DUBAI //A member of a team of divers who find and explore deep-lying shipwrecks is missing after becoming separated from his colleagues in waters off the northeast coast at Dibba. An extensive search involving boats and helicopters has failed to find any trace of Jan-Lars Hanz, 34, a highly trained and experienced diver from Germany.
Mr Hanz lives in Abu Dhabi with his wife Silke, 40, and their 16-month-old daughter, Julia. A friend who broke the news to Mrs Hanz described the heartbreaking task as his "darkest hour".
The diver went missing on Saturday after beginning a descent on a line to the wreck of a supertanker lying on the seabed 112 metres below the surface.
At 20 metres down, Mr Hanz indicated to the two divers with him that he was having trouble easing the pressure on his eardrums. He signalled to them to continue while he went back up to 10 metres. By the time a second team of divers descended 20 minutes later, he had disappeared.
"We think it could have been a heart attack or something like that, or equipment failure," said Bill Leeman, the dive-team leader. "We'll never know because I doubt they'll ever find him, it's too deep for recovery or even a search.
"Everybody was devastated. It was a 10-metre problem that should never have happened given the level of diving that this guy was at.
"He did everything by the book and was the most capable diver on that trip, totally focused on what he did."
The members of Dubai's Desert Sports Diving Club were on a weekend live-aboard trip on a dhow. The tragedy happened on their second day exploring the wreck of the Sagheera, a Saudi-registered vessel that sank and split into two sections 22 kilometres from shore after an on-board explosion in January 1989.
