Irish girl dies during scuba diving in Australia

fakearms123

I just heard on the news this morning that a girl from Donegal drowned to death when was seperated from her group during a three day scuba diving course over in Australia. I can't find anything on the news sites about it. Just heard a quick thing about it on the radio on the way to work. That she was near the end of her 1 year in Australia. Crazy stuff altogether, now that there are so many young irish over in that part of the world I'm sure there will be more horror stories coming back to us here.

Any one got a link?

Xavi6

Yeah it was announced here yesterday.

http://www.irishecho.com.au/2011/04/20/irishwoman-drowns-while-scuba-diving/9266

(Aus/NZ forum is your friend)

fakearms123

Thanks Xavi6

A 23-year-old Irishwoman has drowned while scuba diving in the Whitsunday Islands.

The woman has been named in Ireland as Elaine Morrow from Balintra, Co Donegal.

Queensland police said Ms Morrow was scuba diving with a group at Langford Island around 4:15pm yesterday when she failed to resurface.

“They were [on] introductory dives so they have got to stay very close to the instructor. She got separated from the team. There was three divers and the instructor [in the team]. The rest of them surfaced and she wasn’t on the surface,” said Sgt Graeme Pettigrew of Whitsundays Water Police.

The Donegalwoman was located following a search of the ocean floor and brought to the surface, where witnesses tried to resuscitate her.

She was unable to be revived aboard the charter boat and later by a nurse at Hayman Island Medical Centre.

A Biology graduate, from NUI Maynooth, she is understood to have been travelling Australia on a tourist visa.

The Irish Embassy in Canberra is now working to provide assistance to the family.

Whitsundays Sailing Adventures, the charter boat operator, has expressed its condolences to the family in a statement.

“All of our tours are operated to the highest safety standards. The operator involved carried out all emergency procedures including CPR, but unfortunately the young lady could not be revived,” it said.

“Whitsundays Sailing Adventures and the vessel operator are currently working with the appropriate authorities in regards to this incident. Our condolences go out to the family and friends, and counselling support is being given to the other guests and crew of the vessel.”

dpe

Very odd this. When you're on your introductory dives you should always be buddied with an instructor or dive master (its usually two/three people to one instructor/DM). It looks to me like she got caught or trapped (it says "a search of the ocean floor" - its hard to stay at the bottom unless you're actively trying; bodies float up in scuba gear) and the instructor wasn't paying attention, which is baffling unless they were running too large an instructor/pupil ratio.

Canis Lupus

dpe wrote: »

Very odd this. When you're on your introductory dives you should always be buddied with an instructor or dive master (its usually two/three people to one instructor/DM). It looks to me like she got caught or trapped (it says "a search of the ocean floor" - its hard to stay at the bottom unless you're actively trying; bodies float up in scuba gear) and the instructor wasn't paying attention, which is baffling unless they were running too large an instructor/pupil ratio.

Yeah I thought those introductory dives are usually not deep and 'should' have been closely monitored. Whilst it's total conjecture I can only blame the intructor(s). It's their complete responsibility on an intro dive to keep people safe. You simply cannot/should not let someone get sperated from the group.

RIP, poor girl.

g'em

Canis Lupus wrote: »

Whilst it's total conjecture I can only blame the intructor(s). It's their complete responsibility on an intro dive to keep people safe. You simply cannot/should not let someone get sperated from the group.
.

To be fair without knowing exactly what happened you can't possibly apportion blame on anyone at this point.

Canis Lupus

g'em wrote: »

To be fair without knowing exactly what happened you can't possibly apportion blame on anyone at this point.

Unless something actually happened to her like a heartattack which the intructor can't obviously save or some freak current scattered the group the instuctors/divemasters shouldn't have lost track of a group member. ut I get your point.

g'em

Canis Lupus wrote: »

Unless something actually happened to her like a heartattack which the intructor can't obviously save or some freak current scattered the group the instuctors/divemasters shouldn't have lost track of a group member. ut I get your point.

People dying in diving accidents are freak occurences in themselves - the instructors are the obvious targets but without knowing what happened it's really unfair to blame them. Perhaps she did have a heart attack. Perhaps there was a freak current. Perhaps one of the other divers had a panic attack and the instructor had to ensure that they got to the surface safely. Perhaps there was an equipment malfunction. There's an awful lot of things that could have gone wrong (including the instructor being at fault) but it's unlikely that anything will be known for sure until months down the line after the coroners report and an inquest has been done.

WindSock

Poor girl, that's awful. I would wonder what happened with her dive buddy, 4 is such a small group, can't see how she was easily missed when resurfacing.

Fratton Fred

Terrible tragedy.

If she did have a heart attack, the instructor should have spotted she wasn't with them.

It is too early to abortion blame, but somehow somewhere something went wrong and the tour company must take some responsibility for that.

Jonah42

RIP

dpe

g'em wrote: »

To be fair without knowing exactly what happened you can't possibly apportion blame on anyone at this point.

None of the news reports have mentioned any problems with the other divers on the course, and the key issue is she was "found" on the sea bed, which means she was somehow lodged or stuck there (you simply don't have a heart attack or whatever and sink to the bottom; you will always float up) and this wasn't spotted, which is a failure on the instructor or DM's part. I have my DM cert, and you're told to be always eyes on a trainee. This clearly hasn't happened. Reading the report it looks like the instructor surfaced with the other two trainees and she wasn't there; which is another failure; the instructor should be underneath trainees as they surface. The only circumstance I can think of where that wouldn't be the case is if the instructor had a problem with his own gear and couldn't buddy-breathe off the trainees because they were low on air (entirely possible as trainees tend to burn through their air pretty quickly), but actually that's a bit of a failure as well because best practice (and I know this isn't always observed) is that an instuctor shouldn't dive with trainees on his own in the first place.

g'em

dpe wrote: »

None of the news reports have mentioned any problems with the other divers on the course, and the key issue is she was "found" on the sea bed, which means she was somehow lodged or stuck there (you simply don't have a heart attack or whatever and sink to the bottom; you will always float up) and this wasn't spotted, which is a failure on the instructor or DM's part. I have my DM cert, and you're told to be always eyes on a trainee.

I'm an AI, I know exactly what you're told to do with trainees

dpe wrote:

This clearly hasn't happened.

My point is that it's not clear at all what happened, only teh very bones of what transipred has been reported.

dpe wrote:

Reading the report it looks like the instructor surfaced with the other two trainees and she wasn't there; which is another failure; the instructor should be underneath trainees as they surface.

huh? How can you assure safe ascent rate if you're underneath them??? Total rubbish. The vast, vast majority of trainees will come up too fast, won't account for swelling of air in lungs, will kick up too fast etc. Who told you to stay underneath them? You stay at eye level and within grabbing distance.

I'm not saying that the instructor absolutely hasn't done anything wrong here, all I'm saying is that we can't leap to the conclusion that it was definitely their fault. My heart absolutely goes out to the family and friends of the girl involved but also to that instructor - I've been in a situation where a student under my care on a dive had to receive urgent medical attention shortly after we surfaced and instantaneously all fingers pointed at me.

My dive computer later showed a textbook perfect dive, and it later transpired that the student had lied on her medical form absolving me of blame. Had you read the initial 'reports' on the dive though given the absence of any obvious problems I can see how people would want someone to blame and I was it. So I'm not taking sides on this, merely saying that there's not nearly enough info to finger point and say that anyone's at fault in this case - yet.

Blazer

dpe wrote: »

None of the news reports have mentioned any problems with the other divers on the course, and the key issue is she was "found" on the sea bed, which means she was somehow lodged or stuck there (you simply don't have a heart attack or whatever and sink to the bottom; you will always float up) and this wasn't spotted, which is a failure on the instructor or DM's part. I have my DM cert, and you're told to be always eyes on a trainee. This clearly hasn't happened. Reading the report it looks like the instructor surfaced with the other two trainees and she wasn't there; which is another failure; the instructor should be underneath trainees as they surface. The only circumstance I can think of where that wouldn't be the case is if the instructor had a problem with his own gear and couldn't buddy-breathe off the trainees because they were low on air (entirely possible as trainees tend to burn through their air pretty quickly), but actually that's a bit of a failure as well because best practice (and I know this isn't always observed) is that an instuctor shouldn't dive with trainees on his own in the first place.

Sister was on one of the diving trips over in Oz and she was saying that the teacher/pupil ratio was ridiculous...no one man could keep an eye on all the trainees..
She did a few over there and always the ratio was shocking..

g'em

Sc@recrow wrote: »

Sister was on one of the diving trips over in Oz and she was saying that the teacher/pupil ratio was ridiculous...no one man could keep an eye on all the trainees..
She did a few over there and always the ratio was shocking..

In this instance it was one instructor to three trainees, perfectly normal and within guidelines.

twowheelsonly

dpe wrote: »

None of the news reports have mentioned any problems with the other divers on the course, and the key issue is she was "found" on the sea bed, which means she was somehow lodged or stuck there (you simply don't have a heart attack or whatever and sink to the bottom; you will always float up) and this wasn't spotted, which is a failure on the instructor or DM's part. I have my DM cert, and you're told to be always eyes on a trainee. This clearly hasn't happened. Reading the report it looks like the instructor surfaced with the other two trainees and she wasn't there; which is another failure; the instructor should be underneath trainees as they surface. The only circumstance I can think of where that wouldn't be the case is if the instructor had a problem with his own gear and couldn't buddy-breathe off the trainees because they were low on air (entirely possible as trainees tend to burn through their air pretty quickly), but actually that's a bit of a failure as well because best practice (and I know this isn't always observed) is that an instuctor shouldn't dive with trainees on his own in the first place.

Firstly, RIP to Miss Morrow and Condolences to her family and friends.


Whilst I agree with most of your post the highlighted part simply isn't true. Many people are overweighted for introductory dives in particular and coupled with the possible lack of knowledge and state of panic don't think or know how to inflate their BC. The same can happen to even more experienced divers, many of whom are also dangerously overweighted.

I would certainly be apportioning a large share of the blame on the instructor in this case from the information given so far. It was a small group, there's no report of any of the others in difficulty and visibility was presumably good. The instructors job in this type of dive is to monitor all of the group all of the time. 'Get them in, but more importantly, get them out...' is what I was taught and have continued to teach others. The only way that I can see to relieve him of some of the blame is if there was indeed another member of the group in difficulty. In that case it's a pure freak occurence that two members of the same small group should encounter difficulties. (Dependent on the level of prior instruction obviously)
Diving since 1985 BTW, Instructing since '90. BSAC (Less so in recent years though )

g'em

twowheelsonly wrote: »

Whilst I agree with most of your post the highlighted part simply isn't true. Many people are overweighted for introductory dives in particular and coupled with the possible lack of knowledge and state of panic don't think or know how to inflate their BC. The same can happen to even more experienced divers, many of whom are also dangerously overweighted.

That's actually a very good point.

gracehopper

btw - you dont always float back up as some have suggested. If the weights are doing their job and your gear is deflated you will easily stay down without too much effort. It is likely she became stuck on the ocean bed.

God love her and her family

Dixie Chick

I literally just nearly had a heart as my friend is in Australia and was going scuba diving today, je-sus

RIP that poor girl and her family

hondasam

RIP

sympathies to her family.

WindSock

Perhaps she didn't float due to the weights, and uninflated bcd.

Oops, just see that point was made already.

Yakult

Tragic. No other words for it.

Aoifey!

RIP


Condolences to her friends and family.

Son Of A Vidic

What an awful thing for her poor family to face, may she RIP. But if it was a small dive group, it is really shocking to think she was missed by the instructor. Even if the instructor had to bring another pupil to the surface, then best practice would have been to also bring the other inexperienced pupils with them. Because neither of these pupils wold have been competent enough to act in a buddy role.

We obviously don't know the precise circumstances of what happened at the moment. But one thing is certain, the instructor has failed miserably in their duty of care to ensure the safety and well being of their students.

Canis Lupus

g'em wrote: »

huh? How can you assure safe ascent rate if you're underneath them??? Total rubbish. The vast, vast majority of trainees will come up too fast, won't account for swelling of air in lungs, will kick up too fast etc. Who told you to stay underneath them? You stay at eye level and within grabbing distance.

Just out of curiousity at what depth exactly is there a danger from rapid ascent? She was on a intro dive, surely she wouldn't have been deep?

Blazer

g'em wrote: »

In this instance it was one instructor to three trainees, perfectly normal and within guidelines.

that sounds low so how the hell was he not watching all of them?

g'em

Canis Lupus wrote: »

Just out of curiousity at what depth exactly is there a danger from rapid ascent? She was on a intro dive, surely she wouldn't have been deep?

This is the bit I really can't understand tbh. It was an "intro" dive, does that mean they were just doing a discover scuba or was it an actual training dive for the open water course? Either way if she's an unqualified diver it shouldn't be particularly deep - Discover Scuba is no more than 12m, OW diver it's 30m. Generally you'd need to be at 15m+ to be at risk.

I have to say an awful lot of it just doesn't add up.

SeaFields

I went on an intro dive in the canaries in Feb. It was fantastic. Our supervisor was great too. He swam backwards the whole time with his eyes on us asking myself and my girlfriend every 30secs or so if everything was ok.

I actually never gave a second thought that something could go wrong. RIP to that girl. Horrible for a family to receive such news and they must feel helpless with her being so far away.

bigjohnny80

Pointless making assumptions.

RIP

twinytwo

dpe wrote: »

None of the news reports have mentioned any problems with the other divers on the course, and the key issue is she was "found" on the sea bed, which means she was somehow lodged or stuck there (you simply don't have a heart attack or whatever and sink to the bottom; you will always float up) and this wasn't spotted, which is a failure on the instructor or DM's part. I have my DM cert, and you're told to be always eyes on a trainee. This clearly hasn't happened. Reading the report it looks like the instructor surfaced with the other two trainees and she wasn't there; which is another failure; the instructor should be underneath trainees as they surface. The only circumstance I can think of where that wouldn't be the case is if the instructor had a problem with his own gear and couldn't buddy-breathe off the trainees because they were low on air (entirely possible as trainees tend to burn through their air pretty quickly), but actually that's a bit of a failure as well because best practice (and I know this isn't always observed) is that an instuctor shouldn't dive with trainees on his own in the first place.

Wrong.. there is such a thing as negative buoyancey.

bibi-phoque

Canis Lupus wrote: »

Just out of curiousity at what depth exactly is there a danger from rapid ascent? She was on a intro dive, surely she wouldn't have been deep?

The maximum she would have been is 18 meters (Open water). They train you to slow down your ascent to 1 min while breathing out if you run out of air.
Maybe she run out of air and couldn't reach the group. It's easy to be quite a few meters away from the others when you have over 20 meters of visibility.

Also, if you are weighted properly, you don't go up, you stay buoyant (pretty easy to stay on the sea bed).
When you run out of air, it's easy to panic because you can't inflate your BCD, the only think you can do if your buddy is too far is to remove the belt. A lot of things to think about for a beginner.

What I don't understand is why his/her buddy didn't inform the instructor. I always make sure my buddy is close at all time.

L'prof

Only heard about this last night. I met her a few times before she went to Oz through a friend. Lovely girl, I'm truly shocked. RIP Elaine and my deepest condolences to the Morrow family