Posted by Joe B on June 03, 2004 at 10:43:15:
In Reply to: Some answers posted by Ken Kurtis on June 02, 2004 at 23:08:44:
Ken, I am not nearly as experienced a diver as you but I do have several hundred dives logged, and one thing I have learned is that inevitably when diving, Sh*t Happens. It's the response to the Sh*t that determines whether you leave with a story or you become the story.
There were lots of circumstances that coincided to make this a story. But you yourself had a not-entirely-dissimilar experience a few years ago, and while you did the right thing and aborted your dive, frankly it was the EPIRB that kept you from becoming the story.
http://www.reefseekers.com/Tahiti_2003.html
If you hadn't had an EPIRB and the DM on the boat had logged you back on the boat (unlikely of course since it was your trip, but I'm just saying), had the boat pulled anchor and steamed off for the next dive location, would there have been a sailboat full of boy scouts in the middle of the South Pacific?
This topic has been beat to death. Obviously there was a confluence of circumstances that created this situation. But I guess I don't understand the POV that downcurrent would be an illogical place to look for a lost diver. Seems exactly the opposite to me. And if the DM hadn't mistakenly logged the guy back on the boat, at least there could have been a search.
And if that search had been unsuccessful, and Dan had drifted too far and ended up in the food chain, I guess nobody would be able to blame the DM.