One complaint about this forum is that we read the initial report of an accident or incident but normally do not hear the results of any investigation, leaving us to wonder and speculate about causes. With that in mind, here is what we have learned about this accident in Sebago Lake.
This tragedy happened a couple of months ago and I do have some final information from speaking with people who have direct knowledge.
As was reported, the coroner ruled cause of death an embolism.
The diver involved had been an underwater welder but had not dived in a long time, years according to people I spoke with. He reportedly did not own a complete set of equipment.
He made two attempts to find the sunken ATV over two days. On the first day, he had to abort the dive because he was underweighted.
On the second day, he returned and apparently made it to the bottom to search for the ATV using GPS numbers taken by state officials when the ATV sank. He had surface support, and was diving through the ice. I could find no one who knew if he had any sort of overhead environment training or experience, but he did seem to have knowledge of surface support for ice diving.
According to witnesses, at about 20 minutes into the dive, the surface support people tugged on the line attached to the diver and received an OK tug back. About 20 minutes later, they tugged again and did not receive an OK signal and began pulling him in. As has been reported, he was not breathing when he came to the surface.
The diver was related to some of the folks involved in bringing him to the surface so I want to be sensitive about this. It is clearly tramatic for those involved.
I can tell you from experience, at the likely depths of this ATV, there is no light penetration at all. The bottom is several feet of mud and the slightest touch produces clouds of silt. Finding this ATV is extremely unlikely without a side-scan unit in my opinion.
Again, this is just to sort of tie up some loose ends.
Jeff
