Stuff they could've done

Don't be so sure. Stephen Caliban, whose yacht sunk when he was sailing alone in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean had many flares on his life raft, and he shot many of them off when a passing ship was in visual range (he said in his book that one ship passed so close he could see the check pattern of the shirt a man on deck was wearing) but no one spotted any of them. He documented his ordeal in his book "Adrift", published in the 1980s. Caliban was lucky. His raft made it to the shore of Central America, where he was rescued. For anyone who hasn't read his account, I recommend the book highly. It's a harrowing tale, and he tells it eloquently.

Agree...........no sausage, no dive.

"Stalingrad. . . The fall of Stalingrad was the end of Europe. There's been a cataclysm."

GoodbyePorkPieHat wrote:

> I have ten year-old gear, but one of my three gauges is a compass.
> At least swimming toward shore would have had the illusion of a
> goal and perhaps given them some hope.

The real incident which this movie is based on, took place on the Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Queensland, Australia, in 1998. The real people (Tom and Eileen Lonergan) were reportedly taken 40 miles off-shore to the dive site. What happened to them after the boat left, is purely conjecture. Some of the problems involved in swimming to shore are:

1. The distance of 40 miles.

2. Open ocean currents in the area likely exceeded their swimming speed. (Olympic Gold Medalist Mark Spitz could only swim 4.3 mph for 100 meters.)

3. Normal surface current maps of the Great Barrier Reef area indicate that they could have been swept Northward, Southward, or out to sea in circles.

4. Since they were in the water and not on a boat, their visible horizon was less than 2 miles, assuming they could raise their eyes 2 feet above the water for a quick look. This prevented them from obtaining a visual reference from anything that wasn't very close to them.

5. Aside from needing the correct magnetic declination dialed into their compasses for that area, they would need to remain very still for a few seconds to get an accurate bearing; difficult in anything but calm water. But without any stationary surface references to guide on, taking bearings would be almost useless.

6. They were diving in January, which is the middle of the summer in Australia. At that latitude, the sun would be nearly overhead at mid-day, giving them no directional reference for much of the day.

7. Actively swimming would likely attract more attention from sharks than just floating motionless.

The bottom line is that they were screwed. Their only hope was to be rescued, or that a swift current would sweep them into shore, while they were still intact.


> They also should have tied themselves together with their weight belts.

There are some problems with doing that also:

1. Have you ever tried to swim while tied to another person?

2. If one person panics, he/she is likely to drown the other.

3. If either is attacked by a shark, the other will be pulled into the melee.


> A lot of people have survived longer in warm water without the gear they had.

Some people may just be luckier than others. Weeks after their disappearance, their gear (tanks, BC's with their names, a female's wet suit) started washing up on Queensland beaches, but it gave no indication of a violent end. Some figure that the tropical heat and delirium from dehydration caused them to shed their gear and they just rant out of energy to stay afloat. It appears we'll never know.

One thing is for sure; events like this are entirely preventable, but errors will continue to happen. A little insurance in the form of an EPIRB for open ocean diving would be well worth the expense.

Dig your user name.
Great Mingus song written for Lester Young.


Take the Coltrane

She took her weight belt off because she was seasick and it was tugging on her. (I still think she could have easily drowned herself, though.) I wondered why they didn't use their air tanks to blow in the water to try and frighten the sharks. Their inactivity really frustrated me, too. I can't sit in traffic and wait for the bridge to come down. I have to go around and take the tunnel because even if it takes the same amount of time, at least I'm doing something!

What was keeping them afloat anyway? They weren't treading water, were they?

> Final Analysis: they could've been saved if they had a signal device (as
> mentioned), but that's not usually an item 'tourist' divers think about.

Hmm. I am a "tourist" diver, and couldn't imagine going into the open ocean without my SMB (surface marker bouy). A few of us got seperated from the main group on a drift dive last week in Grenada, so I deployed my SMB during our safety stop at 5m (15 ft). The boat was there waiting for us when we surfaced.

But then the dive operation we used was first rate. The boat crews had everyone listed by name, and did a roll call before leaving dock; and before and after every dive.

Teresa
http://MermaidLady.com

'If the dive boat capt/crew had any brains, they would've: A) counted heads before they left and B) eventually noticed or some other divers would've said 'weren't there two other divers'?'

The dive boat crew DID do a head count, but it was faulty, and they were left behind. There was an emphasis by the filmmakers on that flawed head count.

As to the second point, the other divers and crew didn't notice they were missing until Davis found their bag the next day & remembered their faces - and that they had not been on the boat coming back! In the real case, the crew of the dive boat also found the missing dive bag on the boat and called the hostel they were staying at, but the hostel had no record of them having returned. They also called the shuttle bus company providing transport to the hostel, which said they were not on the bus, but they figured they had decided to find their own way back to the hostel. When they found out from the hostel that the couple had never returned, the search was mounted, but Thomas & Eileen Lonergan were never seen again.

Thanks, mrvolvo, I always wondered about that. Now I understand. :>

"The truth is..a lot of people can say what they would've done or should've done if they were in their position - but no one really knows for sure because they, themselves weren't in the their particular situation. I'm pretty sure they didn't plan on getting abandoned at sea."

because they seemed stupid maybe they did plan it. Maybe it was a suicide after all.