A diver is rescued off the Great Barrier Reef
Posted on 05/24/2008 3:54:50 PM PDT by rawhide
Two scuba divers were plucked from the open ocean almost 24 hours after they went missing on a pleasure dive on Austrailia’s Great Barrier Reef.
The divers, 38-year-old Briton Richard Neely and American Allison Dalton, 40, were found shortly before 9am 7.8 nautical miles from where they had lost contact with their diving boat on Friday afternoon.
They were winched to safety after an 18 hour air rescue effort involving up to 12 aircraft and flown to a Queensland hospital where they are said to be in good spirits despite suffering from mild hypothermia.
Last night, police and emergency services used helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft equipped with search lights and infrared sensing equipment to search for the divers but were forced to call off the search.
At first light this morning the search continued with seven helicopters and three fixed wing aircraft. A rescue helicopter spotted the pair near the Whitsunday Islands off the Queensland's coast.
Police said the experienced divers surfaced yesterday afternoon around 200 metres from the dive boat but were unable to raise the crew.
They decided against fighting the strong current to conserve their energy, tying themselves to each other with a weight belt.
"They conserved energy throughout the evening and stayed as a pair awaiting rescue," Acting Superintendent Shane Chelepy of the Water Police said at a press conference in Brisbane today.
"From the debrief we have, these people said they did spot one of the search aircraft last night but were unable to attract its attention," Deputy Police Commissioner Ian Stewart said.
Following the search, attention has now turned to the dive boat operator, The Pacific Star, whose skipper was believed to have waited three hours until 5.30pm to alert emergency services to the missing divers.
"That issue will be investigated thoroughly, not only by Queensland Police but also by Workplace Health and Safety in a joint investigation," Mr Stewart said
"Obviously there were other divers with that vessel at the time so we will have to look into what happened with their recovery - whether they were back on the boat and what actions the captain took to commence the search.”
Attempts to contact the operator of The Pacific Star were unsuccessful today.
A similar incident occurred in 1998 when an American couple was left on the Great Barrier Reef by a dive operator at St Crispin Reef near Port Douglas.
The skipper of the dive boat was charged and later found not guilty of the manslaughter of Thomas and Eileen Lonergan after it was concluded by the coroner they had drowned or been killed by sharks.
A diver is rescued off the Great Barrier Reef
Sometimes things just suck. It's important to keep your head and go with the flow. These guys rate high on the 'making hard decisions under pressure' scale.
/johnny
Open Water is a 2003 film inspired by a true story about an American couple, Tom and Eileen Lonergan, who in 1998 went out with a scuba diving group, Outer Edge Dive Company, into the South Pacific. They were accidentally left behind because the dive-boat crew failed to take an accurate headcount. There were 26 other divers and five crew members, all of whom failed to notice that the couple was not on board.
Even lacking a beacon, every diver should have an inflatable safety sausage and a strobe, especially diving in open ocean environments far from shore.
Having spent a few frantic moments on deck scanning for missing divers in rough water, I can attest to the need for basic underwater navigational skills, situational awareness, and proper equipment to avoid this outcome...
Great to hear they stuck with it and were rescued though.
It has some top notch nudity as well, but I guess the British don't find that worth mentioning in the rating? ;->
The rescued divers rate high on my 'keeping their head when all about them....'
/johnny
It seems to me that someone could make a simple device, about the size of an aluminum cigar tube, that would contain a rolled up, brightly colored balloon, and a small capsule of compressed helium.
All you would have to do is take the cap off one end, and pull out the compressed balloon with a 100 foot line; then take the cap off the other end and push a button to release the helium.
The helium would inflate the balloon, which would then rise up to its maximum height and be very visible from a long way away.
It could even be painted with glow in the dark stripes, in case visibility was limited.
If you really wanted to get elaborate, a small, electronic whistle could be put on the base of the balloon, powered by a hearing aid battery, that would give off a piercing sound at a 360 degree circle, and at a slightly downward angle.
I like your ingenuity.
Out fishing once we had a guy fall off the back of the boat and didn’t notice him for 5 minutes. He was taking a leak and when the boat throttled up, over he went.
We followed our wake back to the area and scanned for several minutes before we found him.
Without having a 406 beacon, the best signaling devices are a signal mirror in the day and a strobe at night. Both are really small. A safety sausage is a great thing to carry when diving because it makes you visible to surface vessels (like your dive boat.)
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