Five divers who were drifting for hours off the Hawaiian coast were rescued by a sailing couple that heard their screams for help and found “five little dots” in the vast ocean.
The divers became separated from their boat during an excursion, leading them to cling to each other for survival. Camila Storchi and her husband were sailing from Kaneohe to Honolulu when they heard the desperate cries. Storchi recounted to local station Hawaii News Now, “We were passing Hanauma and going around China Walls. He heard screaming for help and he started scanning the ocean and we saw five little dots.”
This means that to be covered, you must have continuous (uninterrupted) coverage from the time of the incident that led to the claim to the time the claim is filed.
Any gap in coverage, no matter how small, will negate coverage for previous incidents or claims. Keep in mind that it may take up to 48 hours to process your policy, and there is no grace period, so be sure to renew well before your current policy expires.
News has broken overnight that the 33-year-old diving industry stalwart, and Dive Rite's General Manager lost consciousness at Plura Cave on Wednesday 3 April 2024.
The Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation NRK (nrk.no) first reported the diving incident:
An American citizen has been confirmed dead after a diving accident in the Plura Cave in Rana. Although a defibrillator was used after a short time, his life was not saved.
The following is a first-hand statement given to me by one of the divers involved with the fatal dive. They spoke to me on the evening of 4 April 2023.
When a swarm of tiger sharks attacked a Netflix video crew's boat, the boat was punctured, and they were forced to make an emergency landing on a beach in Hawaii.
The team had been gathering material for the David Attenborough documentary Our Planet II. They were operating an inflatable boat around the Laysan area of Northwestern Hawaiian Islands in order to capture footage of tiger sharks consuming young albatross fledglings.
Arthur Castillo had his conviction of involuntary manslaughter quashed after the appeals court ruled that he did everything he could have reasonably been expected to do under the circumstances.
On Friday 25 November 2022, a lower court found diver Arthur Castillo, 60, guilty of the involuntary homicide of his long-time dive buddy Christine Gauci, who died following a dive in Mgarr ix-Xini, a bay on the southern coast of Gozo in January 2020. Gauci was an Armed Forces of Malta member, diving instructor and technical diver.
In a ruling that caused outrage in the diving community, the lower court handed Castillo a two-year jail term suspended for four years, which was immediately appealed.
On Friday 25 November, diver Arthur Castillo, 60, was found guilty of the involuntary homicide of his long-time dive buddy Christine Gauci who died following a dive in Mgarr ix-Xini, a bay on the southern coast of Gozo in January 2020. Ms Gauci was an Armed Forces of Malta member, diving instructor and technical diver.
The court handed Mr. Castillo a two-year jail term suspended for four years, pronouncing itself convinced that this case did not merit effective imprisonment. Castillo told Times of Malta he will be appealing the judgment but declined further comment.
Scotland's highest civil court published their Opinion of the Court on 10 May 2022, and ruled that fault or neglect on the part of Scapa Charters "is not established".
The Opinion states "The Lord Ordinary wrongly concluded that walking in fins represented an unacceptable risk...The inference drawn by the Lord Ordinary was unreasonable. The divers' unchallenged evidence made it clear that putting on fins and then walking to the exit point was almost invariable practice.
In the last 92 hours, the USA mainstream media has reported a double scuba diving fatality in Florida. What is unusual in this case is that the two victims were aged 7 and 9.
On Friday 23 April 2021, Zale Dudas (9) and Saxon Nairne (7), along with their father Rodney Nairne, visited a property in Jensen Beach. It is believed that the purpose of the visit was to demonstrate a DPV or Diver propulsion vehicle.
According to mainstream media reports, the siblings were “described by their father as experienced swimmers and proficient divers”. This is not a surprise because the family are ardent and experienced scuba and technical divers, and several members have done work in scuba diving.
On 28 July 2021 Rodney Nairne - Zale Dudas and Saxon Nairne's father - contacted me. He stated that both he and Suzie had agreed to donate the children's organs.
In September 2019, off the coast of California, a fire aboard the MV Conception, a 23-meter (75-foot) scuba diving liveaboard, broke out during the night, killing 33 passengers and one crew member. The captain and four crew members barely escaped. After more than a year of speculations and rumors, the NTSB (the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board) published the results of its investigation and the U.S. Coast Guard issued a new policy on a few topics, including the charging of lithium-ion batteries aboard small vessels and liveaboards.
61-year-old Tim Saville was diving the wreck of the Titanic’s sister ship. At the time of writing this article, it is not known why Saville died.
There is a policy in place on Britannic that divers are not allowed to penetrate the wreck unless they are diving a rebreather because this will help preserve the ship. (Gas is expelled when diving open circuit scuba). It is understood that Saville was diving an X-CCR rebreather.