Missing divers recovered; time for the investigation to find out what really happened in the Maldives
I spent more than 15 years analyzing dive accidents for Scuba Diving Magazine and a decade before that as the training director for DAN America. I know several people from DAN Europe involved in the recovery efforts of the Italian divers in the Maldives — although I have not met the recovery divers themselves.
DAN Europe reported this morning that all of the bodies of the divers have been recovered. Watching a video of the recovery divers exiting the water, my thought was that is how they should be outfitted. I saw rebreather systems, stage bottles and diver propulsion vehicles.
Here’s the statement from DAN Europe following the operation, noting there will be one more dive to remove any guidelines and equipment the recovery divers left in place.
“The operation lasted approximately three hours and was conducted using advanced technical diving systems including closed-circuit rebreathers (CCR), DPVs, and redundant configurations designed for deep overhead environments.
The primary objective assigned to two of the team members was the careful transport of the remaining victims through narrow passages inside the cave system while preserving both rescuer safety and the integrity of the victims. Challenges included potential entanglement hazards and visibility reduction caused by disturbed sediment, all of which were successfully managed by the team throughout the dive. A third diver provided operational safety support and documented the intervention in depth, in line with established cave diving team procedures and best practices commonly adopted in recovery operations.
I won’t criticize or speculate on the tourist divers themselves, or on the techniques used by the original police divers. This is a difficult job and one I do not envy.
This dive is both technical in nature, working at those depths for any amount of time at all will require decompression protocols and additional gas supplies. And it is also a cave diving scenario where the divers are in an overhead environment and unable to make a direct ascent to the surface.
The Navy Dive Manual limits the dive to 5 minutes with a mandatory decompression stop at 10 feet for a minute with a total ascent time of 2:20. Bottom times of 10 minutes or more push into “exceptional exposure” limits which can require an hour of decompression before surfacing. The work these recovery divers did, I’m sure, pushed them into even greater nitrogen gas loads and extended decompression times.
Any number of things could have led to this tragedy. Nitrogen narcosis, oxygen toxicity, breathing gas supply and getting lost inside a cave system without lights and reels are all complicating factors.
Almost all dive accidents stem from a lack of preparedness and/or panic. Panic quickly cascades into a fight or flight situation and tunnel vision. That limits your options and is when you get in trouble.
In a final dive tomorrow, the recovery divers will attempt to map and document the cave to aid in the investigation. I look forward to hearing the results of the investigation into this horrible situation. I’m just relieved there has been no further loss of life and the bodies have been returned to their families for closure. That doesn’t always happen.
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