In Reply to: Re: Coroners posted by tleemay on September 20, 2006 at 15:05:09:

Terry asked; "Can you, in one complete sentence, sum up an answer to the "Why Divers Die" question?"

Yup.

Smart divers make bad choices that cost them their lives.

You can interpret that any way you want. You can blame solo, deep, cave, wreck, tech, rec, whatever. The point of the matter is that in most of the cases we look at (and the only obvious exception might be heart attack), divers are making not only bad choices but usually a SERIES of bad choices. It's rarely one thing that has done them in. It's usually one thing on top of another on top of another . . . until they overload.

If there was a message we'd like you all to walk away with (and we said this at the Scuba Show at the end of our panel), it would be that if you're on a dive and ONE thing goes wrong, abort the dive, return to the surface/shore/boat and fix the problem. Once that's done, resume the dive or sit it out and wait for the next one.

As I have preached to my students for 26 years: You never get hurt on a dive you don't make.

Ken Kurtis
NAUI Instr. #5936
Co-owner, Reef Seekers Dive Co.
Beverly Hills, CA

• I thought that is what you had said before. seahunt 05:26:28 09/21/06 (0)
• Exactly! n/t tleemay 22:12:25 09/20/06 (0)