The body of a 60-year-old male scuba diver has been recovered from the Dorothea Quarry inland dive-site in north-west Wales.
The incident occurred on Saturday, 31 May, when emergency services were called to the disused slate quarry in the Nantlle Valley. “The man’s family have been informed,” stated North Wales Police. “The death is not being treated as suspicious, and the coroner is aware.”
Also read: Dorothea diver was found dead at 85m
The flooded lakes near the village of Talysarn have a maximum depth of 106m, which has made Dorothea or ‘Dotty’ a popular site especially for technical divers since the 1990s, even though it was fenced off and offered no facilities. Diving was for a long time officially banned there, though this did little to reduce the formerly high fatality rate.
In more recent years the site has been run by North Wales Technical Divers (NWTD), a branch of the British Sub-Aqua Club, operating a controlled diving programme under licence from the landowner. Admission is restricted to divers qualified to carry out mixed-gas decompression dives.
Solo in Curaçao
Belgian technical diver Jan Verhaegen was found dead by Coast Guard yesterday (2 June) near rocks in Piscadera Bay, south of Curaçao’s capital Willemstad.
Verhaegen, 39, ran a construction company and had lived on the southern Caribbean island for seven years.
Said to have been an experienced technical diver, he belonged to Curaçao Diving Society and regularly teamed up with other members on their weekend dives in the area, but was also said to have enjoyed diving alone, especially if he wanted to venture into deeper waters.
Despite reportedly poor underwater visibility he had gone off on a solo dive on Sunday afternoon, and as usual had asked a friend to raise the alarm if he had not returned by a certain time.
The subsequent search and rescue operation involved a helicopter and a fixed-wing aircraft, along with a number of boats and divers.
Also on Divernet: Explore 16 Remarkable UK Inland Diving Sites: Coldwater Adventures
