Diving News
Three deaths on Great Barrier Reef
A 60-year-old British diver has died on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. He was found on the seabed at 15m with his regulator out of his mouth during his second dive of the day at Agincourt Reef on Friday, 18 November.
The man was brought back aboard the Port Douglas-based Silversonic day-boat, where extensive efforts were made to revive him. A doctor was helicoptered out to the vessel, which was equipped with emergency oxygen and defibrillation equipment, but eventually declared the diver dead.
“The dive-boat Silversonic has operated for 11 years and carried 230,000 divers during that time with no diving fatalities,” Col McKenzie, Executive Director of the Association of Marine Park Tourism Operators, told the Cairns Post. “Accidents like this are a tragedy for the surviving family-members, the crew and the passengers.”
The man, said to have been travelling with his wife, has yet to be named.
Earlier in the week two French tourists had died while snorkelling at Michaelmas Cay on the Great Barrier Reef. Both in their mid-70s, Jacques Goron and Danielle Franck were on a snorkelling cruise aboard the vessel Passions of Paradise. They had both reportedly informed their tour group of pre-existing medical conditions that could trigger heart attacks.
According to the Cairns Post, a cardiologist had theorised that the almost simultaneous deaths of the two snorkellers might have been caused by an encounter with tiny but deadly Irukandji jellyfish.
“In Queensland, we have one fatality for 450,000 dives – so we have a record that is four and a half times better than the worldwide industry average,” McKenzie pointed out to the newspaper.
