The memorial service for Shari is Saturday, May 24, 2008 at 4:00 p.m. at the Meadow Glade Adventist Church in Battle Ground, Washington.

Where was her dive buddy?!

Jeannieb43

Skagit County Sheriff's Chief Criminal Deputy Will Reichardt couldn't pinpoint a reason leading to Booth's disappearance, but named some factors. Rosario Beach is a popular spot for divers but is known to carry strong currents and have limited visibility. Booth's diving partner reported that Booth was nearby when the school's diving group dipped 120 feet below the surface on Monday. But the partner couldn't find her after surfacing.

After surfacing is not how the buddy system works.

Maybe it's because I'm not a diver but my first thought was that this is a tragic and sad situation not to question the buddy.

Blessings and peace to the immediate family and the wider Walla Walla family as they go through the bereavement process. All of us, I'm quite sure, are sorry for your loss. You're in our prayers.

May God comfort the family and extended school in this tragic time.

May the class instructors comfort the rest of us- with changes in their group diving protocol so that parents like myself who plan to send a scuba certified child to the Rosario Beach biology program within the next few years have some measure of assurance that risks have been minimized further. (Rising from 120 ft takes a significant amount of time and buddies are to make eye contact several times during safety stops along the way. Group leaders should be counting their party during the ascension.)(or were these two alone?)

Excellent questions, Arlyn.

SCUBA diving is not for the inexperienced or untrained. My son has been a SCUBA instructor for 30 years. I've heard him say 120-foot dives in rough water are extremely precarious and should be undertaken only by the most experienced divers. And each diver's dive buddy will never let him get out of his sight!

There are plenty of enjoyable locations for a class to dive which don't present the hazards mentioned here. Diving at 50 feet in clear water is a thrill; learning the various fish and plant life is part of that thrill.

And what exactly is the goal of a first-year college class in SCUBA? Should it be to train Expert Divers? or should it be to familiarize a student with the sport, after which s/he would then go elsewhere to receive an Expert rating?

I have been down to 50 feet a few times but never in darker, deeper water. I have been down without a buddy - not recommended of course. Your buddy in a class should stay at arms length for safety. Scuba is so easy but that can make one overconfident as a consequence. What a shame for a beutiful girl!

I know some people who were in rosario in that class; from what I understand, the dive was only 50-60 feet and was the final one of the weekend; but the visibility (as usual in the puget sound) was quite low (1-3 feet at best). Shari's buddy lost sight of her on the assent after they had communicated to each other to surface together. I understand that the instructor (a seasoned and very safety-conscious veteran whom I know personally - and through whom I am certified as a master diver) was in the water immediately to help her when she didn't surface w/ her buddy; but all attempts to locate her failed.
Simply a tragic tragic set of circumstances. May our God comfort her friends and family in this time of loss.

I am a PADI Master Diving Instructor and during an Advanced Open Water Diver class it is the instructor's responsibility to stay within eye contact of each student at all times during the dive. Also the maximum allowed depth for the deep dive of this course is no greater than 100 feet. It is so easy for a diver (especially a student diver) to have no idea of the depth and to forget to inflate the Buoyancy Compensator device during the descent. This can cause divers to go deeper than they originally plan to go. Nitrogen Narcosis affects divers from around 100 feet and the deeper one goes more "drugged" or "narcotic" the diver can feel - to the point that the diver is unable to help himself/herself. A colleague of mine had this with an Italian female tourist student when they missed the reef and to his surprize they had reached 150 feet. She was limp like a rag doll. If he wasn't there to help her, she would have drowned. As soon as they reached shallower water she revived and she was fine, and the class continued. Also in the PADI course an descent/ascent line is considered mandatory, unless there is a gradual slope on the bottom that can be used as a reference. The descent line helps avoid disorientation. I personally use a line connected to me at one end and at the other end is a large small truck tube with a canaster and dive flag floating on the surface at all times. This helps my students stay together and helps us work as a group when returning to the boat. We all use the line underwater when the visibility is poor to help keep the class together.

MacLennan,

That was my experience with safety precaurtions especially with cloudy water when I got my Advanced certificate.
So sorry for the likely "needless" loss of this girl.

pat

The recent diving accident brought back dark and sweeping memories of my own experience diving in the Sound. Many may have forgotten, or were not born yet, but we lost a student (Neal Kline) to drowning on the Southern end of Lopez Island during summer school 1962. Afterwards, the memory of retrieving his weight belt in 75 feet of water during an unforeseen rip tide at the bottom put me within two and half breaths of drowning myself. Once Jim Dixon (my diving partner on that occasion) and I got a hold of the weight belt, the current tossed us upside down and I became disoriented, tumbling with the sea urchins and bouncing along on the bottom. I will never forget the beauty and joy of the wispy air that blew in and out of my lungs once we broke the surface and escaped the treacherous water swirling in pools around the boat. I've been down to 140 feet looking for fishing boat anchors in Bellingham Bay and it is so black at that depth a light is like a broom stick, and only reaches out maybe fifteen feet. There is little reason to dive much deeper than 30 to 40 feet at Rosario and the environs.

My thoughts and sorrow go out to the family especially, but also to the professors and students involved in the dive at Rosario. The sorrow will linger along side the experiences of a wonderful place to adventure and learn about the biologic world at Rosario Beach. Fifty years of the memory of Neal's drowning has not diminished for me and I'd guess that others in our class like Gene Stone and Jim Dixon have not forgotten either...the Friday morning that we had to bring Neal to the surface without really knowing why he drown (he was only snorkeling on the surface). His ever running feet stopped running with us that morning. The event that morning potted our memories. "And even in our sleep falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our despair, against our Will comes wisdom to us by the awful Grace of God."

T Joe Willey your story has completely ruined any chance of me diving in the Sound. Not that I was terribly tempted - I don't like cold and low visibility anyway - but any hint of current freaks me out. The thought of being tumbled along that deep under water will give me nightmares now.

Give me Bonaire - 80 ft visibility, reefs right off shore, you can see the bottom at all times, and no currents. Yes I'm a chicken. I did some night dives there which were great but the only way I'll do them is to hold hands with my buddy - luckily it was my husband who was willing to cooperate.

I'm really sorry for the loss of your friend and my heart goes out to those involved in this latest tragedy.

It is Memorial Day week-end, and even though I didn't know Shari, her death while scuba diving at Rosario makes my heart ache for her family and friends, because I can empathize with them. I am honoring the memory of Doug York this week-end. I dated Doug while we were students at Walla Walla College. He died while scuba diving with a group of students at Rosario Beach in 1972. I will be going to Mt. Hope Cemetery here in College Place to take flowers to put on his grave and my box of letters and cards to read that he sent me when I was a student nurse in Portland and he was on the College Place campus, and the ones from the summer he was working on a ranch in Nevada while I was on the College Place campus taking psychiatric nursing. I will kneel by his grave and pray and look forward to the heaven I know Doug is going to love when Jesus comes and he is resurrected to go there.

I never did learn exactly what caused Doug's death. The comments by the divers here was the first time I have read anything technical about diving accidents. I have always been mystified how someone so healthy and strong could have died the way he did. It was my understanding that he was nearly to shore and about to surface and the water was only 12 feet deep where he died. I believe that his death certificate listed laryngospasm as the cause of death, but I don't know what about diving would have caused a laryngospasm, especially in such shallow water. I remember someone saying that the instructor was already on the beach and his tanks were out of air, so it took a long time to bring Doug up and get him to shore and attempts to resuscitate him failed.

Until I read about it here, I didn't know about Neal's death ten years before Doug's. "Earth has no sorrow that heaven cannot heal."

Hi Valerie, Laryngospasm is a protective mechanism of the body that happens when one accidentally swallows water. No breath can be taken until the water is somehow removed. This can happen if the regulator were to accidentally slip out of the diver's mouth, or if the regulator were to mal-function due to a leaky exhaust valve - perhaps caused by some seaweed getting caught up in it etc.

http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-211784.html gives some more information about it. The comment at the end is especially enlightening about how student divers are trained to deal with it.

I am so sorry to hear about Shari, Doug and Neal. It is a crying shame that their buddies separated from them.

This most certainly was a tragic accident and my heart goes out to the family and all those involved. As an active Assistant Instructor for about 15 years, Certifying Scuba students at this very spot including entry level, advanced and specialty courses, I have helped certify many hundreds of divers. I was never involved with the biology classes but I was aware of them for years. I also believe that I know and worked with the instructor for many years as well.

I am troubled by some of the previous posts, as many of them are finger pointing, trying to make someone to blame for this tragedy espousing scenarios assuming facts and conditions that I haven’t seen posted any ware nor had it clarified on any news reports. . The visibility varies in this area from 0’ to (I have seen) 50+ feet. On 0’ days we never made dives on the outside of Northwest Island. We always dove on a slack current or we didn’t go out there no matter what the vis was. This is also a perfect spot for the deep dive required for advanced certification. It has the depth and the structure is steep but certainly not vertical and is a beautiful area to explore. An anchor line is certainly not necessary here but I don’t know if one was used or not. 100’ is the recommended maximum depth for entry level certified divers, this was an advanced certification and the deep dive is more for confidence than anything else.

Nitrogen narcosis theoretically can occur at any depth. Each individual person has a different threshold for when this occurs, there is not set depth where it can set in. The only thing that can be said is that the deeper you go the more likely it becomes. 100-120 feet would not cause Nitrogen Narcosis in the vast majority of us. The fact to remember is that whatever your threshold may be, as soon as you ascend to that level of depth that it set in, it goes away. If as her dive partner stated in a previous post they were at 50-60 feet then the idea of being narced, causing the accident does not come in to play.

It is physically impossible to keep eye contact with your dive partner every second let alone with a whole class diving at the same time. A dive partner does not guarantee your safety while diving but rather to increase options if something happens, which can happen in the blink of an eye, like a down draft, which would leave the dive partner helpless to do anything for you.

Actually if this was the last dive of the class, the instructor should have been cutting the apron strings by then. The instructor will not be diving with them throughout the rest of there lives.

I believe that this was a MARINE biology class and scuba classes would be a logical addition to the school curriculum.

In the many years that I helped out there I never heard of any accident more serious than dropping a tank on your foot or maybe a lead weight belt. The safety record for both the biology classes and public classes had been impeccable from my memory which dates back to the early ‘80’s. If any changes should be made that can be identified from this accident I am sure they will be. Without knowing what in fact did happen speculation and finger pointing is out of line for us outside “experts” looking in.
Please stop the speculation, and the hurtful finger pointing, it helps no one.

I am glad you are sure they will be.

But as an "outsider" who is now alerted to a recent public tragedy, I would like to be assured more factually- a child's life is too precious to risk on assumptions. Again, not for guarrantees, but to further minimize the inherently serious risk.

And Rosario's safety record is "impeccable"? 1972-Doug York's death, 2008- Shari Booth's death. How does this site rate in safely compared to other sites? I'm not asking to blame, but for personal risk management. Surely, an acceptable concern.

I really appreciated the information about Laryngospasm. I remember that it had been reported after Doug's death that he had gone through a lot of seaweed on the dive. I don't know if they checked his equipment and found anything wrong like seaweed in the exhaust valve. If I recall correctly, he had unfastened his diving buddy's weight belt and when she realized he was drifting down instead of surfacing with her she surfaced and yelled for the instructor to come help but he was on the shore and his tank was out of air. By the time they brought Doug up and tried to resuscitate him, it was too late.

I visited Doug's grave today at Mt. Hope Cemetery. It was so beautiful there today. There are very tall trees with hundreds and hundreds of little white petals that were falling down from them onto the graves today. Actually I thought of them as a symbol of tears. Doug's Mom and Dad both died in 2005 only two months apart from each other. Their gravestone is right above Doug's. He was an only child. Their gravestone mentions that their ashes were scattered together off Rosario Beach at the Walla Walla College Marine Biology Station.

Doug loved absolutely anything and everything that God has created. Scuba diving was an opportunity for him to explore a different aspect of creation. Considering how fascinated he was with everything that grows and all kinds of creatures, I just know that he won't have any problem at all filling up his time throughout eternity exploring the universe.

I absolutely agree with you Arln,IF they ever figure out what caused the accident and how it could have been prevented I would want to be assured that changes were put in place as well. What I ment by I am sure is that it is in the best interests of all concerned to improve safety when a problem can be identified. I did miss that Doug had his accident there, it was before my time and missed that fact which was posted above. That would make two accidents in the same area in 35 years,and I feel that is one too many, please don't missunderstand me. I know that there have been thousands if not tens of thousands of dives made there. I have no comparison's at this time of other dive spots but I am sure that there are others who's stat's aren't near as good as this area. Impeccible may have been bad choice of words, what I ment was that the school and the dive organization have a very good record and from personal experienc the greatest concern for the student and safety. My origional post was essentially to ask people to quit trying to point fingers and you certainly weren't doing that and I hope other people share theie concerns as you did, I totally agree with every thing you said.
Larry

Thanks for understanding Larry, I know our teachers do their best and accidents do happen regardless. Thanks for being one of them.

Contrary to what others have posted elsewhere, Shari was in the process of completing the course requirements of an Advanced SCUBA class taught by a consummate instructor with an excellent safety record. On what proved to be her final dive, she and her buddy descended to a maximum depth of 60 feet and spent most of the dive at 40-45 feet. Underwater visibility was approximately 12-15 feet. They ascended together to a depth of 30 feet, where they apparently lost contact with each other. At the time of the incident, the weather was sunny, currents were very slight, the water surface was glassy, and the support boat was following the divers' bubbles the entire time. Although the cause of Shari's disappearance may never be determined, I believe that we must learn what we can from this tragedy, implement additional diving safety procedures if possible, refrain from finger-pointing, and offer our prayers and heartfelt sympathy for those who are mourning the loss of their daughter, sister, and friend.

There was another WWC Scuba death in 1978. I believe his name was Dale and he was 19. I remember he was also a freshmen. He was tall and had blond curly hair. It seemed at the time the rumor was there had been quite a few deaths occurring with students going over to Rosario to Scuba dive. I don't know why this practice is continued.

My experience at Rosario Beach (WWC campus) was very poor visibility. It is not a place where inexperienced divers should be diving.

How many more student deaths need to take place before WWC aka WWU will stop allowing classes to dive there? We should always pray for God's protection, but let's not forget that we should not presume safety when putting ourselves in unnecessary dangerous situations. Wasn't that the lesson to be taught when Satan tried to tempt Christ to jump and call for the angels to save Him and Christ was not tempted to do it?

I am sure that Shari had no idea how dangerous this situation could be for her and trusted that teachers would not put her in danger, but teachers no doubt had prior knowledge of previous deaths. This needs to be a warning to students and parents. Let this be the last death that takes place at WWC/WWU from Scuba diving.

Hmm, If her dive partner would have been paying attention Sharri would not be missing. And those of you that have no diving experience can't say not to blame the buddy because if the buddy would have been paying attention, Sharri's body would not be missing and she may even be alive. Way to go buddy!
I know it can be hard to loose sight in low visability but if you know the visability is low then all the more reason to be cautious. You have to constantly watch for your partner. This is so sad. All we can do now is pray for her body to be found and for her family.

I have posted here before but maybe some of these later posters need to know more about me, I am a gold master diver, I have been diving since 1981, my dives are numbered in four figures, I have made dives all over the world, I helped instruct at this site for over a decade, I have actual knowledge of this accident that Brian has and maybe a bit more, my two children were certified at this very spot when they were just over the age limit to take scuba classes and I would do it again there. Is that enough qualifications to say that Sharri's dive partner was most likely not to blame? Please put your fingers back in your pockets unless you have something factual about the accident to back up the hurtful things you are saying about those involved. And this is posted under my real name.