The exploits of scuba divers Joseph Hartranft and Yessic Spencer offer some valuable learning opportunities for anyone who is willing to benefit from their diving story. Unfortunately, neither of these two men will know about any valuable lessons that result from such study. They both died in November of 2008 in a scuba diving accident that should have never happened, on a dive that should never have taken place.

The dive that took the lives of these two men in an underwater cave in Hudson, Florida is a dive that should never have been made.  Cave diving requires intense training, planning, skill, preparation, and experience.  Neither of these two men had what it takes for such a difficult dive;  and neither seemed willing to heed the advice of friends with much more experience and much more respect for the necessity of proper training.

In the months leading up to this fateful dive, Mr. Hartranft had  integrated himself into the local north Florida cave diving community, despite his lack of training and certification for the types of dives that he often openly discussed with friends and on online scuba technical diving chat boards.  Mr. Spencer, the apparent “leader” on this dive had the most basic level of cave diving certification, far less than was necessary for this dive.  Common sense would surely indicate that both understood the importance of  following the rules of  safe and proper cave diving, but they apparently felt the rules did not apply to them.  I remember reading a particular post where Mr. Hartranft chided and openly criticized another diver for diving in conditions for which  he was not trained.   What a shame he couldn’t even abide his own advice.  These two died because they ignored many admonitions to never enter overhead environments, to never attempt cave diving without the proper training, and  to never dive in conditions for which they were not experienced.  The cave in which they perished, known to locals as “Wayne’s World”, presented the worst combination of challenges possible for these two relatively inexperienced divers.   This dive site and the experience of these two divers was a deadly combination.  Their actions were not a bad outcome for what might have happened; they were the result of what will happen when divers do everything wrong and ignore years of collective knowledge about best diving practices.

The news of this event is several months old.  I would not write about this accident today were it not for an article that appeared in many newspapers this week, including the Decatur Daily, our local newspaper.  Written by Christine Armario of the Associated Press, this article gives good insight into the danger of cave diving and the unique factors of this particular disastrous dive.  From the day this happened, I personally followed this incident closely and participated in real-time discussions of the accident on TheDecoStop, an online chat board for technical and cave divers.  While I did not know these two personally,  I know many of their close friends.  During the ongoing discussion of this horrible event, it was painful seeing these friends grapple with the hard reality of such unnecessary deaths.

I would encourage everyone to read the well-written article by Ms. Armario.  I have provided a link to an online publication of the article in The Oakland Press.

Why Did Two Divers Perish in Underwater Caves?

Phil Ellis

www.divesports.com

Note:  For those interested in reading the real-time online discussion of this terrible accident, you can visit that thread on TheDecoStop that deals with these events.  Due to the nature of the technical diving discussions, TheDecoStop does requires registration to view and participate in threads, but membership is free and I encourage everyone interested to take a moment to join.