A recent dive trip changed the lives of everyone involved, and I hope this story might help save another life.
About 30 days before the trip, I was talking to a dive buddy who had just become a divemaster, and he was listing all the equipment he carries on every dive. I remember saying, “You have every piece of dive equipment anyone could dream about,” but he did not have a tourniquet. We wondered if there was ever a need for it and thought it might be the most important piece of safety equipment a diver could carry.
About a month later I was on a dive trip to Belize. We had just finished a dive at the Great Blue Hole and
moved to Half Moon Caye for our second dive of the day. The crew warned us that the sharks tend to be a little bigger and more aggressive in this area. The fish and marine life were incredible, and the sharks were more aggressive here than on any dive I had been on over my 50 years of diving. They were also beautiful and curious about the divers.
Giant tarpon were everywhere, and I remember thinking I wanted to dive the site again the next time I was in Belize. The two groups of divers from our boat were about 150 feet (46 meters) away from each other when we surfaced. The other group had three children, ages 12, 14, and 15. We had talked with them on the boat and were impressed with how polite the children were and how much they loved to dive.
As we floated there while waiting to be picked up, we talked about how great the dive had been. The entire experience was amazing until something horrible happened.
The screams of our fellow divers interrupted the stories. We looked over to the dive boat to see the water exploding, and right away our divemaster said, “It’s a shark attack!” We did not know who was still in the water or how bad it was. My first thought was that we had a tourniquet, and they would need it.
My dive buddy, Tony, and I started swimming toward the boat and yelling, “We have a tourniquet.” The current was strong, so we swam underwater because it was easier than being on the surface.
The first time I surfaced to get my bearings, I saw that the attack was still going, and I watched another diver throw a tow rope into the water for someone to grab. As I went under again, I thought there was no way someone could grab and hold on to a rope in the middle of the chaos. I surfaced again close to the boat and saw that the diver had somehow been pulled to safety. Only when I climbed the ladder did I realize how bad the attack was.
One of the children who had been enjoying an amazing dive just minutes before was lying in the back of the boat. Luckily, one of the divers was a Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) commander and had started providing first aid. I later found out that he had often dealt with life-threatening wounds in his military service. My buddy gave his tourniquet to the diver doing first aid, who put it on her leg.
Her hand was also badly damaged, and it looked like the shark had bitten it as she was trying to push away the shark. The diver quickly improvised another tourniquet with a mop handle and a towel, which slowed the bleeding from her hand. Seeing how bad it looked, I started praying, not knowing how anyone could survive that kind of attack and a two-hour boat ride before we could get her to medical care.
We reached the Coast Guard station, expecting they would have a helicopter and a medic ready and waiting to rush her to Belize City, but no rescue helicopter was there. A passenger helicopter arrived 15 minutes later, and its crew flew her to the hospital three hours after the terrible attack.
After more than 12 hours of surgery, the girl was weak but stable. The hospital staff told us the next day that she was a fighter and was awake and stable. Thinking back over that day, I realized that everything was against her — the shark could have taken her down, and we were hours from shore without any help. Without the tourniquet, I do not believe she, or anyone, could have survived.
I am not telling this story to scare anyone away from diving or to cast sharks in a bad light but rather to encourage everyone to make first aid preparation part of their predive checklist. The dive boat had minimal first aid equipment, and the crew and most of the divers had little to no first aid training.
We often dive where there are sharks or other potentially dangerous marine life, but most of us do not carry tourniquets. They fit into your BCD and will last a lifetime with proper care. I encourage every dive operator to have multiple tourniquets on their boats and make first aid training mandatory for staff.
There are short videos online that will show you step-by-step how to apply and use a tourniquet. This story would have a different ending if a diver hadn’t brought one with him. I will never dive without one. It is one of the most important safety devices you can have during a dive trip.
© Alert Diver – Q1 2025