A Great Barrier Reef dive-boat operator has been fined Au $60,000 (more than £29,000) after failing to mount a search for a British tourist in its care when he went missing.
Hostel Reef Trips pleaded guilty to a category 2 charge of breaching workplace health and safety obligations at a hearing at Cairns Magistrate Court on 26 September (category 1 charges require an element of recklessness or gross negligence).
Cameron Shaw, 25 and from York, had been on an extended holiday and was out on the operator’s Reef Experience boat visiting Saxon Reef north-east of Cairns on 24 October, 2022.
With his two friends he had undertaken an introductory scuba dive before proceeding to snorkel in an area said to have been monitored by a Hostel Reef Trips staff-member.
After being called back to the dive-boat and realising that Shaw was missing, his friends alerted the crew twice, but said that no attempt was made to find him. As lunch was served they reminded the crew of Shaw’s absence, but again no action was taken.
Around this time the tour operator was informed that the snorkeller’s body had been found floating near a private boat 1km away. Shaw, an undefeated professional boxer, a ski instructor and described as a strong swimmer, was later determined to have died of natural causes.
No adequate safety procedures
The charge of negligence related not to causing Shaw’s death but to the failure to search for him, stated the prosecution, according to an ABC report on the court proceedings. Hostel Reef Trips should have searched for the missing snorkeller as soon as the alarm was raised but no adequate safety procedures had been in place.
Hostel Reef Trips had been operating diving and snorkelling boat trips to the GBR since 1992 but the year after the fatal incident rebranded as GBR Tours. Since Shaw’s death It was said in court to have “revised its safety manual” to cover such eventualities.
However, its legal representative argued that there remained no official requirement for the company to have done this, and that its offence had been an “honest error”. GBR Tours operates Reef Experience and the liveaboard Reef Encounter.
Magistrate James Morton said that the safety manual revision and early guilty plea indicated remorse on the operator’s part. He said that the fine imposed was intended to send a message to all GBR operators.
No conviction was recorded and the company was ordered to pay court costs and additional fees of about $1,600.
Past fines
A fine of $250,000 was imposed following the drowning deaths of two students at Fraser Island in 2019, after a Queensland tour operator had failed to warn them about or prevent them from swimming. Another GBR dive operator and its director had to pay £110,000 after being found guilty of failing in a number of basic safety duties.
The 1998 disappearance of scuba-diving couple Tom and Eileen Lonergan in the Coral Sea brought Outer Edge Dive a fine commonly reported as AU $27,000, though its skipper was acquitted of manslaughter. That decision also ushered in a number of changes to Australian safety guidelines.
The timing right before tourist season really makes you question why anyone would board a commercial dive boat. Passengers aren’t safe, families aren’t protected, and neither are the employees. Yet the company walks away with nothing more than a scratch, the cost of a fast-food meal in retrospect, while still free to fire back with nasty remarks through their lawyers. The magistrate should have held them in contempt of court.
The only real path to justice is litigation. Companies like this only change when their bottom line is hit hard, when liquidation forces accountability, and when owners are made to pay in equal measure for the suffering they have caused.
nice lecture, take in the numbers of people that want to go out to the reef and the numbers that return home safe after a great day too. there is a self risk to going on a boat out into the ocean remember..
i worked for this company for a number of years in the 2000s and they were always onto you about passenger safety and logs, they train good divemasters so there is something on that day that went wrong.
its is a tragedy any loss of a life but you gotta ask how far away did the guy swim after being told to stay near boat? (found 1km away?)
The 1 damming thing is if they were told somebody was missing its an automatic head count and search.. no questions about that (common sense too).. thats how it was when i was there.
hopefully the divecrew and all involved were sacked (a sacking after an incident like that you wont be working in Cairns again).. you do get bad workers in all companies..
the company atleast owned up to the problem,
Hopefully things were learnt by everybody so it doesnt happen again.
Thats the thing about risky adventures you dont find a weakness until something goes seriously wrong..