Bottom Cleaner killed by thruster in Palm Beach

Yeah, have seen that.

Exactly!

Need a Westport guys help; Is there usually a grate covering the thruster? Anti Manatee device?
This has been bugging me sense this story came out.

Wet divers are wet. Rarely dry enough to come on deck and red tag a breaker.
We manage one boat that gets serviced on a to the hour schedule. All other boats are sometime during the week.
Our divers swim down docks of boats. Tanks on their back, they usually come up for a fresh tank or zincs.
Then again, there is nothing fancy or over 80' in the Jax area.

Wet divers are wet...no way to solve this problem.

Okay, orange traffic cones with "diver in water" around each boat being serviced. Divers can afford them. In the state I live in if any service truck comes to your house, they must put an orange cone on the back, street side, corner of the service truck.

Bet the yard this happened in insurance company will come up with a plan for all persons in the water servicing a yacht when this is done.

I've often wondered about the orange cones. Maybe because of habit, the service trucks also put a cone down when they go to lunch.
But what does a orange cone do? Somebody's getting cable TV/ washer-dryer/ telephone/ carpet installed?? BFD

Something more is behind this tragic event.
A big Westport has proper crew and I find it hard to believe somebody just lit up the gen-set and played with a thruster for a few seconds....

Seems crew was not aware of the diver. Crew could have been checking systems??

My point, clearly, was lost.
The ease of having orange cones labeled "diver down" to add to a "diver down" flag in the water is not a big effort to add to the work requirements of a service diver. Also solves the wet diver on the yacht issue.
Sure those orange cones could be marking off something where the crew working are at lunch...like an exposed opening, or overhead work, swinging range of a crane, fall protection, etc. BFD attitude won't serve you well in court. If a diver dropped a "diver down" cone on the boarding mat of yacht and the Capt fired it up and injured the diver seems pretty clear.
Not that what I have suggested solves what happened here or could happen in the future, but just waving a hand at the issue as "can't be fixed" seems reckless disregard when safety measures exist in other industries. As posted earlier in this thread, they have it aviation...which has crews, service works, complex systems, etc, etc, etc.
Better to brainstorm ideas to prevent repeating past mistakes.

And what if the crew who is living on the boat, never steps foot on the dock to see an orange cone signifying the diver is in the water. Not sure the issue in this situation. What happened really is an extremely rare occurance. At this point it's just speculation as to what really went on. Perhaps the diver was working on the wrong boat to begin with, swam over from another boat, and the crew knew nothing of a diver in the water. I've never seen any divers here use a flag in the water, However, they're never further than 10' away from the boat they're working on.

The larger the boat the more important it can becomes to notify the owner/captain. A cone on the dock could also notify anyone going on board and operating any equipment hazardous to a diver. In a marina it would also notify boats on either side.

How about 2 cones, one on the dock, another on the captain's chair.

If I were a diver I would not be comfortable with people up top who had not been positively notified that I was down there.

Obviously there was crew aboard doing what they are hired to do, tragic there was no communications to prevent a death.

So much for a dead 2 year old thread.
Before all is repeated again (again), read the whole post.

Yes, old thread, did they figure out what happened?

I do not know of any official report getting released.
If it's not fresh blood selling commercials, the local media dropped it that night and went sniffing for the next 3 minutes of fame.
I'll PM you with my investigating findings.

If there is a trial, if the case is not settled outside of the courtroom, we'll find out. Allegedly a law suit was filed against the yacht, the crew, the marina, and the employer last summer.