Flotsam & Jetsam

Ascend Slowly from Every Dive: An inquest in the UK in January into the death of a 68-year-old experienced British diver who made a rapid ascent from the wreck of the P29, a former East German minesweeper, in Malta in October 2024, found that Darrel Pascoe suffered a pulmonary barotrauma (lung over-expansion injury). He was only three minutes into the dive, and the cause of his uncontrolled ascent has not been determined. The inquest heard that Pascoe had not dived for 18 months before his vacation, and had not provided a medical certificate from a medical practitioner confirming fitness to dive, as is a statutory requirement in Malta.

Some Humpback Whales Don't Migrate: They are shifting to an earlier return migration pattern, and conservationists are worried some female humpbacks in the Southern Hemisphere may be skipping migration altogether. The ecosystem is undergoing unprecedented environmental changes, which have led to shifts in the location of Antarctic krill, the primary food source of baleen whales. The decline in sea ice area, combined with the significant increase in the humpback whale population, is a potential factor contributing to the shift in the timing of migration. See a report on swimming with the humpbacks at Vava'u (Tonga) in the January issue of Undercurrent.

A Documentary About Linnea Mills: Lisa Mills writes: "A documentary film about my daughter Linnea Mills and the scuba diving training tragedy in 2020 that took her life at age 18 has been accepted into the Big Sky Film Festival in Montana in February 2026. I have not seen the film yet but was interviewed, and I hope the film will serve to educate people in order to help prevent future tragedies." https://tinyurl.com/bdepkkdy

Bob Weir's passing reminds us that he and Jerry Garcia shared more than a musical partnership in the Grateful Dead; both were active certified scuba divers and committed to ocean conservation. Weir dived with Jack's Dive Locker in Kona, Hawaii, where he supported their "Grateful Diver" program, which partnered with the shop for ocean education and conservation. Garcia is said to have made more than 300 dives with Jack's.

Don't Leave Your Dive Boat Unattended: This was the harsh lesson learned in January by two Western Australian divers who surfaced about three miles off Mindarie, a suburb of Perth, only to find their boat wasn't where they'd anchored it. It was gone. Ryan Chapman and his buddy assumed it had sunk. After an hour and a half, floating helplessly, they managed to flag down a passing fishing boat, which actually took them back to their boat, drifting more than a mile away. They climbed in, returned to the dive site, and went diving. Chapman later said he now realized how important it was to leave someone with the boat when they went diving. Duh.

All Religious Groups Have Their Extremists: And none more so than some sects of Islam. This has led to Islamophobia, with some people believing that all Muslims intend Christians harm. The scuba diving community is no exception to this, and yet, some who hold the beliefs about Muslims living in the United States happily take dive trips to the Red Sea, the Maldives, and Indonesia (the world's most populous Muslim country) and enjoy the locals' generous hospitality. Crazy-making, isn't it?

Regulation of Diving Professionals: The Directorate of Tourism for India's Andaman and Nicobar Islands has capped at four the number of dives dive instructors or divemasters can make in one day. Concerned about the well-being of those in a fast-growing sport, this was considered the way to prevent fatigue among dive professionals. It came after the Directorate learned that certain scuba diving centers were not fully adhering to prescribed safety standards. We think even four dives a day, day after day, is pushing it.