Dazzled Divers 
2003 Reader Submission
Pending Acceptance
I heard this story during a Brazilian Aviation Conference on Flight Safety. It does not concern airplanes or air travel, but it was used by the lecturer as an example of how supposedly smart people can die in absurd circumstances.
A group of scuba divers rented a boat to go diving in some interesting sites some miles away from the coastline of Angra dos Reis (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil). They all put their equipment correctly (they were experienced people, anyway, and very safety-concerned), did all the checks and jumped into the sea. They even took pictures of coral reefs, fishes and other interesting stuff they found underwater (later retrieved by the rescue team which found them). Their trouble only began when they went back to the boat. Only then they realized that ALL of them had dived, and that NOBODY remembered to throw a ladder off the side. The boat was quite a big one and it was too high above sea level to be climbed in bare hands. As a matter of fact, the rescue team even found the wooden sides all scratched by human finger nails. Some of the bodies were found days later floating close to the boat, but some were never retrieved.
Submitted on 03/04/02
Submitted by:
Fernando
Reference:
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1990's
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