Northwest Dive Club

Well that's not good.

https://www.mukilteobeacon.com/story/20 ... 24493.html

Headline news reporting at its finest right there. 1 diver rescued, was he solo? If not, where is his buddy? The good news is that he made it topside.

How much air did they have in their tank?
Did they have a long hose?
What color was their snorkel?
Blade or split fins?
What gradient factor?
Did they have redundant air?

How the hell are we expected to learn from these?????

Was a solo diver. He was well beyond the buoy at the boat. He said he was fussing around with a ghost crab trap and ran short of air to return underwater. Aside from those issues, he surfaced in the ferry lane.
I suspect that he decided to surface, lost orientation while in the water column, swam the wrong way (north) and ended up waaaay out.
All credit to the Washington State Ferry crews for keeping this just an interesting story and not much more.

I think most of us could imagine this happening under sufficiently curious, distracted, or narc'ed conditions. A good reminder that according to every training organization(?), any time a direct ascent to the surface is not a safe option is a tech, wreck or cave type of dive.

There are a lot of 'recreational' dive sites around here like this. Gas planning and awareness, abundant redundant gases, oh sh!t plans, DSMB deployment prior to any unplanned ascent or surfacing in open water, surface signaling devices, navigational aids, site knowledge, tide/current awareness, effective compass usage