On Tuesday, January 22, 2002 12:56 PM, Mike Wallace wrote:

> Not sure that I have the operator right, although I think I do. It was a
> couple lawyers from California that got left. They managed to make it to
> a buoy and spent the night + several hours hanging on till they were
> spotted the next day.

G'Day, Mike!  The details of that particular incident can be seen at:
http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/fls/Aqua%20Nut%20Divers.html

It's something that happens more often than anyone likes to admit - and in
some instances goes unreported.

In retrospect it's always easy to see how such incidents might have been
avoided.  Which is one of the reasons that - here in Oz - the Queensland
Government's Workplace Health & Safety division were so insistent on an
Industry Code of Practice intended to reduce the chances of that happening
again.  ( In early 1998, a day boat left two divers behind on the reef.
Their dissappearance went un-noticed and un-reported for several days.  The
subsequent air/sea search failed to find the divers; generated enormous
publicity; and put the Queensland diving industry under the spotlight.)

Certainly in this part of the world the fall-out from that incident
encouraged liveaboard operators to put their own procedures under the
spotlight to ensure the avoidance of a similar disaster.

Strike