Before Argentinian scuba diver Pablo Avila lost consciousness on surfacing from a shore-dive off California’s
Catalina Island, he can hardly have imagined that his life was going to be saved by a group of mermaids.
Avila had been exploring the Pacific site with old friend Javier Claramunt, with whom he was said to have been diving since the 1970s, and Claramunt’s son Joshua.
Father and son were towing Avila back to shore at the surface but growing tired. As luck would have it, a group of female freedivers had been practising rescue scenarios for
PADI’s Advanced Mermaid course nearby when their instructor spotted that a genuine emergency had occurred.
The course was being run by instructor Elaina Marie Garcia (Mermaid Elle) of
Catalina Island Mermaids. An experienced scuba diver as well as a freediver, Garcia told Fox LA that she had seen Avila coughing foam, “which is a tell-tale sign of an air embolism”.
She swam over and started giving Avila rescue breaths. The rest of her group followed, helping to remove the victim’s dive-gear and towing him back to shore at Casino Point, on the south-east of the island.
The emergency services had been alerted and were waiting to take Avila to the island’s hyperbaric chamber. Medical staff later credited Garcia and her mermaid group with saving Avila’s life. The diver underwent several hours of treatment in the chamber, where he regained consciousness and was later discharged.
Being a mermaid “is not all bubble-kisses,” said Garcia afterwards. “Now I know I can rescue a mermaid, because I can rescue a scuba diver while in a mermaid tail, which I think is crazy!”
”It was something out of a fairy-tale, being saved by a mermaid,” commented Joshua Claramunt. Find more about
PADI Mermaid
courses.
divernet.com
