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Diver abandonment is not a rare occurrence

“Scuba divers left behind in Florida.” “Tourists left behind on Great Barrier Reef snorkeling trip.” “Abandoned diver wins big negligence case against dive company.” “Scuba diver abandoned off California mandates changes to industry standards.” “Diver abandoned at sea gets $1.68 million.”

These are just some of the headlines in recent years from cases of divers being abandoned by their tour groups. And shockingly the majority of these events would have been eliminated if only the group leader had called an accurate head count before departing the area. Compounding this is that there have been cases where no head count was called and the group leader still marked the missing person as present.

Diver abandonment lawsuits typically include damages for negligence and post traumatic stress disorder.

Earlier this month, two scuba divers surfaced in the open Atlantic Ocean to discover they were alone, AFP news reported.

The tour boat that carried them and 28 others out of Miami had left without them.

The Coast Guard announced it was investigating RJ Diving Ventures of Miami Beach, the tourism company involved.

A private yacht rescued Paul Kline and Fernando Garcia Puerta—the two divers—who were holding onto a fishing buoy for their lives in the shark infested waters.

“We were in shock,” Kline, 44, told the Miami Herald. “We could easily have died.”

It was getting dark when they were rescued at approximately 6:00 p.m. after hanging on for two hours.

Last June, when an American snorkeler on a tour of the Great Barrier Reef raised his head out of the water, he was shocked to discover that his tour group had left him behind.

“I lifted my head up and I saw the boat had gone—it had left me,” Ian Cole, 28, told The Cairns Post.

Cole was diving in Michaelmas Cay on the afternoon of Saturday, June 25. There was no sign of the tour boat Passions of Paradise. He swam to another vessel owned by the same company and workers radioed Passions of Paradise to return and pick him up.

The employee responsible for conducting headcounts on the boat was subsequently fired for breaking the rules by not obtaining Cole’s signature before departing the area.

Stricter headcount rules have been in place since the disappearance of U.S. dive couple Tom and Eileen Lonergan in 1998.

The scuba diving industry has implemented required redundancy and visual verification to count divers following the 2004 case of a man who drifted for several hours off of California when he became separated from his group.

Daniel Carlock, then 45, was diving with 20 others when he had to surface because of trouble equalizing the pressure in his ears. He lost contact with his diving buddy and surfaced 400 feet from the dive boat.

Despite frantically waving his arms and blowing his safety whistle, no one realized he was missing. Nevertheless, the dive master marked him as present on the roster. The group relocated to another location seven miles away, and again Carlock was marked as present.

Carlock drifted for five hours before being rescued by a group of Boy Scouts passing by in a tall ship.

Recently, a jury awarded him $1.68 million in his negligence lawsuit for emotional distress, fraud and for contracting skin cancer after the sun exposure, the Los Angeles Times reported.

The trial took 23 days.

Sundiver Charters and Ocean Adventures Dive Co. were the defendants.

The incident changed the way that divers are accounted for as both dive masters and boat captains must do a visual check that all are present. Previously there were no such requirements.

The site Scuba-doc.com has an article titled “Abandoned Divers, What to do, How to Prevent,” which contains a great deal of useful information to help divers make sure they don’t get abandoned by their group, as well as tips on how to survive if they are left behind. Among the points of advice given are to ask for: the credentials of the captain and the crew, the system of counting heads and an explanation of their rescue action plans.

(Legal News.com contributed information to this report.)

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