
Since 2009, we have been reporting cases about diving fatalities, hoping that by describing the incidents, readers will become more careful divers and avoid fatal accidents – such as scuba diving death.
In the cases that follow, divers made fatal errors, mainly in judgment. Each of these unfortunate deaths could have been prevented by learning diing death reasons.
Many divers see diving like riding a bicycle: once you learn how to do it, you'll never forget. That assumption, however, can be fatal. Stephen Radlein, 39, was an experienced diver with rescue and instructor certifications, but he had taken a 15-year break from diving. Then he went diving with a man and a woman he had met the day before. They planned a dive to 12.19m for 45 minutes but Radlein got separated from the other two at the 40-minute mark (best diving). They found him a few minutes later, floating face down and unconscious on the surface with a partially inflated BCD and an empty tank, and Radlein couldn't be resuscitated. His dive computer showed that he had done a rapid ascent from 10.5m. He was also wearing 24.5kg of weight, although he told his two dive buddies prior to the dive that this was how much he typically used. So we need to answer a question – why divers die, what are the most common reasons of scuba diving death.