re: Sad Loss of an Avid Outdoorsman

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The Dive;

On the way down, I saw David out of the corner of my eye, but I never really saw Mike other than one glimpse of him over to the side, he was not on the second pipe with me and David. The reason I could barely see David also was because I was swimming in front of David, but I knew he was close. At 110’ there was a deck, and I just peeked my head around that pipe to see if the cubera was on top of that deck, I didn’t see him so then I dropped a little more and looked underneath that deck, nothing. I now left the 2nd pipe, and started swimming into the conductor pipes in the center of the rig, and now I could see David very well on the side of me as we circled the conductors. We dropped to 150’ and there was fish ever where. All of this time I’m trying to find Mike but I can’t locate him. I shot a small scamp at around 150-155’ and threw the shaft back into my gun, looked at David who was right next to me and started looking for Mike. That is when I noticed a stream of bubbles coming from below all the way to the outside of the rig. I went over to those bubbles, trying to look down, but after 155’ the water started getting dark and murky. It also appeared as if the bubbles were getting stronger meaning the diver was ascending. I stayed at this depth for a minute waiting to even see if this was Mike, and then I made the decision to drop down to see what was going on. I was dropping really fast trying to get to the source of the bubbles. I had checked my gauges before I dropped and know I only had about ½ of a tank of air, and I checked my gauges at max depth, 235’. I was only 5’ off the bottom and could see the bubbles but could not see Mike, I was screaming and yelling to the top of my lungs but I could not go any deeper as now I only had 500psi. left in my tank. I started to think that the rig was leaking bubbles because the source of the bubbles was coming from the bottom of the Gulf and I didn’t want to die to find a leaky pipe.

I blew up my BC and hauled arse for the surface, at 200’ I passed David, who saw what was going on and tried to keep an eye on me. When I got to 30-20’ I had barely anything left in my tank, me and David stayed on the corner leg of the rig, motioning hand signals, about Mike. Before I could completely finish my decompression, I was out of air, but my meter was in good shape as this was only the first dive of the day.

Back at the Boat;

When we hit the surface, we started asking Justin if Mike was already on the boat, and he told us “no.” I told David, if that was Mike’s bubbles, he’s dead. We both got on the boat, and after about 2 minutes, Mike popped up slumped over. Both me and David jumped in the water and half way to Mike I thought it would be better for me to get back on the boat and bring the boat to them. Not to mention, I’d have to set up an oxygen bottle. I frantically pulled at first aid gear, and David and Justin had Mike at the ladder, we couldn’t get him in the boat because he was so heavy. In the process, his BC and tank got unbuckled and dropped back into the water. We finally got him in the boat, and I started yelling MAYDAY on channel 16, diver in distress.

I then started yelling at the rig, for them to lower the personnel carrier, but nobody was looking over the side, so I had planned to jump on the rig, but the current going the opposite way of the waves was making that impossible, at this point I had Justin driving the boat, and he couldn’t handle getting the boat into position. I then had to take over the helm and I nosed the boat to the rig and got Justin to jump off the bow, and up the ladder to get help.

I know David was working on Mike, but I could barely stand to look to the back of the boat where they both were. Finally, the rig workers lowered the personnel basket and David and I wrestled Mike into the basket and David took the ride up and onto the rig, but Mike was already gone, and we’re not really sure if he ever was there after surfacing several minutes earlier.

These are the details to the best of recollection, it just so happened that I had this data logger on me. Dr. Stein had wanted me to take it down, for a fish study to determine water depth and temperatures at that depth. This was my first dive ever with the data logger. Some of the depth numbers in these details may be off but the data logger will give the exact depths, once I get that information I will forward it to you.

If there was only one thing that could’ve been changed. On the way back, I was towing the boat, and the bearing burned up, my boat is sitting on the side of the road at Delta Outboards down in Empire, I couldn’t make it back home with my boat, I wish the damn thing would’ve burned up on them the night before and the boat wouldn’t have made it down there, but no doubt, we would have been persistent enough to fix it, and still go diving.

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