Woman missing after tumbling from jet ski

[JayS]

July 6, 2004, 9:10AM
Woman missing after tumbling from jet ski
Associated Press
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/2664917



MIDLAND - Crews were searching a West Texas lake for a Big Spring woman who fell from a jet ski on July 4 but didn't resurface.

Josephine Mitchell was riding on the back of the jet ski driven by a 13-year-old when she fell into Moss Creek Lake on Sunday.

Mitchell, 42, of Big Spring was not wearing a life jacket, said Drew Bavin, a patrol lieutenant with the Big Spring Police Department.

"When she fell off the jet ski, she couldn't swim, and we feel there's a good possibility she drowned," Bavin told The Midland Reporter-Telegram in today's online edition. "We have witnesses that saw her go down ... and not come back up."

*SNIP*

[FeebMaster]

1. Why on earth

would someone who can't swim ride a jet ski without a life jacket? Or am I misreading that and they're implying that she couldn't swim because she was unconscious? Not that being able to swim means it's a good idea not to wear a life jacket.

I think it's clear what needs to be done here. Ban jet skis.

[Salmo Trutta]

4. I agree

"Ban jet skis."

Couldn't have said it better myself.

Right in front of my house is a sea wall with the Atlantic (Hereford Inlet) on the other side. About 40 yards out is a sandbar that uncovers most of the day. When the tide is in, there is only about 1 foot over the bar. This bar runs parallel to the sea wall and the stretch of water between the two is about 15 feet deep.

Anyways, that little stretch of water is considered a navigable ocean waterway and there are no speed restrictions through there. The waterway empties to where the bulk of Wildwood swimmers and waders spend their time. It seems each week during the summer up here, some jackass runs over somebody who is swimming. Also, at least 2 times per year, one of those jetskiers is drunk and smashes into the seawall rocks at full speed, in full view of my house, killing himself and endangering the fisherpeople on the wall.

They are useless, noisy, dangerous and need to be banned.

[iverglas]

5. they are also

among the most polluting devices on earth -- jet skis, or "personal watercraft" (PWCs) -- and not just by way of noise pollution, which is a serious problem in itself.

http://www.enviroliteracy.org/article.php/540.html

Another large source of consumer oil in the environment comes from the use of two-stroke engines in outboard boat motors and jet skis. (See HowStuffWorks.com to find out how these engines function and why they release oil into the environment). Oil from consumer uses and recreational boat motors can concentrate in sensitive coastal ecosystems before it has a chance to be dispersed in the ocean.

http://www.americanboating.org/how_oil_really_enters.asp

Here is the breakdown of how oil enters North American waters:

Source -- Millions of Gallons/Yr
Runoff -- 15,600,000
Emissions -- 6,100,000
Pipeline/transport spills, and
refining/distribution -- 2,700,000
Two-stroke engines
(small boats, jet skis) -- 1,600,000
Oil and gas exploration -- 880,000
Other -- 2,200,000
Total petroleum from human activities -- 29,000,000

Total petroleum from natural processes -- 46,000,000

Two-stroke engines account for far more than their "share" of oil in waterways. And the freshwater waterways that they pollute, in particlar, in high concentrations in small areas, are often particularly sensitive.

http://www.earthisland.org/news/news_bluewater5.html

Bluewater Network contends that any one of PWC countless impacts, including degraded wilderness, increased conflicts with other recreation users, toxic water pollution, noise disturbances, harassed and injured wildlife, and increased boating accidents, warrant a system-wide ban. "Jet skis are floating chainsaws - their noise alone makes them inappropriate for the America's parks," said Russell Long, Bluewater Network's Director.

The pollution impacts are even worse, the group reports. According to the California Air Resources Board, a 100 hp jet ski operated for one hour emits the same amount of pollution as driving a modern passenger vehicle for a year. The Environmental Protection Agency reports that a single PWC emits between 25 and 30% of its gas and oil directly into park waters. "That's up to three gallons of fuel per hour," continued Long. "The Park Service wouldn't allow a park visitor to dump three gallons of gas and oil into park waters, so why would they allow a jet ski operator to do so?"

[Salmo Trutta]

7. I question the sanity of PWC users...

last weekend, I observed one person on a jet ski zoom off in one direction for about 200 yards at breakneck speed, turn around, and return to his starting point, turn around, and repeat the process over and over for about 1 hour, until I left.

I watched for about 10 seconds and sat down to finish reading the last 100 pages of "2001" (which is a great book, BTW). When I had to leave for a party, he was still at it, so I'm not sure how long he stayed out there.

You ever see that home video of the kid who put a bucket on his head and ran into the same spot on the wall over and over again?

[JayS]

8. Thankfully the four stroke models are getting more popular and...

...they are much quieter and a lot less polluting. The two stroke models do leave behind a thick oil sheen that is very pretty in the sunlight though.... :)

[Salmo Trutta]

9. If only the crania of the operators

experienced a similar performance upgrade.

[JayS]

10. hehehe Maybe that will be available as an option in a later...

...model. We have problems with jet skiers trying to be cute and buzzing our kayaks...but that is nothing that a fishing pole and wicked looking lure won't solve. :)

[TX-RAT]

2. She was found this morning.

[FatSlob]

3. I am continually amazed by the stupidity of some people.

A little common sense and she'd be alive.

[JayS]

6. I still have not heard if she just could not swim or was in some...

...way incapacitated by the fall. In either case, riding around on a highly maneuverable vehicle that is prone to accidents even without a thirteen year old at the helm without a life jacket on is not a good idea.

[TX-RAT]

11. Local story says both were in the water

They say he lost control and both went into the water, he swam to shore, she didn't make it. Don't know if she lost consciousness or not. Both should have had on life jackets, sadly neither did.

[Wickerman]

12. Ok, bear with me - I am trying to type this while

having great empathy for the family and horrid case of the giggles for all the pro-freedom crowd down here wanting to ban the pwc and force people to wear life jackets. The hue and cry will be "but wearing a life jacket is only common sense!" "The PWC interfere with my right to enjoy peaceful nature."

Yep.

Spare me the constitutional right bit, I've heard about that before; just take a minute to consider the arguments thus far offered. Most posts, I've had to read twice to see if they are parody.

For the record, I wouldn't ride on one of those things for love or money, nor would any member of my family - and no one goes near open water without a life jacket.

[FeebMaster]

13. Only the last line of my post was parody.

I don't really think jet skis should be banned. I don't think people should be forced to wear life jackets while riding them, either.

Which pro-freedom crowd are you talking about? Only three of us posted in this thread so far and only I called for banning jet skis, which was, of course, a joke and made all the more hilarious when people started agreeing with me.

[Wickerman]

14. the whole crowd

[iverglas]

15. give it up ;)

Your first post was incomprehensible.

:P

(And *my* post wasn't parody! I actually had to read a fair bit about these brutes a little while ago, in connection with a proposed municipal bylaw in Quebec relating to an environmentally precarious waterway, and ended up lots more disgusted by them and their operators than I already was.)

[Salmo Trutta]

16. Neither was mine...

We just had 2 people killed within about a mile of my house with those things. They need to be taken off public waterways.

Don't get me started on people driving powerboats amongst swimmers.

[iverglas]

17. sometimes I also have to read

really really tedious things about fish, which involves knowing the English and French names for them, and sometimes the Latin. Sometimes the only way I can figure out which English one is which French one is by checking the Latin. (Salmo trutta is easier w/o the Latin.)

http://www.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/canwaters-eauxcan/infocentre/guidelines-conseils/factsheets-feuillets/national/browntrout_e.asp



I'm unable to resist saying: how now, brown trout?


(oops. Put that missing word back in.)

[Salmo Trutta]

18. Very nice! You are the first person

in the greater DU community to figure that one out.

I call it the great paradox in my life: I absolutely adore fly fishing the small waters of the Northern States and Parts of Canada for the elusive and voracious brown trout, yet I am relegated to spend my days in the tidal regions of the Atlantic.

If you are interested, check out the battle on the taxonomy of the brook trout!

Does it belong to the genus Salmo or Salvelinus

For your perusal: http://www.fishbase.org

Great site.

Now, my question is this: what do you read that you have to say such a thing: "really really tedious things about fish", when such things written about fish are never tedious!

[iverglas]

19. ah, clever me

In my rooting around in things fishy, I'd discovered that a trout is a kind of salmon. Or not, as you say. And yes, I got muddled up in that toxonomic contretemps, quite unwillingly.

Since fish makes me puke, I'd never had any great interest in these things. But my work involves reading reams of gummint stuff, and gummint stuff up here all too often involves fish. Heck, the only real international brouhahas we've been embroiled in, in the last few decades (i.e. involving our own interests/sovereignty), were about fish -- the international boundary dispute relating to the French islands of St-Pierre-et-Miquelon in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and our sabre-rattling at Spanish fishing trawlers within our coastal limit.

Consider, if you will:

http://canadagazette.gc.ca/partII/2003/20030604/html/sor176-e.html

Ah yes, the Anadromous Atlantic salmon. I picked a Canada Gazette search result for "fisheries act regulations" at random, but I actually happen to have had to read that particular set of regs, and their impact analysis statement, in depth and detail.

I wanted to give a link to one of the 100s of pages-long schedules to Fisheries Act regulations, listing fish after fish after fish, but they don't seem to put them on line. (They also publish them in their own separate inch-and-a-half thick special issue of the Canada Gazette, the place where statutes and regulations are first published, and it once took me far too long to figure this out, since the library I was, um, fishing around in had stacked that special issue separately from the others and I found it only by complete good fortune. And fortunately, next time I had to find it a couple of years later, I had retained that dim memory and was able to put my fingers on it readily.)

I'm mum about what I actually do, but imagine, for instance, that it involves reading Federal Court and Supreme Court judgments. Those judgments can be about just about anything. Sometimes they are about the parts of paper mills (when somebody tries to keep a spare one of every part on hand and call it a non-capital expense, e.g.), sometimes they are about the construction of bridges over the icy St. Lawrence (when a ship runs into one and crashes it up, e.g.) And sometimes they are about fish. My very first encounter with fish talk was back when Canada and France were duking it out in the International Court of Justice over the boundary line around St-Pierre-et-Miquelon. I learned far more than I wanted to know about straddling stocks of Atlantic groundfish. ("Straddling" as an adjective modifying "stocks", the herds of cod etc. that cross boundary lines, not an action that I learned how to do to groundfish stocks, I hasten to point out.) Only, few of these fish have names as straightforward as "cod".

I have bookmarks (somewhere on that old E drive now) to all sorts of academic sites all over the place that consist of fish names, and helpful bits of information about which fish have which kind of spots and stripes and the like.

You should talk to TX-RAT, who is also fond of fishing in bits of the Canadian outback where I've never been.

[Salmo Trutta]

20. I stand corrected!

"Tedious" would be an apt description of court judgements on matters fishy.