This dive was part of a tour with Lost Reef, we had 3 groups diving with guides, my group of 4 being composed of James (who called himself Jim), another diver, a guide, and myself. I had done two reef dives with Lost Reef on the 31st to ensure I was ready for the Vandenburg, as I was only certified this past October for open water diving. I have been in the ocean many times before, snorkling, surfing, swimming, and also being a lifeguard and swim instructor I have more confidence than most who are new to diving. My PADI instructors knew this, and suggested the Vandenburg to me. I also explained this all to my guide, and we agreed I would stick to him through the dive for safety. The guide was a very experienced diver, and had been doing the tours for many years without major incident, and was confident enough in my abilities for the planned dive. We were to descend, group up around 100ft to ensure everyone was comfortable, and make our first penetration from port to starboard and continue touring from there.
As for conditions, visibility was near 80ft, and James was wearing the same type of wetsuit you'll see in my profile picture. Waves were choppy making entry/exit a bit more intense, but I managed well enough. Once we had all entered and grouped up, we descended along a line down to the stern of the wreck (I believe it was buoy 6 for those of you with local knowledge, though I could be mistaking that for another buoy. I'll speak about that later).
Our guide lead and was watching us descend from within arms reach of me, I was following second, the other diver and James were behind me, one of which was following the descent line by visual reference. I'm fairly certain it was James, but at this date I'm not positive and I am starting to forget a few details. At the time I certainly though it was him, and so I could see he was fairly skilled to descend steadily even with the current pushing us a bit. When we reached the deck at around 90ft we moved off the port side of the ship and dropped down another 10 or so feet to where we could see two holes cut into the ship for diver penetration. One was further aft and about 2-5 ft lower, which we grouped up around.
Our guide checked that we were all ok and that we were going to penetrate straight through the ship. The space was only wide enough for one diver to enter at a time, but inside there was a room to our right, some space to our left, and another cut out where you could exit the wreck above in the center of the room. Again our guide led, and just before I followed I noticed James had sunk about 3 feet and was kicking with his hands relaxed in front of him. It looked like he was not establishing neutral buoyancy with his bcd, so I faced him, held up my bcd hose and pointed to it, to which he replied with the ok signal. (On reflection, it could just be that he was cold and wanted to warm up a bit. Being my first dive, I paid absolutely no attention to the cold, and I normally swim in cold water) The other diver was just next to us, so I turned and followed our guide through. About 20-30 seconds after I had finished my penetration the next diver exited, and James never followed.
After about 60-100 seconds, our guide signaled for the other diver and myself to penetrate back through the second spot (the one slightly raised and towards bow) to look around, while he would go back the way we came to ensure we didn't do a chase around. The rooms on that penetration looked too small to navigate with scuba gear, but regardless my other buddy and I saw no sign of James, nor had our guide upon regrouping. We held that spot for another minute or so, and our guide spotted a person almost directly above us on the surface. I would estimate anywhere from 3 to 6 minutes had gone by, but later our guide would tell us he would be hard pressed with his 30 years of experience to make that same ascent that quickly, and he appeared to be in better shape/health than James. (That being said, I have a frustratingly bad memory of names, hence "our other diver", whose name I don't recall. One thing that struck me is I had already started to forget what James's face looked like by the time I had surfaced. While he gave the impression of being a fairly competent diver, he did not look especially fit, nor unhealthy.)
Though I did not recall immediately, I seemed to remember seeing a person on the surface, on their side and horizontal. Either the image didn't make an impression because the figure was not in distress (vertical and thrashing about), or because I was simply imagining it. Additionally, I could have been looking at one of the crew from the ship and have not seen James at all.
Within the next 10-20 seconds after that, our guide made the call to continue our dive (which I know after discussing it with my PADI instructor wasn't the best choice). We continued for about 20 minutes going to shallower sections of the ship, and after we ascended and did our 3 minute safety stop I immediately heard my guide ask the crew member who was helping divers exit the water as to James's whereabouts. All other groups confirmed their divers made no ascents, so it had to be James who surfaced. Upon surfacing, the crew member jumped into the ocean and started swimming out to James, who descended out of the crew's sight before being reached. After all other divers were accounted for, we waited for several minutes looking for signs of bubbles. After 5 or so minutes the crew member who had originally spotted James on the surface geared up to look for signs of James (bubbles, etc). Also our guide got back under with a new tank, and I assume he tested the current while descending. A while after that we started searching on the surface, and finding nothing for about 10 minutes called in the coast guard.
The coast guard did their search over the next few days as you all know turning up nothing, while the sheriffs department could not dive the next few days due to poor visibility. If the search was indeed called off by the 6th than no more than a day or three had been spent actually searching around the wreck.
With my PADI instructor we speculated possibilities, the obvious were medical issues; being in his 50's and the last man through it's possible he had an emergency, panicked and surfaced. Had he become so panicked as to forget to ditch his weight belt and inflate his bcd, we could see that he powered up to the surface, and either from lung expansion, exhaustion, or a medical issue he lost consciousness while still negatively buoyant and ended up as the user Wookie suggested at 160ft aft.
The speculation of intoxication was brought to light by another diver, who was unconfident that it was James he had seen drinking beer, or simply a person of no consequence.
As for the buoyancy of a person, I would say he was so negatively buoyant when I saw him that if he had the equivalent of 17lbs removed from weight he could still have sunk. I don't know the mathematics of the buoyancy provided by ones bcd, but assuming it was really deflated that may affect where he would go.
My memory is by no means perfect, so I may have unintentionally omitted minor details, but those are what I can recount, and I also drew from a video I took the day of the event for certain information, so the majority of what I separate from my own experiences and my thoughts should be fairly accurate.
