Ocean claims another diver
(CNS): A 73-year-old American tourist has become the tenth person to die in Cayman waters this year, one of the highest number of deaths recorded in the islands during a six month period. James Klein of Erlanger, who was on holiday in Little Cayman with his wife from Kentucky USA, got into difficulty while diving Bloody Bay Wall on an organised boat dive . Police said that at 12.25pm the man lost consciousness as he was ascending. He was transported to shore on the dive boat as crew carried out CPR. A nurse met the boat at Salt Rock Dock and continued CPR while the man was taken to the local clinic in the dive company’s vehicle, but he was pronounced dead on arrival.
A police spokesperson said that enquiries continued but there appeared to be no suspicious circumstances surrounding the death.
The visitor’s death at sea comes less than one week after 80-year-old William Lemuel Lawson Jr, who was visiting from Florida, died while diving off the Double Wall dive site northwest of Cayman Brac.
The number of water-related deaths in Cayman this year has already exceeded the annual average, with only half the year gone. Eight of those deaths have involved ocean swimmers, snorkelers or divers, the youngest of which was Pablo Perez Lara (41), a swimmer with the Special Olympics team from Uruguay, who died during an 800-metre race. Most of the other victims were visitors from the US who were over 50 years of age.
The other two water-related deaths include the drowning of a 9-year-old boy in a swimming pool and a 21-year-old man who died in a boat incident.
Category: Local News
There's been of lot of posting relating to medical exams. Not bad idea, in fact in Australia your fitness to drive a motor vehicle has to be verified by a doctor every year once you turn 70.
The problem is that any medical is a long way from foolproof. When I was working in Israel a 43-year-old woman suffered a fatal heart attack during her open water course just days after completing a mandatory medical exam, which included a chest x-ray and ECG. In the UK an instructor I knew suffered a fatal heart attack after recently undergoing an HSE medical, he was also in his 40s.
You can also get round this kind of monitoring by downloading a very official looking medical exam form on the internet and completing it yourself.
At the end of the day it's down to the individual concerned making a judgment call over when to stop diving. The problem is a lot of people (and I am not in any way trying to comment on the two latest incidents) refuse to make that decision. I can remember a customer in the Bahamas who signed a waiver declaring no medical problems but turned out to be taking six different medications for at least three distinct medical conditions, any one of which should have stopped him diving.
About the only area where I might find fault with dive operations is that some of them take people out (or in the case of cruise shippers are often forced to take them out by contracts with the cruise lines) who are clearly not fit to be diving and don't in any way try to advise or counsel the customer. If someone crawls back on a diveboat after an easy 60' dive looking pale and stressed out (and I've seen this happen too many times) it might be an idea to have a quiet talk to them before booking their next dives.
Why limit age restrictions to diving?
Snorkeling is just as stressful or exhausting as diving, for people who don't know how.
Driving on the other side of the road in the heat is a lot more exhausting so better limit that to about age 25.
Golf is incredibly stressful for most people plus lots of walking and swinging, better make that limit about age 30.
I know, just put age restrictions on everything…
and watch your tourism industry disappear. 😮
After seeing all the inappropriate thumbs down, it's quite obvious that some of these divers [if thats who they are] gets a little too much of that gas they breathe while diving.
It seems that any suggestion that might help to prevent these accidents from happening will get a thumbs down. So go ahead and have fun with this one too. but keep in mind that your thumbs down does not change the facts, which is, that if nothing is done to improve on the current system we will continue to see more & more divers suffer.
Please start your Divers Thumbs Down!
Some of these poor souls die because Cayman has not done nearly enough to bring about better safety precations and consequences, both civil and criminal, for those at fault.
One of the biggest growth demographics in tourism is the over 60s. The diving world is seeing a massive increase in divers over this age – they have disposable income (comparatively). Cayman has a high number of overnight tourists who have bought property or choose this destination because it's more appealing than backpacking in Utilla. So the profile of the tourist here is more mature. But this a trend being seen worldwide and has it's own set of issues.
The big diving certification companies, such as PADI, cannot put an age limit on older divers, it would be discrimination. So the only way for incidents in the more mature diver to be completely prevented is for a country to put a regulation/age limit in place themselves (IF they have laws that could support this). This would cripple the diving industry here. Perhaps (to help) the press should also correlate the number of deaths to the number of people diving – Cayman still remains one of the highest dive destinations in the Caribbean. Would you like to work out the % press? The facts are not being properly disclosed here.
However – this is a problem that is only going to get worse. Upto date dive medicals would help… the chances of getting a heart problem over 50 (having been previously very healthy) is something like 4 times as high… just by getting older! We have a fantastic dive medical community here, why not make people who have not had a medical within the last year get one before they dive. This would help identify any issues that have not been picked up before they get wet… this is common practice in places like Australia and Europe. Some people dive not knowing they have a new medical issue. And you can't tell by looking at them either!
Also – the unfortunate truth is, if someone is having a heart attack whilst diving (the biggest culprit in these incidents), the window to save this person's life is extremely small. Brain damage occurs with 3 minutes of no oxygen to the brain? It takes one foot per second to come up (this is ignoring a safety stop, which could be detrimental after a deep dive), any dives over 30ft are going to make it difficult to save that person's life. So unless a safety person is waiting on the surface, in the exact spot to start CPR (and takes no time to haul the person out of the water), the dive team supporting the victim have a very, very tough job in saving their lives. A deep dive will take nearly 2 minutes to come up from. De-fibs on boats would help (yes, they have ones that can be used in a 'wet' environment such as on a boat these days). But I think the facts surrounding this should be clear to everyone, diving is an 'extreme' sport for this very reason, there are risks and people MUST take these into account on a personal level and do everything they can to dive responsibly (i.e, know they are medically fit).
There will be a certain amount of incidents that cannot be pre-determined though and all the dive community can do in this case is be up to date on the training, comply to having the right number of staff taking care of the divers and make sure the buddy rule is being enforced . And before anyone points the figure at the lack of health and safety, they should try doing a rescue themselves… providing ample rescue support in the water is incredibly difficult.
TO 09:51 ABOVE.
Best contribution on the subject thus far! So if the dive industry will just follow the governing regulations and not say things like: We cannot follow the guidelines as stipulated in the laws regulating the "Diving Industry" because it costs us money! This was said by one of the owners of a dive company here on the Island. We "must" follow the rules of safety
Thank you for a thorough explanation which points out all the important aspects of adhering to the rules and regulations [process] instead of looking at the bottom line, when a life is at stake! Your last paragraph says it all.
It is nice of you to be concerned about this. However medical exams idea is pure utopia. Death is uncomfortable subject for so many. Almost as soon as you are born, they begin warn you about it, watch out, that could kill you, watch out and what they say, you could say , they really mean it and right away you start tensing against it…but we are all eternal beings and there is no lapse in consciousness.
" De-fibs on boats would help (yes, they have ones that can be used in a 'wet' environment such as on a boat these days)."
Actually Automated External Defibrillators do not work in all cardiac cases. AEDs can be used to shock V-Fib and V-tach. Other problems such as asystole cannot be treated with AEDs.
It is important for rescuers to realize that the AED will refuse to shock if the detected cardiac rhythm is not one of the shockable rhythms. The AED is working as designed when it does not deliver a shock in such cases.
So while Defibs may help some, there is no reason to think they would help in most of the diver death cases we ahve seen in Cayman.
Before divers where originally people of the island and no their waters as well follow rules. Now with have non long term skill individuals from overseas saturating the industry. Fly by day and fly night people who will eventually return home with an International experience meanwhile Cayman is getting a bad review. I rest my case. The Education Department needs to start promoting diving for the next generation as this will help the country.
Note to tourists over the agge of 40: Do not attempt to swim/dive in our waters.
LOL, bit late for me then – I didn't get certified until I was 41!
I would suggest the Education Department starts by addressing the high rate of illiteracy in Cayman first…….
We all will die someplace some time, exactly how Mother Nature intended. Over dramatization over natural course of events. There is no death after all, just change of form.
The post on here clearly show that preservation of the diving industry and its income streams are the most important things to the vast majority of posters, who would rather these regular deaths were not reported becuase it, to quote, "certainly does not do the Diving industry any favours", or they would rather make up excuses "our waters have stronger currents than they are accustomed to" or live in complete denial – "Caymans dive industry still ranks as the safest in the world". Cayman is a very dangerous place for visitors. There is a complete lack of adequate government safety standards, dive companies can exclude all liabilties and do not therefore need to worry about insurance cover prices when deciding whether to take on a diver or not. The attitude is as one poster said, and received a lot of thumbs up: "You pays your money and you takes your chance." More acucuratey, they'll take your money whatever the risk. It is a disugsuting greed-fuelled state of affairs. Anyone who has lost a loved one on a vacation in Cayman would be horrified to know the truth.
Agree 100%. It is sadly likely that most of the posters on here think they have a financial interest in not having higher safety standards introduced.
Any sportsman needs to be physically and mentally in shape for their chosen endeavour . Too they must be well trained to the extent they can say to themselves " i ve been here befor; i know what to do … Condolences to the family
I agree with you. The one thing I have thought for a long time is that divers should have an up to date medical certificate from their doctor. If not then they should see a doctor on the Island and get a basic check up done, blood pressure etc etc. and get a note to say they have had a check up, before being allowed to dive. When something like this happens it puts a huge responsibility on the dive operators and it's not their job to say if they think someone is fit enough to dive, is it??. I see some people at a particular resort who are so overweight I wonder how they get back onto the boat after a dive!!.
Malta had such medical requirements for every diver regardless of whether in a class or not. It did not work to change dive accident rates so they removed the requirement.
Cayman's government has turned a blind eye to the horrific death rates of tourists in its waters. This is because these business are locally owned and the government is unwilling to take any step that is unpopular with the families that own these businesses or, heave forbid, might cost them some money. It should be illegal to exclude liability for negligence for death or personal injury and insurance should be mandatory. This simple step would save at least a few lives every year. But people are dying because of greed and a lack of legal or economic accountability.
You obviously have never studied law as is obvious from how you wrote. In the UK, and specifically England and Wales, which has the legal system closest to Cayman, business exclusion clauses that sought to avoid civil liability for negligently caused death or personal injury were outlawed by statute decades ago. It only needs a very simple cut and paste and Cayman could have that legislation in weeks. It would reduce significantly the number of deaths and accidents in Cayman. I am sorry if you think saving lives is Communist, but that line of logic would be in line with the rest of the nonsense in your post.
It's clear that YOU know nothing of the law. Last I heard the Caymans were a BRITISH colony. Even US law is based on English parlimentary law. If any government can just "cut and paste" to overwrite and intervene in civil matters then they are, as was said, more of a dictatorship than any free or democratic society.
A lot of people here seem to think that diving fatalities only occur in the Cayman Islands, or waivers are only used there. The whole world uses waivers, instructors can't even take someone diving without a waiver. So even if they COULD somehow, beyond me, be able to "copy and paste" in some law to make release waivers illegal, then that would put an end to diving altogether in the Cayman Islands because no instructor would be able to take anyone diving.
Got any more bright ideas?
There is no real solution here, because there is no real problem. People die all the time, some just happen to be in the ocean when they get their heart attack or siezure or whatever it is that would have killed them anyway.
People should get medical checkups and do refresher dives if they have not exercised or have medical issues. Then when they go diving tell the TRUTH to the instructors, put in on the waiver, let them know something may be wrong. Then if they take you and you die there is a cause. Otherwise it's called an ACCIDENT. Sorry to disappoint all the drama queens, but nobody to sue, nobody to blame. It's life… and death.
Condolences to the family for their loss.
T.
Um, you don't cut and paste laws, at least not in any civilized countries. There is a thing called due process. Google it, learn, understand, then make intelligent comments. 😉
The day ANY country outlaws or bans or (cuts and pastes – lol) release forms out of the equation is the day they say goodbye to scuba diving, and all the tourist dollars it generates.
NO insurance company ANYWHERE will provide without a waiver. No insurance = no diving.
Simple, eh?
Funny because there is quite a lot of diving in the UK and in the US states that have similar restrictions on waivers for negligence causing personal injury. So you are full of crap.
I kind of feel like you guys are talking past one another…
Liability waivers protect the operators from death or injury in the course of a safe dive and are very smart and necessary. Otherwise, someone could lie about their health on a form, dive, have the operator do everything right, unfortunately pass away, and still have his/her family sue the operator. This is just one of many possible scenarios where the dive operator should not be liable.
However, you cannot generally waive liability that is the result of negligence. This means the operator has to do everything in accordance with the law, any regulations and best practices in order to be protected should anything happen. If someone suffers an injury or dies on a dive, they could then only sue if the operator was negligent, e.g. gave the person faulty equipment or did something else wrong that resulted in or was a major contributor to that injury/death.
So I feel like you would both agree on these points, but one of you is talking about waiving liability due to negligence and the other is talking about waiving liability in general (with the presumption that liability due to negligence is not included).
You pays your money and you takes your chance.
Or we takes you money and that is all we seem to care about.
Forgot to mention your headline is VERY misleading and certainly does not do the Diving industry any favours.It suggests that diving is the BIG culprit in these accidents.
RIght, the headline should have been, Ocean Claims Another VICTIM (not diver). Journalistic irresponsibility is as much a cause of demise in Cayman and everywhere else than any diving accidents.
CNS: The victim was a diver, another one. The headline is accurate.
Cayman is in the Caribbean SEA, not an ocean.
um, somebody just died, have a heart for Pete’s sake!
Condolences to the Family.
Cayman lacks safety standards.
Every tourist who desires to dive should be required to produce an health certificate or maybe a list of medications. Who knows, they should not go into the water but become venturesome and is anxious for the experience.
They already do. They're called Liability Waivers.
My condolances to the divers family.It is sad to see these accidents occuring but unfortunately these things happen as it does in any other part of life cars,planes boats etc.Caymans dive industry still ranks as the safest in the world from what I have seen compared to many other places and the call for intervention by Government to put an age limit on people who want to do certain things is uncalled for.This should be left to the dive companies to decide and most if not all do a proper medical check by having people answer a full slate of medical questions.The problem with this is the fact many people DO NOT answer honestly for fear of not being allowed to dive.I personally will not allow anyone who is way overweight to dive.Its all a matter of asking questions of people when they book online to dive.In closing please remember that not all these folks were diving. If memory serves me correctly at least 3-4 were swimming or snorkling off the beach.
For all those who are inexperienced divers and or unaccustomed to salt-water diving. Here is something everyone including even the veteran divers should always keep in mind while diving. See the ruleson Scuba-Diving -Smiles.com, you are bound to think next time you go diving.
Scuba Diving Safety and Dive Safety Rules
At a certain age, everyone should have a heart check up. Whether we want to admitit or not, this will start looking bad on the Cayman Islands.
These people need to understand that our waters have stronger currents than they are accustomed to. That added to our level of heat can be fatal for people this age. While I am extremely saddened that the families of these tourist will forever remember our beautiful islands as a sad place, we must at some point set age limits to these dives. We cannot continue to watch our tourist lose their lives because of the lack of understanding they have of our climate & ocean. Department of Tourism, put a stop to this. My deepest sympathies to the families. May the soul of the departed RIP.
WOW someone who hasnt got the slightest idea of what he is talking about.
On the whole, the scuba diving in the Cayman Islands has very little current. Each dive site still must be evaulated for conditions on any given day. But is a a gross misstatement to suggest that stong currents are any significant issue in Cayman waters for scuba divers.
Cayman needs to consider putting an age limit on these divers. Seems like we have lost quite a few elderly people.
I do not know how many dives you have but I have ovetr 7500 worldwide including 8 just 10 days ago in Honduras. Also, I spent 33 years in the diving industry in Cayman and am presently 82 years old. 1) The currents in Cayman are quite mild ciompared to the rest of the world. 2) The biggest danger in Cayman diving is that the water is so clear and warm that it can too easily relax the diver, not stress them out. 3) If I, or anybody, is going to suffer a heart attack to hope and pray that it will be on a dive boat as they have a much better chance of receiving proper CPR and O2. 4) If your theory is correct about tourist deaths is correct (and it isn't) then we must a) escort by wheelchair all tourists over 60 from their airplane b) prohibit anybody over 65 from playing golf. For the record – I am no longer in the diving industry and have no dog in the hurnt for a diving dollar. Ron Kipp
Since this is your" forte" Mr. Kipp, and since you have been in this business for so long, can you please explain why is it that The Cayman Islands have such high numbers in scuba diving deaths annually, compared to other destinations.
Statistics show that world wide there are about 90 – 100 diving fatalities on average. Whereas in the Cayman Islands we have an dismal record [number wise] in that, in the first six months of this year we have had 10 diving deaths, that's 10 percent of the deaths world wide!. In 2009 if I'm not mistaken there were 12 deaths. Please explain! I would ask you look up and check the dive fatalities in Cayman for the last ten years and see the consistency in these numbers.
It is my belief also as you stated, that ocean currents has little to do with these deaths. I believe that the likely cause is, a need for dedicated, qualified dive instructors, and adherence to proper procedures on board all dive boats, most notably those owned by the "Johnny-Come-Lately" dive operations that have been given license to operate here in our island since the 1980s &1990s. Remember during those years and before we never heard of divers going missing and boats returning without them. Thats right! "This has happened recently"! But no one was penalized for it . We must make laws that do just that. Otherwise these things will continue.
Let us look at someone who today is still in operation, and has been in the business longer than any other dive masters operating here in Cayman. His name is Mr. Peter Milbourne and in all his years of operation has never lost a diver. I can't recall ever hearing about even one serious accident on his watch during all the years he has been in business.!
Therefore I firmly believe that the greatest causes of these unfortunate deaths are!
!: Properly trained and qualified dive instructors
2: Lack of properly trained personel onboard during dives.
3: Inadequate air supply.
And 4: Greed!
That's right! And why greed you may ask? Because my friend like every other business that starts off doing well in Cayman we grant too many licenses for more of these businesses and the market is then saturated causing the bottom line of each operation to drop. Thus the decline in profits and the implementation of cost cutting measures, which precipitates the hiring of improperly trained staff etc. etc.. These are, in my opinion, why we are seeing such rapid increases in the numbers of diving fatalities here in Cayman.
Government must step in, to make sure "this industry" is properly regulated or the dive business in Cayman will lose its stellar reputation as "The Best In The World".
Anyone watched "The Firm" lately?
I'm not Mr. Kipp, but I'll add my 2 cents…
First of all, could you please link to your sources for these numbers? I see some answers on Yahoo Answers and WikiAnswers that are close to what you cite but they are not sourced and therefore not reliable. The most reliable sites I could find in a quick google search are these three: scuba.about.com, dailyfinance and scubadiverinfo.
If there are 150 deaths per year in the US alone (see second and third link above) the worldwide number is obviously higher, so 90-100 is definitely underestimating annual diving mortality. Unfortunately, I couldn't find an absolute number of deaths worldwide, only the rate of deaths, which is 1 per 211,864 divers (see third link above)
After also searching local news archives here are my comments…
The 10 water-related deaths in Cayman so far this year have not all been divers, as you claim. In fact, only two of those were divers, including the one mentioned in this article. One young boy drowned in a swimming pool and another young man died in a "boating accident". As reported by CNS above, the other eight were swimmers, snorkellers or divers in the ocean. These deaths included 1 swimmer competing an in open-water race on 25 May; 2 divers on 7 July and 12 July; and 5 swimmers/snorkellers on 22 February, 3 May, 16 May, 23 May and 26 May.
According to the Compass, we average 8-10 water-related fatalities each year. Again, we should be clear that these are not all divers, they also include swimmers and snorkelers. In addition to the two divers so far in 2013; in 2012, five of the water-related deaths were divers, one each on 23 January, 3 February, 1 March, 23 March and 11 September; in 2011, four of the water-related deaths were divers, one each on 18 January, 8 February, 10 August and 23 November; and in 2010, only one diver died in Cayman waters, on 13 September.
It is also not appropriate to just look at the number of deaths when comparing Cayman to another dive location/worldwide averages or assessing how "dangerous" it is to dive here. You really have to look at the incidence or rate of deaths. In the US, those 150 deaths per year work out to about 1 death per 200,000 dives (not divers) and DAN reports that, worldwide, a diving fatality occurs in 1 out of every 211,864 dives (again, dives, not divers).
I have absolutely no idea how many dives occur in Cayman each year. However, unless we have had less than 400,000 total dives so far this year then we are safer or just as safe as other places. If we average one million dives in a year we can expect up to a handful of deaths.
Overall, it appears that it is the health of the individual and not the licenses, qualifications, procedures or equipment of our dive instructors and others that are the issue here. The ONE potential exception I can think of is a recent case that the Coroner's Court ruled death by misadventure, where expert witnesses noted that there may have been some small issues with equipment loaned by a local dive company. (To be clear, I am not saying that this was a (contributing) factor and there certainly have not been any allegations or reports of criminal or civil proceedings.)
If there were any general issues with safety here in Cayman (or ones specific to certain operators), a regulator, the police or the Coroner's Court would catch that risk. Every single unexpected/sudden death is investigated by the RCIPS and the case goes to the Coroner's Court. In addition, the DoT, CITA and dive operators themselves all have a huge interest in ensuring diving in Cayman is safe and is also seen to be safe. Even international organisations like PADI and DAN have a stake in our dive operations.
In sum, I completely disagree with your assessment. And if you don't care for my opinion or that of Mr. Kipp, please read Peter Milburn's post above for his insight. We are currently doing all of the right things to minimise the risk that comes with diving. It is unfortunate that some people who choose to dive here are either unaware of serious health issues or lie about them in order to get into the water. And we certainly can't prevent those rare freak accidents where healthy people pass away suddenly.
My condolences to all of those who have lost a loved one in these diving accidents. And to everyone else, please be safe and be smart.
The "BIGGEST DANGER" in Cayman diving is that the water is so clear and warm that it can too easily relax the diver, "NOT STRESS THEM OUT".
WOW! One for Scuba Diving manuals of the future!
IS THERE ANY WONDER WHY THESE DEATHS CONTINUE TO OCCUR IN THE DIVE INDUSTRY?
What has to happen within the dive industry is, that all the players involved must take the time to reflect on the negativity that is being publicized every time these things happen and, they must learn to accept positive criticism. One of the first things one must do when trying to solve a problem is to admit that "there is a problem".
What is needed here is for the industry [and government ] to sit down and come up with better legislation that will protect the clients of the dive operations and insure the reputation of Diving Industry in the Cayman Islands. We must scrutinize every group that come in and starts a dive operation and to test [paid for by the dive operation] every employee that will be working as a dive master and or safety personel.
We cannot afford to loose the industry. So to all those whose egos won't let them admit that there's a problem, the next time you see someone dying out there, ask yourself,
COULD I HAVE DONE MORE TO PREVENT IT?
Compare the micromort index for diving and golf and you would realise that your golf "analogy" is nonsense.