
Five surfers drown in the Netherlands, getting into 'avalanche-like' sea foam - RickJWagner
https://www.foxnews.com/world/netherlands-surfer-deaths-severe-weather-storm-sea-foam-the-hague
======
killjoywashere
The problem with sea foam is that it's mostly air, so you sink in it. If they
were experienced surfers in storm conditions, they were almost certainly on
shortboards or mini-guns, which barely float them to begin with, by design.
They would have leashes holding the board to their ankle, so they would have
their flotation device but if the combination of board and body don't float,
the leash won't help.

I suspect some light seafoam got sucked under denser foam by currents and
then, as it upwelled, basically opened a hole under them. I can't say I've
experienced anything at the scale that would drown 5 men, but falling into
upwelling foam is definitely a thing.

~~~
jms
Looks like they were super experienced body surfers wearing swim fins - the
guys that would usually be doing the rescuing.

It sounds like the bigger problem was that they got lost in the sea foam -
couldn't see where they were going.

You're absolutely right about the suffocation risk due to foam/bubbles though.

------
jeroenhd
I find the Fox article to be rather short, so have another link with links to
more details and news if you're interested in what happened:
[https://nltimes.nl/2020/05/12/rescuers-find-fifth-dead-
body-...](https://nltimes.nl/2020/05/12/rescuers-find-fifth-dead-body-rough-
seas-scheveningen-coast)

~~~
azepoi
More coverage [https://regio15.nl/nieuws/lijst-
weergave/31-waterongevallen/...](https://regio15.nl/nieuws/lijst-
weergave/31-waterongevallen/31716-live-grote-inzet-hulpdiensten-bij-
scheveningen)

[https://www.faz.net/aktuell/gesellschaft/ungluecke/mindesten...](https://www.faz.net/aktuell/gesellschaft/ungluecke/mindestens-
fuenf-surfer-kommen-vor-hollaendischer-kueste-um-16765845.html)

[https://www.rte.ie/news/world/2020/0512/1137952-surfing-
deat...](https://www.rte.ie/news/world/2020/0512/1137952-surfing-deaths-
netherlands/)

[https://regio15.nl/nieuws/lijst-
weergave/31-waterongevallen/...](https://regio15.nl/nieuws/lijst-
weergave/31-waterongevallen/31718-zoekactie-naar-vermiste-personen-bij-
scheveningen)

------
themodelplumber
> two of the surfers were internationally trained lifeguards that had worked
> in Australia.

Wow. That adds a bit of an extra dimension. What a sad event.

> “They were busy training," he said Tuesday. "They then disappeared under the
> foam like it was some sort of avalanche.”

.

------
londons_explore
Sea foam can be natural... But a lot of it has artificial origins from various
pollutants.

I really wouldn't be surprised if the extra foamyness leading to these deaths
couldn't eventually be tracked back to some heavy nitrogen fertilizer applied
to local fields a week ago, and a rainstorm...

------
pkaye
The way this picture was shot (like tilt-shift) makes it look like a miniature
scale model.

[https://twitter.com/regio15/status/1260070967822503936/photo...](https://twitter.com/regio15/status/1260070967822503936/photo/1)

~~~
ansgri
Why do you think it’s TS and not just shallow DoF?

------
oh_sigh
Maybe a stupid question but why don't surfers carry a small emergency air
supply on their body? Not anything big, I'm thinking just about the size of a
soda can or something.

SCUBA divers may carry "spare air", but I've never seen surfers do this.

~~~
s1artibartfast
99% of Scuba divers don't carry spare air. It is hard to imagine it being
worth it for surfers.

~~~
reason-mr
When you get really drilled by a large wave, you get ragdolled. Getting to an
air supply could be hard.

------
londons_explore
To me it's clear that natural conditions _appeared_ safe for experts, but in
fact were not.

Since while surfing, communication and group behaviour are tricky, I'd say
it's likely each of these people individually made their (incorrect) danger
assessment.

That effectively puts the fatality rate in these specific conditions at 5/7,
or ~70%.

So, to prevent this reoccurring, the specific conditions need to be
identified, and other surfers need to be trained to avoid them. I'm thinking
something like "Whenever waves are over 5 feet, there is an onshore wind, and
a water sample maintains foam for more than 5 minutes, you are unlikely to
survive"

Sadly, I doubt very much this will happen.

~~~
CogitoCogito
To be fair, is this a big deal statistically? I have surfed for a very long
time and I've never heard of this. Am I just ignorant and this is not uncommon
(presumably in areas/conditions I don't surf in)? Or is this just some sort of
freak occurrence? Unless this is much more common than I believe I think we
really should just file this under "really bad luck" and move on and focus on
the more statistically dangerous problems surfing.

I mean I guess we can all think to ourselves "deep foam can be a dangerous",
but I wonder if anyone given that message would ever end up saved by it given
how unusual (my assumption) it is.

~~~
reason-mr
I lived in Hawaii and surfed there for some time.

I had a conversation with a well known shaper (surfboard maker) about this and
some of the things which went on on the North Shore. He said : "In your 20's
you try a bunch of stuff and you don't die. So you think you can get away with
it. Most of the time, you don't die. Then as you get into your 40's the law of
probabilities catches up with you and your either die or have a near-death
experience, and then you back way-the-hell off".

I.E. the probability of a serious problem is moderate to small, but you can
have long runs of winning at dice. But eventually, unless you change, it will
get you. Several famous people have gotten this message, including Jack
Johnson (who was on the trajectory as a pro surfer before he became a musician
- incident at pipe). Jamie O'Brian, etc.

~~~
CogitoCogito
I don't see how any of this contradicts my point. If the probability of
something like this occurring is extremely small, then why focus on it over
other much more likely problems? Is this foam issue a statistical fluke? If
so, then no, it won't eventually get you. At least not until the huge number
of other things get you first.

------
IlyaMoroshkin
More young healthy people in the Netherlands have died from Sea Foam than from
COVID-19.

------
stevespang
Man against Mother Nature - - - too often man looses.

Surfers, especially in that geography wear wetsuits which give some buoyancy,
but not like a life jacket does, and I don't know any surfers who wear life
jackets.

I was a WSI, a life guard trainer back in college, still swim 5,200 yds a week
which really is nothing compared to swim team, and I scuba dive down to the
bottoms of our nearby lakes to set submersible pumps for a living (diving 41
years), my dive gear has a BC vest that can act as a life jacket (if) it is
not damaged and (if) my regulator is functioning and (if) I have still have
air in my tank and (if) I have not blacked out by like a boat hitting me, too
many ifs, but I absolutely will not venture out onto surface of bodies of
water on watercraft without wearing a life jacket for a whole host of reasons
(surfboards are some sort of watercraft).

I assume they were more or less "drowned" in the foam, unable to breathe,
suffocated.

The most professional solution for fighting most fires is foam which puts out
fires by sort of drowning them too.

~~~
codezero
I’ve been in foam that was similar to this (at least by description) and no
pfd will have buoyancy that will float you out of it. It’s also less turbulent
than the water, so if it were swimmable they would have done it. I expect they
were in the surface of the water and engulfed in foam too dense to swim up
through and disorienting enough that they couldn’t just head for shore in.

------
nodesocket
Unrelated, but I could have sworn foxnews.com domain was shadow banned on HN?
Not trying to troll at all, just honestly thought so.

~~~
symplee
Not sure if it's a matter of the overall submission count that's giving this
impression, but in the last year, users submitted:

6,612 articles from nytimes.com [0]

91 articles from foxnews.com [1]

[0]
[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastYear&page=0&prefix=tru...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastYear&page=0&prefix=true&query=nytimes.com&sort=byPopularity&type=story)

[1]
[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastYear&page=0&prefix=fal...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastYear&page=0&prefix=false&query=foxnews.com&sort=byPopularity&type=story)

~~~
Zenbit_UX
The way it should be, only one of those is a news site and it's not the one
with the word news in its name.

~~~
CapricornNoble
NYT produces plenty of "fake news" and biased hypocritical trash. All of the
big media outlets are flaming dumpster fires, regardless of where they are on
the political spectrum.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzVzG_6jsZE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzVzG_6jsZE)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v18b5ip95Es](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v18b5ip95Es)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZewXzRxRen0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZewXzRxRen0)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfxHG6yM5Fs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfxHG6yM5Fs)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIGH7J5CLtQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIGH7J5CLtQ)

There's been a few occasions where I've found an interesting article on Fox
News and I won't share or link it here or on Reddit, because I know that the
bias is so strong against Fox as an organization that few people would consume
the content with an open mind. So I go and track down another outlet covering
the same story and link that instead. I'm sure other members here do the same
sort of self-censorship, essentially. That's part of why you'll see 6000
submissions from NYT and only 90 from Fox.

~~~
theonething
> So I go and track down another outlet covering the same story and link that
> instead.

That's exactly what I do on Reddit. I haven't had occasion to share a Fox News
link here, but I think I would do it because I trust this place more to make
judgements based on the content of the article.

