Tim was making good progress surveying the 40-foot pleasure craft. It had sunk quickly after colliding with another boat on the way back to the river marina. The people on board had made it to shore, but now the boat was roughly 50 feet down in the freshwater river. Tim identified several solid places on the boat where he could ­attach his lift bags and raise it to the surface. He was looking forward to cashing the check for this one, and the insurance company would be happy to make some of their money back.

Before heading to the surface, Tim decided to take a quick look at the bow. The boat listed slightly to port where it rested on the bottom, and he wanted to make sure there wasn’t a hole in the hull — that would make the recovery more difficult. Tim used his scooter to blow some of the mud and silt from the river bottom out of the way, but he still couldn’t tell if the hull was intact or not. He moved in closer, continuing to blast silt with the scooter and feeling down the side of the boat with his hand. Then the boat shifted.

THE DIVER
Tim was 43 years old and in good shape. He was well-known on the river and often helped boaters at the local marina by cleaning hulls and diving to retrieve lost rudders and lower outboard units. He was a technical diver and a divemaster with plenty of experience, both in the freshwater river and in ocean environments.

THE DIVE
During a busy weekend on the river, a recreational boater had collided with another vessel and lost control of his large pleasure craft. The boat had gone down in just a few minutes. The marina’s owner asked Tim if he would take a look at the watercraft to see about bringing it to the surface. There was a local commercial diver who was willing to do the job, but it would be a couple of weeks before he could get to it, and he wanted too much money.

Tim had never tried to raise ­anything larger than a boat engine from the river bottom, but he ­happily ­accepted the job for about half of what the commercial diver wanted to charge. He would have to make several dives to place his lift bags on the boat, and then he would make another to fill them all and bring the boat to the surface. He planned to begin that series of dives the following morning and had a couple of friends coming to help him with equipment. Before getting started, Tim decided to make a survey dive and determine how many lift bags he would need. He didn’t ask anyone to come along.

The boat had sunk out of the main shipping channel and was marked with a buoy to help other boaters stay away. Tim geared up on shore and swam from the riverbank to the buoy before he began his descent. He was ­carrying an underwater scooter to help him maintain his position against the river current and get back to his exit point. He placed his diver-down flag on top of the marker buoy and got to work.

THE ACCIDENT
Tim completed his survey of the sunken pleasure craft, marking locations for lift bags on an underwater slate he carried with him. The only thing left was the hull against the river bottom. Tim checked it out as thoroughly as he could, but the silt and muddy river bottom made it difficult to see the impact area. He held onto the boat and turned his scooter around, attempting to blow the mud out of the way and get a better look. Without warning, the boat rolled toward Tim, trapping him on the bottom of the river.

It took several hours before ­anyone on the surface noticed Tim’s dive flag and called for help. The local fire ­department’s dive team recovered Tim’s body about four hours after he began the dive, according to his dive computer.

ANALYSIS
Divers are often asked to work on boats or recover small items lost ­underwater. Most of the time, the ­diver comes out just fine. In this case, the job was not as simple as recovering the lower unit of an outboard motor dropped from the dock.

Tim didn’t realize the magnitude of the recovery he had taken on — and the danger he had put himself in — until it was too late. Commercial divers have surface tenders, redundant or surface-supplied air sources, and communication systems linking them to their surface support in case they get in trouble. Tim didn’t have any of those things.

Tim put himself in danger well ­before any actual recovery work ­began. The first was making a solo dive without telling anyone or having any sort of surface support. The second was improperly using an ­underwater scooter. When he turned the DPV around to blow away the silt and mud, it pulled him farther underneath the boat — and well beyond his dive training. As a technical diver, Tim ­understood the risks of being in an overhead environment but allowed himself to get beneath the boat anyway. Any time there is something that inhibits a direct ascent to the surface, the level of complication rises. It is probable that Tim’s experience and training led him to be overconfident in his approach to this survey dive. It was a simple dive to 50 feet, one he had made many times before. Only this time, he got in trouble and had no ­support system to help him out.

There is no way of knowing what Tim’s last minutes were like, but struggling to get free from the ­entrapment and then panicking when he realized he was going to die must have been terrible. Surface support, a dive buddy, or even a rope tied to the surface to signal for help could have saved his life.

LESSONS FOR LIFE
1) Avoid Overconfidence: You may have dived a site “a hundred times before,” but when adding a new task or skill, make sure you are properly trained.

2) Leave it to the Professionals: Don’t take on commercial-diving jobs without the proper training and support.

3) Become a Solo Diver: If you want to make a solo dive, get the training and equipment ­necessary to do so safely.

4) Communicate the Plan: Let others know your dive plan so they can look for you when you are missed; establish emergency protocols.

About Lessons For Life

We're often asked if the Lessons for Life columns are based on real-life events. The answer is yes, they are. The names and locations have been removed or altered to protect identities, but these stories are meant to teach you who to handle a scuba diving emergency by learning from the mistakes other divers have made. Author Eric Douglas takes creative license for the story, but the events and, often, the communication between divers before the accident are entirely based on incident reports.

Eric Douglas co-authored the book Scuba ­Diving Safety, and has written a series of adventure novels, children’s books, and short stories — all with an ocean and scuba diving theme. Check out his website at booksbyeric.com and follow him on Facebook at facebook.com/EricDouglasAuthor.