4 Divers Rescued off North Carolina | 2024 Tribute to the Coast Guard in our Nation's Capital

See the rescue of four divers off the coast of North Carolina. The Coast Guard crews were honored at the June 18, 2024 Coast Guard Foundation Tribute to the Coast Guard in our Nation's Capital.

[DamonBates]

Interesting. Watched it twice. Vid is done from coast guard perspective of course, to highlight their success, not a diver’s “lessons learned” perspective. In the dive community, unlike the mountaineering community, good accident post mortems are very tough to come by. In my opinion and experience as a Divemaster this is because the victims and their families are embarrassed about their over sights and hide behind claims of “privacy.”

There are some details not clear here but it looks like dad or the grandfather was driving the boat with out a lot of experience as dive surface support. It’s not clear also if the boat was anchored or whether it was a drift dive, and that makes a big difference to how surface support is conducted.

if done over, particularly with 2 pairs of divers and inexperienced surface support I would have made each buddy pair tow a dive flag on a float (common practice for shore diving but not typical for boat diving except under specific circumstances) so surface support could keep track of them.

Hind sight is 20/20 of course but there appears to be ample opportunity here to improve how this dive trip could have been handled.

In addition to highlighting the Coast Guard's outstanding search and rescue capabilities, It would be great if videos like this could itemize oversights and recommend what could and should have been done differently to avoid the need to be rescued. So glad the family is safe and sound.