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A tragic charter boating accident occurred in the Florida Keys on Sunday, December 18th rendering four of the six passengers with minor injuries and two passengers trapped on board; which lead to one fatality. A small commercial vessel called ‘Get Wet’ was flooded in choppy sea conditions near Molasses Reef, off the coast of Florida.
How did it happen?
The tragedy occurred not long after the divers completed their first of two planned dives on Molasses Reef, a popular spot which is around 30 feet deep and located a few miles of the Key Largo shore in the Atlantic Ocean. ‘Get Wet’ had just left one mooring spot and was en-route to a second dive location on the large reef when it began taking in water. Witnesses estimated that ‘Get Wet’ sank in “about two minutes.”
“We’re authorized for more than six passengers. I believe it’s 14,” said Mike Schecter, one of the boats owners. “The boat was built in 1980 by Lindsey Boat Builder. The weather started out fairly calm but the winds picked up and the seas got choppier as the day progressed. The accident happened at about 3:15 pm, when winds were at least 15 mph and the seas were 3 to 4 feet.”
Captain John Nathaniel who was on board the vessel at the time dove into the cabin and retrieved Rhoads and Rampurkarl, who were at that time unconscious. They were put on another commercial vessel from Pennekamp Park called ‘Visibility’ which had promptly arrived to help. Both Rhoads and Rampurkarl were given CPR en route to Key Largo, were taken to the Baptist Hospital in Kendall, where they are still in critical condition.
“A woman diver from Washington State died when she was trapped inside the cabin of a 25-foot charter boat that quickly sank in choppy seas in the Florida Keys”, said Officer Bobby Dube, spokesman for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. “Aimee Rhoads was pronounced dead after emergency workers performing CPR could not revive her on Sunday.”
What’s next?
Scuba Shack owners Chris Jones and Alison Gracey are in the Bahamas opening up the Bimini Scuba Shack and could not be reached for comment at the time this story broke.
“Right now it’s a mystery why it sank, with more questions than answers,” Dube said. It also is unclear why the two passengers were trapped in the cabin. “Even with just two minutes, they should have had time to get out. Maybe they went back to retrieve personal items. We don’t know. It’s just speculation right now.”
Seatow, a commercial salvage company, worked Monday afternoon to recover the boat and bring it back to land. The boat was brought to the surface, and the water pumped out but it sank again.
“Key Largo Scuba Shack, which opened back in August 2010, has currently suspended its operations while investigators from the F.W.C and the U.S. Coast Guard determine what happened”, said Mike Schecter. He also commented that the boat was not overloaded.
Riding out a hurricane several miles on land is a frightening experience for the most stalwart among us. Riding out a hurricane offshore defies description. Only the most blessed live to tell the story.
Mariners across the Gulf Coast have recently experienced more storms than the “old-timers” can recall. Unfortunately, the recent storms have claimed far too many maritime casualties related to improper emergency evacuations.
This short article will address the following question which has been posed to Delise and Hall quite a bit of late: what is the legal responsibility of a maritime employer or vessel owner to evacuate their employees or passengers as a hurricane approaches?
>Read all about hurricane safety for offshore workers and employer responsibilities
VILLAHERMOSA, Mexico
Air and sea search teams intensified their hunt for 10 missing oil workers as Tropical Storm Nate churned westward toward an expected landfall, threatening new areas of Mexico’s gulf coast.
Forecasters at the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said Nate hadn’t strengthened as expected in the early hours Sunday and chances were declining that the storm would become a hurricane before it was forecast to rumble ashore during the day.
At 2 a.m. EDT (0600 GMT) Sunday, Nate was centered about 70 miles (115 kilometers) northeast of Veracruz, with maximum sustained winds of 65 mph (100 kph). It was heading westward at 6 mph (9 kph), the Miami-based forecasters said. A hurricane warning was posted along the coast from Tuxpan to Veracruz and a hurricane watch from south of Veracruz to Punta El Lagarto.
Helicopters from the Mexican navy and the state oil company, Petroleos Mexicanos, left ports along the coast of Tabasco state to scour the sea while other crews searched the beaches closest to where the 10 oil workers abandoned their disabled liftboat for an enclosed life raft in the storm Thursday.
“The hope is that we find them alive at sea,” said one navy rescuer searching the beach at Frontera on the Tabasco coast. He didn’t give his name because he wasn’t authorized to speak to the media.
Rescue Efforts
By Saturday afternoon, authorities said they still had found no sign of the workers, who were employees of Houston-based Geokinetics Inc. and who called for help Thursday afternoon after leaving a vessel known as Trinity II around midday. The missing include four U.S. workers, four Mexican workers, one worker from Kazakhstan and a 10th of unconfirmed nationality.
A liftboat can lower legs to the sea floor and then elevate itself above the water level. This one was being used as a recording vessel and housing for the crew, and it was in waters about 25 feet (8 meters) deep.
Randy Reed, president of the vessel’s owner, Trinity Liftboat Services LLC in New Iberia, Louisiana, was not available for comment Saturday, according to a woman who answered the phone there. The Mexican navy said Friday night that sailors had reached the 94-foot (29-meter), 185-ton Trinity II but found no crew.
Safety Concerns
Maritime attorney Bobby Delise of Delise & Hall, a New Orleans based Admiralty law firm, has handled similar cases and expressed his concern for the workers and their families. Delise stressed that “it is imperative to never give up hope” and absolutely necessary for family members to be proactive in insuring that every possible search method is employed. “It is especially important in Mexican waters where the monetary cost of the search may be taxed to the oil company, to insure that no one is allowed to cut corners.” “This is significantly more troublesome in this instance as the Petroleos Mexicanos is state owned.” Delise remarked that it important that family not just accept the word of Mexican authorities or oil company representatives “they have to have someone on sight monitoring the efforts of the formal search”. Delise also commented that his firm had coordinated independent searches when necessary and stressed the critical time element of acting immediately.
Geokinetics spokeswoman Brenda Taquino said the life raft was a sealed capsule containing enough food and water to last several days, but there was no way to communicate with it.
Pemex said it had evacuated 473 workers from platforms off the coasts of the gulf coast states of Veracruz and Tamaulipas. Mexico’s gulf ports were closed to navigation.
A father and son dive team conducting a drift dive in the Florida Keys were critically injured in a recent accident. The 11-year-old boy was in emergency surgery and his father hospitalized after being run over by their charter vessel’s propellers while diving Tuesday morning, according to a state wildlife agency spokesman.
Calvin Adkins, 39, of Harrington, Del., and his 11-year-old son were airlifted to Miami in serious condition.
The child was in emergency surgery at Miami Children’s Hospital as of 6 p.m., Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission spokesman Bobby Dube said. The father was at Baptist Hospital.
The son’s injuries were more severe than his father’s, he added.
“They were both alive when they left here, but we heard that the son is not doing too well,” Dube said Tuesday afternoon.
The two apparently were run over by the 46-foot Big Dipper, of the Florida Keys Dive Center in Tavernier, about 9 a.m. just after getting in the water near Conch Reef, nine miles south of Key Largo.
Expert advice for avoiding diving accidents
Scuba safety expert and attorney Alton Hall, Jr. said that drift diving is a specialty form of diving and requires specific training and additional gear. Principally a floating dive flag and reel used to indicate the presence of the dive team so that the boat can track the divers progress and equally importantly to warn away other boat traffic. Hall remarked that “being struck by a boat on any dive and particularly a drift dive is a danger that the diver has very little control over.” Hall continued “given that the boat usually backs down on the divers to retrieve them from the water is almost impossible to avoid a boat that doesn’t stop in time.” “A diver is floating on the surface with his BCD inflated waiting to be picked up. He has very limited maneuverability and has to rely on the competence of the boat captain.” Hall who has successfully litigated numerous scuba related cases is a partner in the New Orleans law firm Delise and Hall. The firms practice focuses on recreational and commercial diving cases.
The Coast Guard, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, and the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office are investigating the incident, according to a press release from the Coast Guard.
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (“PTSD”) affects thousands of people around the worldwide including many workers involved with the offshore and diving industry. Our latest article takes a closer look at how the Jones Act applied in cases involving PTSD and reveals some facts and remedies you may not know about.
Read our article to learn more about:
- The history of PTSD
- Technical requirements for a PTSD diagnosis
- How “maintenance and cure” applies for offshore workers diagnosed with PTSD
- Specific examples of legal cases
> Read Seaman claims for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder under the Jones Act and Maritime Law
One of every diver’s worst fears came true for a US tourist on vacation last week when he was left behind by his dive boat roughly 30 miles offshore at Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.
Ian Cole, a 28 year old resident of Michigan, had been in the water for several hours when came back to the surface only to find the dive boat had departed without him, leaving him totally alone in open water. In an incredible stroke of luck, he spotted another boat in the distance which was nearby enough that he could swim to. Cole managed to make it to that boat where he was rescued.
Lesson learned – don’t panic
Cole told local authorities that when he first surfaced and realized he had been abandoned, he went into a state of panic. The physical reaction he had nearly cost him his life
“At that point I was pretty tired, so when the horror of being left behind riddled my body, I began to struggle and started taking water in through my snorkel,” Cole added.
Cole then managed to compose himself once he spotted the other boat, and found the strength to make the swim in around 15 minutes.
Lesson not learned – head count rules
Cole’s case is hardly the first example of dive boat operators leaving people behind in open water. In fact, Australian diver operators must comply with “strict head-count rules” resulting from the 1998 disappearance of Tom and Eileen Lonergan, a U.S. couple who were left behind on the Great Barrier Reef and presumed eaten by sharks. It took two full days for tour operators to realize they were missing. The 2003 film “Open Water” is based on their story.
Yet despite the additional rules and regulations, Cole was still left behind.
“I was in shock when they told me my boat had left. I thought they were kidding,” Cole told local authorities. “I nearly drowned. In my eyes, this is clearly a failure of the management to create an environment that promotes safety and competency.”
According to reports, Cole says that the dive boat company called him to apologize, offer a full refund and offer a meal voucher worth $210. They also fired the person responsible for the headcounts.
Cole also states that he has no intention to sue the vessel owners.
Importance of buddy divers
SCUBA safety expert and attorney Bobby Delise explained that this type of incident is not uncommon and is particularly dangerous as it is very difficult for the diver to protect against. He suggested making contact with a couple of individuals also on the boat and preferably not diving or diving in a separate group and mutually agreeing to insure that the other is on the boat before it departs.
Bobby Delise says “Diving with a buddy doesn’t help if your buddy gets left with you. You need someone else on the boat to be responsible.”
Everyone seems to know that a seaman is someone who works on or around the water. But did you know the actual qualification that will define you as a seaman in the workplace?
It may surprise you to know that divers also qualify as seaman. But what about hair dressers or bar tenders on a cruise ship? The answer may surprise you.
Our most recent article examines the legal definition of seaman including its history and recent cases which have helped shape its application in court. This is important if you are ever in an accident and may need protection under the Jones Act.
In a recent Federal Court case, the attorneys at Delise & Hall successfully argued that their client should not be compelled to endure a Functional Capacity Examination (FCE), a grueling test normally arranged by the employer to determine if the plaintiff is injuring or exaggerating his symptoms.
The Judge’s decision is the only widely reported decision in support of the injured seamen’s right to resist a FCE and will hopefully allow future seamen to defend themselves against similar unwarranted examinations, as these tests are administered by the employers’ experts with predictable outcomes.
Read more about this important ruling as it pertains to the Jones Act.
Nitrox diving is a type of recreational diving that utilizes a higher percentage of oxygen and thus a lower percentage of nitrogen as a breathing gas. Since this ratio closely mimics the air that is found on Earth, it generally allows divers to extend their bottom time and/or shorten surface intervals.
In order to avoid negative effects from an excess of nitrogen, divers must ascend slowly and make decompression stops. They must also follow the recommended surface intervals before completing another dive. When taking the proper precautions, nitrox diving offers many benefits to divers, allowing them to dive for longer intervals and with less side effects.
Nitrogen is an inert gas that is absorbed by the body during a dive. Reducing the percentage of nitrogen in the breathing gas reduces the amount of nitrogen absorbed and the decompression requirements. The benefits of recreational nitrox diving is that divers can spend more time underwater and less time on decompression stops and surface intervals. Happily, many sport divers have found that they also have less fatigue when nitrox diving.
Although there are many advantages to nitrox diving, there are also added obstacles. Since the nitrox has more oxygen in it, it’s possible that a diver can suffer oxygen toxicity. In fact, at certain levels, oxygen is toxic and requires divers to be cautious with depth limitations.
Furthermore, high levels of oxygen in the gas mix also increases flammability. To avoid this, divers must handle and clean nitrox tanks, regulators and valves with extreme care to avoid explosions.
Nitrox diving can be advantageous to the diver but he/she must be aware of the potential drawbacks of enhanced nitrogen and oxygen mixes, and be familiar with the common misconception that nitrox diving allows divers to go deeper. In truth, the deeper the water, the higher the oxygen levels. The use of nitrox requires strict adherence to maximum depth limits.
Every dive carries its risk, which is why it’s important to have a dive lawyer such as Delise and Hall on your side. Specializing in recreational and commercial diving, these lawyers know the rights of technical and public safety diving and related injuries.
Image c/o cdiving.com
It’s summer and for some that means a trip to the coastline. If you are considering a scuba diving vacation, you might be focused on getting your diving skills back in action. While it’s important to brush up on your scuba skills, you’ll also need to spend some time researching your destination and checking out the possible dive spots before you book your trip.
Why should you do research beforehand? Well, scuba dive locales vary widely in their depth, difficulty, and dangers. If you found diving off the coast of the Bahamas a cake walk, you might be ready to tackle more challenging dives. Should you decide to pursue one of these activities, you’ll need specialized scuba training before you set out on an expedition.
Some spots pose their own peculiar dangers to divers. Diving in a bay or near a reef can be far more hazardous than diving in a lake or quarry. Exploring underwater shipwrecks can present similar risks to diving inside caves. Before you decide on a dive spot, you might want to talk to a few local dive shops to get their advice on areas for new and experienced divers. Make sure you have a dive buddy to go on the trip with you or that the dive shop will provide you with a dive buddy. Even veteran divers need assistance from time to time and having a partner can make the difference when it comes to dive safety. Never dive alone.
Inquire about wildlife habitats in the dive locales before hitting the water. Some reefs may be ecologically sensitive which might require you to exercise caution when exploring the area. If you get the chance to visit dive spots that are teeming with wildlife, you might want to find a high-quality underwater camera to capture a few memories of your scuba diving vacation.
Divers should research their legal rights before they head underwater, especially if they are participating in a group or a chartered dive trip. Divers are often told to sign strict liability releases asking them to give up their legal rights. In some instances the diver may find the risk to be acceptable. However consider what happens if the boat runs you down or leaves you stranded floating at sea. The law offices of Delise and Hall have been representing divers in legal maritime matters for over a quarter of a century. Bobby Delise and Alton Hall are avid divers. Alton is a nationally recognized instructor for several dive agencies and also teaches technical and cavern diving.
Image c/o ddie
