Twenty-year-old scuba diver Emily Sherwin disappeared off the Dorset coast last July and has never been found. She had failed to surface from a dive off Old Harry Rocks at Handfast Point on 23 July, and a full-scale 24hr search and rescue operation proved fruitless.
Now an inquest has concluded that while the cause of Sherwin's presumed death remains unknown, it had come about because she and her buddy had been caught in whirling currents. The proceedings took place at Dorset Coroner’s Court today (17 April) and were reported by the Bournemouth Echo and other media.
Also read: Mersey diver dies near windfarm
Choppy waters
Sherwin had been part of a group out for an early-evening drift-dive. Her buddy and friend Bethany Pryor said that the boat-trip from Poole had been choppy but that the divers were in good spirits.
At nearly 6pm the pair had been the last to enter the sea, and they were at a depth of about 7m when they encountered what Pryor described as a ‘vortex’, suggesting a whirlpool with a downdraft.
“We were horizontal facing each other and we were holding each other’s arms,” she stated. “I signalled to Emily that something was wrong and pointed to my ears and gave her the signal to go back up. I did this two or three times.
“At this point we got caught in a vortex and started to spin around. I wasn’t able to check my dive-computer due to the spinning. I just felt disorientated.”
Pryor had signalled to go up but saw no reciprocal signal. Visibility was less than 1m, she estimated, and explained that at this point the sequence of events had become hazy.
“She was vertical and her regulator was out of her mouth,” Pryor said of Sherwin. “She was sinking at the time and I attempted to reach down but that was not possible. At this point I could feel some water seeping into my mask.
“We hit the bottom of the seabed hard and I was unable to see Emily,” continued Pryor. “I ascended to the surface quickly and spoke to the skipper, who signalled Mayday.”
‘Her safe place'
County assistant coroner Richard Middleton told the court that Sherwin came from Poole and had just completed her first year studying marine conservation at Plymouth University. She had qualified as a diver with PADI the previous summer.
Sherwin had celebrated her 20th birthday with her family the previous day, and her mother Ellen told the court that her daughter had been “passionate about the natural world” and usually felt a “deep sense of calm under the sea”, which she had referred to as “her safe place”.
The family found comfort in the fact that “she had been doing something that she loved”.
Middleton concluded that with no body to examine the cause of Sherwin’s death must remain unknown, but his narrative conclusion was that it had resulted from being caught in an underwater current. There were no suspicious circumstances.
Emily Sherwin’s family thanked all those involved in the search operation: “The RNLI and Coastguard teams, the police divers and all at Parkstone Yacht Club who took over 30 boats to join the search”.
Also on Divernet: Missing diver named: police seek information, Diver searches continue in Wales & Orkney, Multi-agency search for Scapa diver called off, Search for diver in Cornwall called off
