Fatal Entanglement

Published March 2026

Warning: the following story analyzes a diver's death. The goal is to learn from it and become a safer diver. The details are accurate to the best of my knowledge from published sources and divers familiar with the individuals involved. In many fatalities, not many details are known so the fatality can be hard to learn from. However, in this case enough details are known that we can see how, given the right circumstances, "Wow, this could have been me." And we can also learn some lessons to decrease the risk that we experience a similar tragedy. 

The Story

It was April of 1998.  The days were getting longer and more divers were itching to get back in the water after the long, dark Pacific Northwest winter. Meghan Rheeling was an avid local diver. She had gotten certified in June of 1990 and had rapidly racked up experience and certifications as an Advanced Open Water (AOW) diver, Rescue Diver, and even Divemaster. She appeared to love diving and be diving regularly.  

In celebration of Earth Day, the Puget Soundkeepers Alliance had organized an underwater cleanup dive of Les Davis - a popular South Sound dive site in Tacoma, Washington. Local divers likely collected trash like discarded bottles, derelict fishing gear and line. Meghan was out with a couple of other buddies. She had a dive knife - which divers use to cut line or nets if they get entangled. None of the divers were reported to have carried an alternate air source (pony bottle). 

Meghan's buddy group had gone for their dive and each successfully collected some trash in their individual bags. They surfaced, ended their dive, and began to swim back to the beach. They had some gas left - but given they had already completed their dive it is likely they each had much less than a full tank remaining. From this point forward, the exact details become a bit foggier. 

At least one news source reports that Meghan informed her buddies she was heading back to shore. However, Meghan did not remain on the surface. On the way back to shore it appears that she went back underwater - perhaps to quickly grab some trash she spotted on the way back. After some time had passed, a diver noticed some of Meghan's gear floating on the surface. Search efforts began. Meghan was found. Her leg and fin were badly entangled in a rats nest of fishing line - exactly the type of trash the divers had selflessly worked to remove from the park. It appeared she had retrieved her dive knife from its holster to free herself but then dropped it. The knife had settled just out of reach. Hand scratches on the seafloor showed that she had tried vainly to drag herself free of the entanglement far enough to reach the knife before she ran out of gas and drowned.  

Reflection

Before you rush to judgment ("Well, she should have..." "Well I would never..." "Obviously they knew that....") consider the broader context. We know how this story ended - hindsight is 20/20. Meghan and her dive buddies did not know how the story would end. To us the outcome may feel inevitable. Meghan and her buddies obviously thought everything was going to be OK or they would not have made the choices they did.  And, thousands of divers have been in  similar situations and did not come to any harm - most of us have been luckier. Meghan was not. 

Who hasn't heard a diver remark - "Oh, let me pop down to grab the camera you dropped - I'll be right back."  Usually decisions like this end just fine. That doesn't mean they were good or safe decisions. Diving has layers of safety that protect us. We can peel off one or two or even more and often we still end the dive unharmed. That does not mean we were safe. We were just lucky when we rolled the dice.

We can see how whatever the exact events were that led up to this tragedy - Meghan's and her team's choices made sense to them at the time. Meghan had experience. She had a knife. She may have thought "Ah, I can grab that line real quick and help out so it won't snag an unsuspecting diver who is less prepared." Her buddies might have thought "She has a lot of experience, she is fine to head to shore on her own." 

Learnings

"Safety is not the absence of [accidents]. It is the presence of defenses." - Todd Conklin, Safety Expert

In diving, like in driving, we rely on layered defenses to keep us safe. In driving these include: seatbelts, anti-lock brakes, air bags, crumple zones, conservative decisions, speed limits, and engineered road improvements - none alone keep us safe - but when used in combination they are a powerful bulwark against Murphy's law . We are human - we will all make mistakes. Our equipment will have problems. Layered defenses allow us to fail safely. When one of our defenses is pierced by a mistake, an oversight, bad luck, or an equipment problem another defense lies beneath it protecting us from harm. 

In this accident we can see how safety margins were eroded by the removal (and absence) of adequate safety barriers. We can only know which barriers are "adequate" in hindsight - but from experience and sharing stories of near misses and accidents - we can learn what can go wrong and better prepare ourselves. Let's examine the eroded defenses in this story and consider how we can insert and preserve these defenses in our own diving. 

1. Goal Fixation. The divers in this story were out to do a good thing. They wanted to clean up as much trash as possible, making the site better for future divers. Maybe they were even a little competitive about whose bag was the fullest Perhaps Meghan even though to herself "Just one more thing before I head back." A diver focused on a goal can be a dangerous decision maker. Our dive goals might include: capturing a great picture, exploring a dive site, beating  a personal record for dive duration or depth.  In your pre-dive briefing, make a point to discuss your goals for the dive with your team. Remember that the primary goal is always for all divers to return unharmed. Be extra careful when a secondary goal is big, expensive (travel diving), or difficult - it can be hard for us to make the decision to end a dive when a goal is important, or it seems like we might not get another chance to achieve it. Rehearse and plan for when you should finish your dive - and abandon your secondary goals. 

2. Redundancy. There is a saying in high risk, life-threatening activities that: "One is none and two is one." We can defend against mishaps with redundancy. Carry two flashlights - if one burns out you have another. Dive as a team. If one diver's judgment or health fails - the other diver may be able to help. Carry two cutting tools (or more). If you drop one, you may need the second. Have a redundant air supply - a pony bottle you carry with you, or a team member who always conserves enough gas to finish the dive while sharing and who stays near enough to you and aware of you that in an emergency you can count on them to donate air. In Meghan's case there were at least three redundant safety barriers that were removed or missing: cutting tools (just 1), gas supply (no buddy or pony bottle at hand), team members (Meghan was alone at the end of the dive). When you make a choice during a dive, consider - are you removing one of your redundant barriers by continuing?

3. Gas planning. Always plan to have enough gas to finish the dive you are planning to do plus additional gas to deal with any unplanned emergencies including enough to end the dive while sharing gas with a teammate. Have a sense of your gas consumption rate and do some math to make sure. Think twice before going back down if you have already consumed most of your gas. Do you have a redundant supply (buddy and/or pony bottle) should something go wrong or should you be down longer than expected? If not, should you descend? Between dives, do you switch tanks so you have a full supply and plenty of reserve - or do you re-use your same tank if you came up with more than half - so that you can save money on air fills? 

4. Visibility and Buddy Contact. Those of us who dive here in the Pacific Northwest are at a distinct disadvantage. Frequently our visibility is limited to a few feet. Commonly we cannot see anything much further than a body length in any direction. What does this mean for how we dive? In clear water it may be easy to quickly look at a diver and see they are in distress, it may even be possible that you will be able to swim to them and render aid. In limited visibility this is only possible if you maintain close contact with your team members (often a body length or less, touching distance is not a bad idea). It means that frequently here, when a diver gets in to trouble - no one knows about it until it is too late to help. Or, even if a teammate or first responder knows that you are in distress (let's say you had a buoyancy problem and drifted up, out of sight) - they have to find you first. That can mean following a slow, tedious search pattern. If you and your teammates do not maintain visual contact throughout the entire dive - you are eroding one of your safety barriers. Many divers who come to harm here are never found. Make and follow a plan to stay in tight visual contact with all your team members for every dive. 

5. Team Diving. What does it mean to be a dive team? Where does your responsibility to your team start and end? When you dive - how aware are you of your teammates' locations? What about their gas supplies (do they have enough for themselves and to share with you if needed)? Discuss with your team your responsibilities to each other. If you plan to use a teammate as one of your safety barriers - that is only effective if they are with you throughout the entire dive and within easy reach to render aid or gas. Meghan's is not the only case where a team disbanded when the dive was "over" and then the team was not available to help when something went sideways. There are at least two other fatalities in our area that were similar. In one at Rosario Beach near Deception Pass, a dive team was at their safety stop - they probably thought their dive was essentially over - they were shallow and surely safe - right? One diver was low on gas and so they communicated with their buddy that they were going to head up. They ascended, leaving the other buddy in shallow water to finish the safety stop. The other buddy did not surface and was never found. In a second case, a volunteer diver at Edmonds Underwater Park ended a dive to swim back to shore alone. They had a medical event, likely a heart attack, and perished. Consider making it a standard in your team that everyone stays together and close enough to render aid until everyone is back safe in the parking lot. 

6. What If? To become a better diver, ask "What if?" and have a plan to fail safely should a hazard materialize. What if we get separated as a buddy team? What if my primary air supply fails? What if I get disoriented? We are planning a deep dive, what if we accidentally rack up a decompression obligation? What if my teammate has a medical issue? What if we need oxygen for first aid? What if I get entangled? What if my BC fails to hold air (rip or a dump valve comes unscrewed)? Can you answer all the reasonably foreseeable what ifs? Do you have a plan to fail safely by using layered defenses?