How do things like this happen?

Dive boat runs over, injures father and son

By DAVID GOODHUE

dgoodhue@keysreporter.com

Posted - Wednesday, August 10, 2011 06:00 AM EDT

An 11-year-old boy was in critical condition at press time Tuesday afternoon after he and his father were run over by the dive boat they chartered from Plantation Key.
They were drift-diving north of Conch Reef when the accident happened, said Officer Robert Dube, spokesman with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. Drift divers jump off their boat and float along with the current. The dive boat typically follows them and picks them up when they resurface.
The son was immediately airlifted to Miami Children's Hospital. The father, who just turned 38, was originally taken to Mariners Hospital in Tavernier, but his condition was worse than originally thought and he was flown to Baptist Hospital in Miami.
The victims weren't identified Tuesday.
Both were wounded by the boat's propeller, Dube said. Dube said at press time that it was unclear how the father and son from Harrington, Del., were run over. The accident happened around 9 a.m. The FWC and the U.S. Coast Guard are investigating it.
The accident is considered a boating accident and not a scuba accident, Monroe County Sheriff's Office spokeswoman Deputy Becky Herrin said. Therefore, Sheriff's Office deputies might help in the investigation but the FWC will lead it.
The dive boat was from Florida Keys Dive Center on Plantation Key. A man who answered the phone Tuesday afternoon said he could not comment.    

Lobster Season and another Tragedy...

Posted on Sun, Aug. 07, 2011
Lobster-hunting trip turns tragic: Bodies of Palm Beach divers found in Florida Keys


By Mike Clary and Ariel Barkhurst
Sun Sentinel

A Palm Beach County woman’s lobster-hunting birthday celebration turned tragic on Saturday when two members of her dive party disappeared underwater while struggling for air, according to the Monroe County Sheriff’s Department.


The bodies of scuba divers Kevin Moss, 43, of Boca Raton, and Judy Boone, 53, of Wellington, were found on Sunday morning off Plantation Key, near the spot they were last seen, the sheriff’s office said in a release.


Their friend Mariann Radwan, of Highland Beach, who turned 54 on Sunday, was the last person to see them alive, Becky Herrin, spokeswoman for the sheriff’s office, wrote in the release. The victims are the second and third person killed in the last two weeks in the Florida Keys diving for lobsters. A man died during the mini-lobster season in the end of July.


Saturday marked the start of the regular lobster season.


The divers were on the second dive of the day about two miles off the ocean side of Plantation Key at Crocker’s Reef.


Moss and Boone were struggling with Moss’s weights and running out of air when Radwan surfaced because of her own dwindling air supply, the release said.


According to Herrin’s account:


Radwan and Moss realized he was out of air when the three divers were 45 feet beneath the surface. She shared her air with him while they tried to inflate her buoyancy device. But they began to sink because neither could figure out how to drop Moss’s weights.


Moss pushed her away, Radwan said, so that she could surface.


As she swam away, Radwan saw Boone trying to help Moss. She did not see them again.


Two other friends on the dive boat, a 25-foot Bayliner called Bob, were Sherri Makis, 55, of Boca Raton, and Alan Boyd, 52, of Boynton Beach.


The boat was helmed by Dennis Leith, 58, a veteran Keys diver and captain as well as a friend of Radwan’s.


He said he took her and other friends diving last year about this time, and she wanted to mark her birthday the same way again.


Leith told authorities the day turned into disaster when the divers ignored his instructions to stay in shallow water after they started finding lobster.


As they swam against the current following their prey, the divers quickly went from a depth of 32 feet to depths of up to 70 feet.


When Radwan surfaced to say, “We have a problem,” Leith said, he dropped anchor, donned his own diving gear and jumped in.


Leith said he made several crisscross passes of the area where the divers were last seen, but he could not spot them.


He called the Coast Guard, which continued the search along with the Fish, Wildlife Conservation Commission and the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office marine unit.


At 8:30 p.m. Saturday they called off the search due to an approaching thunderstorm and low light, according to Herrin.


The divers’ bodies were found at around 9:30 a.m. on Sunday. The cause of death will be determined following autopsies.


“In over 30 years, I’ve never lost a person on my watch, never,” said Leith, reached at his home in Tavernier Sunday evening. “But we lost two people and we shouldn’t have lost any.”


“It was a fun day, nobody was doing any drinking,” he said. “They made a mistake and it cost them their lives.”


“It is,” Leith said, “the saddest day of my life.”


Staff writer Philippe Buteau contributed to this report.


© 2011 Miami Herald Media Company. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.miamiherald.com


Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/08/07/v-print/2349031/bodies-of-two-missing-divers-found.html#ixzz1UPku62qw

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