Total Diving's Position on the Movie Open Water

• The official website of the Open Water movie.
• National Geographic's online shark quiz.
• Project Aware's Protect the Shark campaign.

The true story of Thomas and Eileen Lonergan in the news:

• The Guardian: Summary of the whole story.
• BBC News: Boat captain charged with manslaughter.

What is this movie all about?

John Griffin of The Gazette interviewed Darcy Kieran of Total Diving about this movie. Read John's article published in the August 23, 2004, edition of The Gazette.

Incompetent divemasters leave two divers behind in the open water at the end of a day of scuba diving. As night falls and the sharks move in, the couple realizes that a grisly death is about to be visited upon them. It's a low-budget movie filmed in The Bahamas.

Is it really based on a true story?

The beginning of the movie is based on a true story: The disappearance of divers Thomas and Eileen Lonergan from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, after a day of diving on the Great Barrier Reef, in Australia, in 1998.  In this real-life tragedy, the captain of the dive boat was later charged with manslaughter for what the coroner called "the number of mistakes and the severity of the mistakes". The rest of the movie is just speculation.

How could a boat leave a diver behind?

The Total Diving team with the Paramount team at the premiere of Open Water, Friday August 20, 2004, in Montreal.

In order to leave someone behind, it is necessary for the crew or the diver or both not to follow the standards and/or training procedures. If roll-call, headcount and sign-in procedures are followed properly, no diver would be left behind. 

For instance, in this movie, the crew relies on marks on a piece of paper to count the number of divers. When two divers re-enter the water, the crew doesn't catch it and this results in them being double-counted when they return, giving the appearance on paper that everyone is back on board. 

A simple headcount would have shown that two divers were missing! PADI training not only emphasizes a headcount, but recommends also that the dive supervisor perform a visual verification as well.

Are divers at higher risk of shark attack than other water sport participants?

Actress Blanchard Ryan plays the role of Susan, a scuba diver lost at sea. On the impact of the movie on the scuba diving industry, she declared: <<Everyone says, “Don’t you feel guilty that people aren’t going to want to scuba dive?” I’m like, “Well, I won’t feel guilty if they scuba dive more safely.”>>.

No. Actually, it is quite the contrary! 54% of shark attacks are on surfers or windsurfers; 38%, on swimmers; and only 6%, on divers or snorkelers. Think about it...  The director and the actors of this movie spent many hours in the water with sharks (as you can see in the picture to the right) and no one was bitten during the filming of Open Water!

What's good about this movie?

Although scuba diving is already a safe sport, this movie reminds us of the importance of safety procedures. In fact, Total Diving uses this movie during the training of new divemasters! This is why Total Diving teamed up with Paramount theatre on Ste-Catherine Street to promote safety in diving at the Premiere of this movie in Montreal.

Some interesting facts about sharks and divers:

• In the USA, the annual risk of death from lightning is 30 times greater than from shark attack.

About the highly criticized nude scene, Blanchard simply said: "I don’t like when couples [...] go to bed in their pyjamas on a tropical vacation. I mean, the air conditioner’s broken, I think it makes total sense. I feel very comfortable with it.”

• Bees, wasps and snakes are responsible for more fatalities each year than sharks.
• Consider the number of divers, swimmers, surfers, waders and other water sport participants in the world...  Then, consider that only 3 shark attacks resulted in fatalities worldwide in 2002.
• Contrast these 3 worldwide shark attack fatalities to the 42815 fatalities in the USA alone due to car crashes. In fact, there is an exponentially greater chance for a person to be killed going to or coming back from watching Open Water movie in a theater than from a shark attack as an open water diver!

As I used to say... You will encounter more sharks in your life at work than in the water - and the ones at work are much more dangerous!