard? Maybe. Hope so. So far this thread has been a good one. Other threads on like topics have had to be shut down because they simply got out of hand and ceased to serve any postive purpose at all. Hopefully that will not be the case here. So far so good...

[CaptnJack]

On a flood she would have been carried northward past Sares Head. It drops to >200ft there. And visibility is never very good there and would be quite poor right now with the Skagit being high.

[Penopolypants]

Additional background info: http://www.wallawalla.edu/academics/dep ... scuba.html

Interesting. So it appears from the link above that Walla Walla was conducting a checkout dive on Sunday for students and staff who wanted (or needed) to dive for the college. The students were required to be certified prior to the checkout dive so this wasn't a scuba instruction class.

The college's dive manual also states that this certification limits you to 100 feet unless prior written authorization was obtained by the dive safety executive committe.

[Nwbrewer]

As much as I'd like to agree with Doug and Lamont, let's please wait until we have some information other than what we're getting from the typical news media outlets.

Are you going to hold your breath until we get more information? Because I'm not.

The "120 foot" detail seems both plausible and unlikely to be a mistake for something else. Rosario beach also has a wall on the left side that goes down to about 120. Being part of a class seems entirely reasonable and unlikely to be an "oxygen tank" mistake.

I'm not holding my breath, but I see nothing constructive about throwing out rather random conjecture about what may or may not have happened. This seemed to be going down the road of accusing this woman, the dive op, or the school of doing something unsafe, when in fact we do NOT have enough knowledge of the incident to form those opinions.

Great value can be had in dissecting incidents like this, with at least SOME knowledge of what actually occurred. If we're going to start our conjecture based on what's in the media, then the depth is irrelevant being as they have reported her as being in contact with her buddy at the SS. If she was with the buddy at 15', then who cares what the depth they were at previously was? Seems like that's a detail that would be hard for them to mess up to right? How about the fact they said it was a class, when it now seems like it's at least possible that this wasn't a class at all, but a school checkout dive for previously certified divers?

Point being there seems to be WAY too much conflicting information out there to form any valid opinions about the dive plan, the dive op, or anything else.

In general I respect you opinions a lot Lamont, but I think in this instance you're off base.

Jake

[dwashbur]

they have reported her as being in contact with her buddy at the SS.

Where did you hear this? I haven't seen anything related to a SS, just that her partner couldn't find her upon surfacing.

[airsix]

Two of the 3 instructors who teach at WWU are good friends of mine. If and when I can get some solid info I'll let everybody know.

-Ben

[Nwbrewer]

they have reported her as being in contact with her buddy at the SS.

Where did you hear this? I haven't seen anything related to a SS, just that her partner couldn't find her upon surfacing.

It was on some television coverage.