THIS WAS POSTED ON A SPEARFISHING BOARD RECENTLY:
" I was on the boat and on the dive where Mark passed. This extremely saddening event went down like this:
3rd Dive of the day, depth 162 fsw, 2.5 hours since his last dive. Mark had been having a pretty slow trip and he had expressed that he always loved diving with me because 'You're lucky Tommy the fish are always on the spots you wanna dive' he told me. So he skipped diving with the captain on an airplane wreck and decided to dive with me. Captain gave me the option of a wreck or a large live bottom area, and I picked the live bottom. This area is extremely large and I knew there would be lobsters and fish so I told Mark I'd just take my bug gear and he could have all the fish. We dropped down together and as soon as we hit the bottom Mark pops a Jack and posts up right where we landed. I start working the bottom and get a couple bugs, making a big circle. I end the circle back where I started and Mark is still there but with 4 dead fish around him, a few of them on the stringer, and he's lining up a 5th one, he hasn't moved from where we started. I have a 30ft ceiling on my computer and since I've been bent before, I decided to head home. When I got to about 40 feet I heard another shot, I finished all my deco and handed my gear/catch up to the skipper and when I swam back to the platform I heard yet another shot! Around this time we see a Red Snapper floating on the top about 100-150 feet away so I swim over and get it, it's one of Marks that got away. I get back in the boat and get out of my gear, take my tank/reg apart and bring it back to pump, I guess about a minute later Marks stringer came flying out of the water with a safety sausage attached to it, and Mark is with it (I'd been on the surface for 10+ minutes at this point). We bumped the boat over to him, he was only about 100 feet away, took his gun and his fish and he began to climb on the platform. The skipper starts asking him if he did all his deco and Mark doesn't give a real clear concise response, then he blurts out, "I ran out of air." Those would end up being my friends last words. Captain says, 'You need to get back in the water and finish your deco!' we began to get a fresh tank ready and right about this time Mark dropped to his knees and lost consciousness. He just went limp and unresponsive, he hadn't been in the boat for 2 minutes, it was around 30 seconds from the time he told us he ran out of air to the time he was unconscious. We checked for a pulse, there was none, we tried CPR to no avail. We were powerless to save or help him in anyway, it was lightning fast. He nevered expressed to us that he was in danger or needed help, he was calm when he came to the platform. I wish he'd of cried for help when he hit the surface, but he didn't. After we got on the horn with the USCG the captain asked me to analyze the tank just to be sure, when I cracked the valve, not even a whisp of air came out, nothing. Our guess is that he got low on air and inflated his safety sausage and rode it to the surface so he didn't drown, of course, that's purely hypothetical.
He laid in the wheelhouse all the way back to Mayport and I just kept hoping he'd sit up......
Mark left a family, a wife and a young daughter, he was 44. He was a genuinely wonderful human being to be around, he'd give you the shirt off his back, never did no one wrong, always tried to do extra to make life better for everyone else. I don't know how this could've happened to such a great guy, and a dirt bag like me flirts with the bends umpteen times and cheats it, only to write this."
I'll miss you Mark, really really bad. RIP
