South Devon fatality - UK

[DandyDon]

Man dies after diving off South Devon coast

A man who got into difficulty while diving off the South Devon coast on Saturday afternoon has died, police have confirmed.

The man, who had been diving off the Salcombe coast, was airlifted to Derriford Hospital in Plymouth by the coastguard helicopter.

Kingsbridge Police said: "Salcombe RNLI attended and the male was airlifted to Derriford Hospital but was pronounced deceased by doctors. An investigation is under way by police to establish the cause of his death and a file is being prepared for HM Coroner. Our sincere condolences go out to all of the family and friends of the gentleman."

It is believed that the diver had suffered decompression sickness, also known as the bends.

A spokesman for the Maritime and Coastguard Agency said: "At around 2.15pm, UK Coastguard picked up a Mayday radio broadcast from a dive vessel reporting that one of their divers had got into difficulty and needed urgent assistance.

"The diver had been down to 80 metres depth and suffered medical problems during ascent. He was evacuated by the UK Coastguard search and rescue helicopter based at Newquay to Derriford specialist decompression unit.

"The Salcombe RNLI all weather lifeboat proceeded to the scene to assist the vessel in recovering the remaining divers and escort it back to the shore."

 

[NYCNaiad]

I'm surprised. The news report actually sounds reasonable in describing the accident.

And to go down to a depth of 262 feet is no joke. I haven't been diving in Devon or the UK for that matter, but it looks like the area has a big diving presence with a dive club & a huge number of dive sites.

I wonder why the "Salcombe RNLI all weather lifeboat proceeded to the scene to assist the vessel in recovering the remaining divers and escort it back to the shore." Is this standard procedure?

 

[rivers]

I'm surprised. The news report actually sounds reasonable in describing the accident.

And to go down to a depth of 262 feet is no joke. I haven't been diving in Devon or the UK for that matter, but it looks like the area has a big diving presence with a dive club & a huge number of dive sites.

I wonder why the "Salcombe RNLI all weather lifeboat proceeded to the scene to assist the vessel in recovering the remaining divers and escort it back to the shore." Is this standard procedure?

The UK in general has a massive diving community. I know of at least 4 dive clubs in my city alone (medium sized, about 500,000 people). And there are hundreds of dives sites off the entirety of the south coast, ranging in depth from 3m to 75m+. Not too mention the other coasts, Scotland, Ireland, the Channel, and inland sites...

 

[Rhone Man]

UK suffers a disproportionately high number of diving fatalities because there is (proportionately) a lot more tech diving and lot more rebreather diving. Throw in the fact that conditions are sometimes harsh (low viz, high currents) and a lot of it involves wreck penetrations, then just by the law of averages, bad things will happen from time to time.

My experience has been that "diving news" in the UK is much less sanitised than other places. So even in the glossy magazines in the airports, you get pretty frank articles discussing diving fatalities and what went wrong. One of the net results is that it does mean that journalists tend to be much better informed about the diving accidents.

 

[fsardone]

I was diving in Plymouth last weekend, and at the time of the incident I was completing the second dive of the day.
The only thing I can add is that weather was as good as it can get and sea state was calm. Cannot say much about slack but high tide was at 11:30, also last weekend we were on neap tide. So if he went to 80 meters and coast guard called at 1400 probably he entered water 90-100 minutes before that and hence dived at hight tide slack. So I would say environment was as good as you could hope for.

RIP