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A federal judge in Los Angeles on Friday dismissed the criminal indictment against a dive boat captain charged with manslaughter in the deaths of 34 people when the vessel caught fire and sank off the California coast three years ago. The 75-foot (23-meter) Conception caught fire while most of those onboard were sleeping, killing 33 passengers and a crew member. It is considered one of California’s worst maritime disasters. U.S. District Judge George Wu said in a ruling that the indictment, handed down on December 2020 against captain Jerry Nehl Boylan by a federal grand jury, must be thrown out...

A CRACK team of scuba-diving sleuths has solved a staggering seven cold cases in just two months, bringing much-needed closure to heartbroken families who had been left without answers for years. The group, known as Chaos Divers, operates out of Southern Illinois and is comprised of divers Jacob Grubbs and Eric Bussick, and head of logistics Lindsey Bussick. The group users sonar technology to help solve cold cases that in some instances have been open for decades. Between October and December of last year, the trio managed to solve seven missing persons cases in a number of different states, including...

LOS ANGELES — One of the crew members aboard the dive boat Conception hadn’t been asleep long when a noise jolted him awake. He swung open the door of the wheelhouse — the top level of the 75-foot boat, located just above the galley — and was greeted by flames. As the fire raged in the predawn hours of Labor Day, the vessel’s captain made a frantic mayday call to the Coast Guard. Then he and four crew members jumped from the wheelhouse and climbed into a dinghy to get help from the Grape Escape, a fishing boat anchored nearby...

A New York financier has been killed in a shark attack while scuba diving off the coast of Costa Rica, the country's Environment Ministry announced. Rohina Bhandari, 49, a senior director at WL Ross & Co. LL, was identified by friends as the American tourist who was fatally attacked last Thursday. She was dragged from the Pacific Ocean after sustaining severe bites to her legs but could not be saved. Her 26-year-old diving instructor was also badly injured.

PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla., - A scuba diver in Florida is suing a utility company after he was sucked into a quarter-mile-long pipe that took him inside a nuclear power plant. Christopher Le Cun said he was scuba diving off the coast of Hutchinson Island with friend Robert Blake last summer when the pair went down to investigate three large shadows underneath a yellow buoy. "I swam right up to this big structure and it looks like a building underwater. I felt a little bit of current. All of a sudden it got a little quicker and I said, 'this...

For months, hype has been building about a set of 15 giant sculptures that were built and designed to be sunk yesterday off the coast of Deerfield Beach, making an artificial reef for scuba divers to explore. These pieces were eight to 22 feet tall and designed as replicas of the mysterious heads at Easter Island, also known as Rapa Nui. But things took a bizarre turn when the barge carrying the sculptures tipped over and sunk on top of them, crushing them all.

The revolutionary idea breaks away from the traditional goggles and tube with a futuristic all-in-one design. Instead of just breathing through your mouth, the Easybreath full-face design allows you breathe through your nostrils too. The head piece allows for a full 180-degree-range so you won’t miss that sea turtle swimming by. It also has a double airflow system that prevents mask fogging, and a built-in component that automatically plugs the top end of the snorkel when it's immersed.

Designer Jeabyun Yeon has created something great. Essentially it turns humans into fish. “Triton uses a new technology of artificial gill model. - It extracts oxygen under water through a filter in the form of fine threads with holes smaller than water molecules. - This is a technology developed by a Korean scientist that allows us to freely breathe under water for a long time. - Using a very small but powerful micro compressor, it compresses oxygen and stores the extracted oxygen in storage tank. - The micro compressor operates through micro battery. - The micro battery is a next-generation...

Someone's snappy: Jaws-dropping moment deadly Tiger shark tears £11,000 camera from the grasp of a petrified photographer • Diver Miguel Lasa, 49, was swimming without a cage when the Tiger shark approached • Deadly shark grabbed the specialist, £11,000 camera and swam off • Luckily, it dropped the equipment 100 metres away on the sea floor in the Bahamas • Tiger sharks are the world's second most dangerous breed - just behind the great white • 'It was a great experience but I wouldn't do it again as it was too dangerous,' says Lasa This snappy shark was clearly not...

Diving icon's ashes spread here today Inventions touched all uses of scuba, re-breathers BY ADAM LINHARDT Citizen Staffalinhardt@keysnews.com The ashes of the man responsible for developing what evolved into the most advanced scuba systems used by today's Special Operations Forces, as well as leading marine researchers and explorers, will be spread this morning in the waters off Key West. Christian J. Lambertsen was a medical student in 1939 when he invented his Lambertsen Amphibious Respirator Unit (LARU), a forerunner of modern dive re-breathers used today by the Army Green Berets, Navy SEALs and deep-sea explorers. Lambertsen died on Feb. 11...

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) — A dream honeymoon to scuba dive on Australia's Great Barrier Reef turned into a terrible nightmare, and the horror is about to play out years later in a courtroom in Alabama. An Alabama man who already served prison time in Australia after pleading guilty to a reduced charged in the death of his bride goes to trial Monday, accused of murdering her for insurance money. Tina Thomas Watson drowned during a scuba dive on the reef just days after her wedding in October 2003.

Hi FReepers, I'm posting in order to locate FReepers who are living on board a sailboat in or around Florida. We are thinking about a retirement sailing around the Carribean on what's know as the 'Grand Tour' which would take us in a big loop down to Columbia and back. Should this part of the trip go by uneventably boring, we could transit the Panama Canal and run down the Pacific coast of S. America.

Upper Darby police have yet to close their inquiry into last month's odd death of engineer Peter Stelzenmuller. That is partly due to how and where Stelzenmuller was found: clad in a scuba suit in the corner of his attic. Investigators are also intrigued by the bizarre history of Stelzenmuller's girlfriend, Edythe Maa, who reported finding his body Aug. 18, Police Superintendent Michael Chitwood said. In 2008, Maa was working as a dominatrix when her boyfriend, a New York lawyer, was fatally shot near her Philadelphia apartment by an angry former client. The killer then kidnapped and sexually assaulted Maa...

Any dachshund owner knows the feisty breed rarely backs off from a challenge, but one in Russia is taking that reputation to new heights — or depths. The dog named Boniface is learning how to scuba dive. Owner Sergei Gorbunov, a professional diver in the Pacific Coast city of Vladivostok had a diving suit complete with helmet made for the dog and is teaching him the tricks of the trade. In a recent demonstration, Boniface barked eagerly as Gorbunov readied the equipment and uncomplainingly endured being hung upside-down as Gorbunov fitted the suit on him.

Federal authorities say a person wearing scuba gear apparently tried to sneak two bundles of marijuana across the Mexican border through a sewer system. Border Patrol agents operating infrared cameras noticed several individuals illegally crossing into Arizona using a sewer outlet near Douglas on Friday. The Douglas Station's bike patrol went to the sewer system and saw one person carrying two bundles that were suspected to be marijuana. That person was wearing a wet suit and scuba gear and was wading through waist-high water with the bundles. The person saw the agents, dropped the bundles and began wading back toward...

A British woman pushed the boundaries of human endurance to new levels yesterday as she dived 96 metres (314ft) below the surface of the Atlantic and back again on a single, very deep, breath. Sara Campbell — “part woman, part fish” — broke the world record in the extreme sport of freediving, whose participants dice with death by submerging themselves to lung-crushing depths without breathing apparatus. Holding her breath for three minutes 36 seconds, she went deeper than any female freediver has gone before without weights or equipment to hasten her descent, or an airbag to speed her back to...

Last May, British scuba diving instructor Richard Neely and his girlfriend Allyson Dalton were left stranded in the open ocean for 19 hours when the Pacific Star returned to land without them. The pair floated helpless in the sea overnight before they were eventually rescued. The Pacific Star's owners AP Vessel Management Pty Ltd, which trades as OzSail Skippered Yacht Charters, were charged with breaching the Workplace Health and Safety Act by neglecting to ensure all of their customers had returned to the boat before leaving the reef. Mr Neely and Miss Dalton were among 20 passengers on the Pacific...

An American tourist was charged with murder yesterday for allegedly drowning his bride of 11 days on a scuba diving trip on the Great Barrier Reef during their honeymoon. Christina Mae Watson, 26, died while diving on a shipwreck near the northeastern Australian city of Townsville while her husband looked on. Daniel Watson, 31, of Birmingham, Alabama, had claimed during police interviews that his wife had panicked a few minutes into the dive. He said that as she thrashed around in the water, she grabbed hold of his mask and pushed it off his face. He later described seeing her,...

The U.S. Embassy in Greece says DNA tests have identified the remains of three American divers missing since 1978 while exploring underwater caves. Two of the divers will be buried in Minnesota, where their parents are from. The remains of U.S. Air Force Sergeant Donald Michaud - along with 20-year-old Airman Jan Granroth and her 21-year-old brother Mark Granroth - were identified after extensive DNA analysis by the Department of Defense Armed Forces Medical Examiner. Funerals for the Granroths are scheduled for August fourth in Sebeka, about 45 miles northwest of Brainerd. Jan and Mark Granroth grew up in Sacramento....

Despite challenges such as darkness, limited visibility and cold temperatures, the waters in and around Sweden offer unique opportunities for underwater exploration. Worlds away from the warm, clear waters of the tropics, Swedish diving is in a class of its own.