Counting Divers Down

Three divers diving with Dixie Divers off Deerfield Beach, Florida, were left behind on May 24 when the boat’s novice captain forgot to count heads after an afternoon dive and headed back to shore without them. The captain of the dive boat Get Down admitted, “It’s all my fault. I made a mistake.” The divers had to dodge speedboats and water scooters for 45 minutes before they managed to flag down a fishing boat to bring them in.

It’s hard to fathom why operators omit a safety measure as crucial as head counts, and it’s also hard to imagine what might force them to count heads if common sense doesn’t. Australia tried to address the problem by passing a law requiring head counts before boats departed a dive site, but the law wasn’t much help to Louisiana divers Thomas and Eileen Lonergan, who perished off Queensland when they were left at sea by the dive boat Outer Edge in January, 1998 (see Undercurrent’s 3/98, 4/98, 10/98, and 3/99 issues).