Posted by labugman on May 01, 2004 at 23:29:10:
I have personaly witnessed several incidents of commercial charter "boat leaves diver behind". One L.A. area boat did it twice on the same trip! Once at Cortes Banks, no less! I won't name the boat because I don't want to rub their nose in their mistakes but maybe somebody should.The diver.net web site creator knows which boat it was, he was on the trip too. Anyway,the first diver left behind was me. We were at Cortes Banks and I was freedive spearfishing.We didn't know but the boats crew was using a count of floats to keep track of the freedivers in the water.On one dive I decided to go deep into the kelp bed so I left my float on the boat and went in. Eventualy I looked up to see the boat pull anchor and pull away in the opposite direction from where I was. Luckily one of my friends noticed and told the crew before they got too far.They came back and got me.You think they'd have learned their lesson? Well, the next day we were at San Clemente Island.On the third dive of the day the crew anounces that a diver had not come back from the dive. A friend of his said he didn't remember him comming back from the previous dive. The Boat Captain rudely said that the diver had been counted in as comming back and had been checked out entering the water at the location they were at. Then the captain asked for volunteers to go in the water and "look for his dead body"! Several divers went in to look for him. A while after these divers were in the water a lobster traper came up on our boat with the lost diver on board his boat. He had been left behind at the previous dive location just as suspected by the guys friend.The crew and captain of this boat was more than just negligent.They were grossly incompetent and dangerous that trip. I haven't been on that boat since. I hope they have cleaned up their act since.I still have friends who dive on the boat.Good head counts by sober crew members with IQ's higher than their age is my recomenation :)