Which boat were they diving off of?  Who let them in the water with so little
experience?

I was talking with Gary McGee yesterday and expressed my concern that a
commercial charter operator went out off of Whitefish in the dense fog into the
shipping lane the Saturday and Sunday before this accident.

Some peole do this with surface radar.  This boat didn't have radar.  Think
money had anything to do with this decision to go rather than admit the boat
wasn't prepared with the correct equipment for Lake Superior?

Sunday June 30th, the Canadian light house operator had to ask for assistance
from his boat because he not only didn't have radar, his Loran didn't work and
he got lost out in the fog.  Even though he had his Lat and Long #'s, they did
him no good without his chart which was not on the boat.

Oh yea, and the flat calm water turned into 4-5 footers on the way back.

Some people are just stupid.  Yes, they are on the water, and yes they dive and
die and even encourage folks to dive way over their skill level.  Although the
accident report below makes it sound like the people envolved in the accident
were generally incompetent and shouldn't have been diving no matter what the
depth.  Must have had good training to calmly get to their backup air no matter
where their octopus was.

David Drake             EDS/SATURN Infrastructure 8-320-4190 on GMnet
Spring Hill, TN  USA    Internet: saturn.ddrake05@gm*.co*


______________________________ Forward Header __________________________________
Subject: Re: Great Lakes Death Info.
Author:  owner-techdiver (INET.OWNERTE7) at DIAMOND
Date:    7/8/96 9:42 PM


> Hello, Divers:
>
> Rumor has it a diver died while diving in Lake Superior (Michigan, USA)
> recently (this past weekend).  Any one have any details on the Diver's
death? >

You heard right, a woman died on the Viena at Whitefish point on
Friday afternoon.

I just got the info from our boat crew who provided some assistance.

She apparently lost her Regulator at about 60', was unable to find
her octopus, so her buddy attempted to give her his primary.  He then
began to panic because he couldn't find his octopus, and shot to the
surface.

Another diver recovered her body at about 147'.  Upon surfaceing CPR
was performed but she never recovered.

From what I was told by the crew on our boat was they were both very
inexperienced 10-20 dives total.

This kind of accident should not be happening.  Why are people with
so little experience doing dives this deep, especially considering
the water temp was only 45-50.

I was not impressed with the Whitefish point presserve. They are
catering to the so called "Tech" divers.  The only wrecks that are bouyed
are the wrecks deeper than 100'.  This will help push people into making
dives that they are not ready for.  Couple this with the attitude that
seems to be going around the dive industry that the deeper the dive the
better.  All we are going to do is get more people killed.

The information about the accident is second hand so it may not be
totally accurate but I got the same story from a couple of different
sources.

Bob



Bob Wright
e-mail: rwright@is*.ne*
http://www.iserv.net:80/~rwright/
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