Three commercial divers in their 30s using surface-supplied air were recovered unconscious from harbour waters in Korea yesterday morning (20 July), but two of them died and the third was said to remain in critical condition.
The divers had been working since shortly after 8am to clear barnacles from the hull of a container-ship anchored at Busan New Port in the city of Changwon.
Changwon Coast Guard were alerted to the emergency at 11.43am and maritime police and paramedics arrived to find that the divers had been brought out of the water but remained unconscious and were being treated for cardiac arrest.
They were transferred to hospital soon afterwards, where two of the divers were pronounced dead. They had worked for a diving company contracted by the container-ship owner.
According to witnesses the divers had all lost consciousness at the same time, and the Coast Guard has told local press that a problem might have occurred either with a hose connection to their air-supply unit or with the unit itself. Officers were conducting interviews and examining the equipment and CCTV footage.
On the same day a recreational scuba diver in his 50s died in the El Toro area of the Spanish island of Mallorca. Shortly after reboarding a boat following a dive at around 1.30pm the man was reported to have collapsed in cardiac arrest.
The boat was based at Santa Ponça Yacht Club, where emergency responders tried unsuccessfully to resuscitate the man. Divers from the Guardia Civil later went to investigate the dive-site.
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Sounds like bad air ot a lack of air.
If it was the former that would explain their deaths and they would not have had time to react, i.e. to surface or use their backup cylinder. This is, in my humble opinion, the likely cause.
If it was a case where their air supply was cut off they would have had time to either surface or open their backup cylinder supply.