Austria diver's death on 100-meter dive - Cyprus

[DandyDon]

Austrian diver found dead off Protaras

A 60-year-old man from Austria was found dead in the sea off Protaras on Thursday afternoon.According to authorities, Famagusta District Police received a report about a dead diver near the Golden Coast area around 1:20 pm.Under conditions which are being investigated, Alex Schoeller, a permanent re

in-cyprus.philenews.com

A 60-year-old man from Austria was found dead in the sea off Protaras on Thursday afternoon.

According to authorities, Famagusta District Police received a report about a dead diver near the Golden Coast area around 1:20 pm.

Under conditions which are being investigated, Alex Schoeller, a permanent resident of Paralimni, was found floating unconscious around 1.4 nautical miles off Golden Coast while diving with a friend.

Members of the Coast Guard rushed to the location to bring Schoeller back to shore. An ambulance then transferred him to Famagusta General Hospital where doctors declared him dead.

First information says that he had dived at a depth of 100 metres in search of a shipwreck.

Police say there are no indications pointing to foul play.

An autopsy will determine the exact cause of Schoeller’s death.

 

[MB NZ]

Just for reference, the country is spelt Cyprus in English. A typo I think, U and I are next to each other on the keyboard. Παρακαλώ!

 

[azstinger11]

Omne Trium Perfectum

Good things come in threes. At least that’s what explorer and former commercial diver Axel Schoeller believed when he needed a specialized rebreather platform for a deep open water project. The result of several years’ effort is a triple closed-circuit rebreather configuration—one back mount...

gue.com

“
1 JUNE, 2023—We are saddened to report that the 60-year old author,Axel Schoeller died on a 100-meter solo rebreather dive on his CCR Trilogy rig near Protaras, Cyprus, less than a day after we published his story. We are awaiting details. RIP Axel. According to DAN, which verified Axel’s death, he is the third rebreather diver to die in the last seven days.”

Mods- feel free to delete, but as this was published on a very public website figured it was appropriate and added to conversation but will defer to your judgement.

 

[Jonn]

An autopsy will determine the exact cause of Schoeller’s death.

I love the articles confident sense of optimism here!

 

[kissonerga.ccr]

A bit of an update

Autopsy fails to reveal cause of death in scuba diving fatality (Updated) | Cyprus Mail

A post-mortem examination failed to reveal the cause of death of the 60-year-old Axel Schoeller who died while scuba diving in Paralimni, authorities said on Friday. There was no sign of suffocation or drowning found by state examiners Angeliki Papeta and Orthodoxos Orthodoxou, the Famagusta...

cyprus-mail.com

 

[Angelo Farina]

Omne Trium Perfectum

Good things come in threes. At least that’s what explorer and former commercial diver Axel Schoeller believed when he needed a specialized rebreather platform for a deep open water project. The result of several years’ effort is a triple closed-circuit rebreather configuration—one back mount...

gue.com

“
1 JUNE, 2023—We are saddened to report that the 60-year old author,Axel Schoeller died on a 100-meter solo rebreather dive on his CCR Trilogy rig near Protaras, Cyprus, less than a day after we published his story. We are awaiting details. RIP Axel. According to DAN, which verified Axel’s death, he is the third rebreather diver to die in the last seven days.”

Mods- feel free to delete, but as this was published on a very public website figured it was appropriate and added to conversation but will defer to your judgement.

It appears he was a very experiened technical diver, employing a massively-redundant triple rebreather.
Something went wrong, of course, but an health condition appears more probable than an equipment failure.

 

[DandyDon]

Austrian diver who drowned off Protaras was ‘unsung hero’ in Red Lake serial killings search

Axel Schoeller, an Austrian permanent resident of Parilimni who drowned yesterday off Protaras, was a volunteer in the search to find the women and children murdered by serial killer 'Orestis' in 2019.Marcos Tragkolas, the former fire service chief who headed the search, confirmed that Schoeller was

in-cyprus.philenews.com

 

[DandyDon]

"According to some reports the diver had been using the CCR Trilogy configuration that he had spent the past five years developing with other divers in Cyprus, as a means of maximising dive-time."

Triple-CCR diver dies on 100m solo dive

Austrian rebreather diver Axel Schoeller has died following a dive understood to have been carried out solo to a depth of around 100m off Protaras in eastern

divernet.com

Austrian rebreather diver Axel Schoeller has died following a dive understood to have been carried out solo to a depth of around 100m off Protaras in eastern Cyprus.

The 60-year-old lived on the island, at Paralimni about 10km inland, and had been carrying out a wreck-dive on 1 June. He was found unconscious at the surface by a friend, about 1.4 nautical miles out from the Golden Coast marine area, and Famagusta Police were alerted at around 1.20pm.

Coast Guard officers helped to bring Schoeller ashore and an ambulance took him to Famagusta General Hospital, where he was declared dead.

According to some reports the diver had been using the CCR Trilogy configuration that he had spent the past five years developing with other divers in Cyprus, as a means of maximising dive-time. The rig was based around a single Divesoft CCR Liberty backmount combined with two sidemount rebreathers.

An initial post mortem examination failed to reveal the cause of death. Famagusta police said there had been no signs of suffocation or drowning, but that tissue samples had been taken to allow laboratory tests to be conducted.

A former merchant seaman, Schoeller had started diving in Germany’s Baltic and inland sites, and went on to work with Mel Fisher’s Atocha wreck-salvage team in the USA, and with eco-activists Sea Shepherd. He took part in DAN chamber-diving experiments and travelled widely as a commercial diver for the construction and oil and gas industries.

He had begun technical diving in the late 1990s in Florida under the guidance of Captain Billy Deans and then Kevin Gurr and Dave Thompson in the UK, becoming qualified on a number of rebreather units. He also worked on a variety of maritime archaeology projects in Asia, the UK and the Mediterranean, and eventually settled in Cyprus.

In 2019, Schoeller was the diver who discovered the body of a victim of Cypriot serial killer Nikos ‘Orestis’ Metaxas, who had murdered five women and two girls between 2016 and 2018.

Schoeller had found the first body in a mine-shaft near Mitsero, and went on to help find others in nearby Red Lake. He was later described as an “unsung hero” by investigators, with the discoveries leading to Metaxas receiving seven life sentences.

Schoeller’s death occurred the day after publication in the InDepth online technical-diving magazine of his comprehensive account of how he had developed the CCR Trilogy rig.