Well-known US technical diver Joe Mazraani has died following an Atlantic wreck-dive more than 300km off the USA’s north-eastern coast.
Mazraani, 48 and based in New Jersey, was diving with a group from his boat Tenacious on 29 July when he reportedly underwent a medical emergency. Other divers assisted him back to the boat and attempted life-saving measures, but were unable to revive him.
The boat arrived in New Bedford, Massachusetts early the following morning, and state and local police and the US Coast Guard were carrying out an investigation.
“While we are choosing to keep the details private, we currently have no reason to suspect diver error or equipment failure,” stated Mazraani’s partner Jennifer Sellitti on behalf of their New Jersey-based company Atlantic Wreck Salvage and Tenacious. “All indications point to a medical emergency.”
The group had been diving on the eastern edge of Georges Bank, well-known among US technical divers, exploring an unidentified shipwreck they called “the Big Engine Steamer”.
Wreck expeditions
Mazraani was known as a maritime historian as well as a technical-diving explorer. Born in Lebanon, he had emigrated to the USA when he was 15 and went on to become a criminal defence lawyer. He had also been a scuba diver since the mid-1990s, wreck-diving off New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts at every opportunity.
An open-circuit trimix and rebreather diver, he was also a licensed boat captain, and had fitted out the 14m Tenacious for deep wreck exploration.
He had led expeditions to dive the U-550, the last diveable German U-boat wreck in the North Atlantic, and the Andrea Doria as well as taking part in other trips to such iconic deep wrecks as the Lusitania and the Britannic, on which he was credited with locating the bell in 2019.
Only weeks before Mazraani’s death, the Tenacious team had made a significant discovery on the 70m-deep Andrea Doria, the Italian liner that sank in 1956, going on to recover a 1.5m tall gyro compass repeater from the bridge area.
Mazraani had located the wedged-in item on the first dive of the 11-14 July expedition, and it had taken him and fellow-diver Chris Ogden four dives working in an enclosed space to extricate and raise it.
“Getting this artefact to the surface would have been impossible without the teamwork and tenacity of Maz and Chris,” stated Atlantic Wreck Salvage. The divers had also found a porthole, a light and well-preserved ceramics on the trip.
‘Larger than life’
Tenacious wreck expeditions have been chronicled in the books Where Divers Dare: The Hunt For The Last U-Boat by Randall Peffer and Dangerous Shallows, In Search Of The Ghost Ships Of Cape Cod by Peffer and Eric Takakjian.
“Joe Mazraani was larger than life,” said Sellitti. “He was kind, compassionate and generous. A mentor and a student, a friend, brother, son and partner.
“Whether motoring aboard D/V Tenacious, diving into deep and dangerous water, or defending his clients in court, Joe demanded the best of everyone around him. Sometimes he demanded it grumpily – but he always demanded by example.”
“He lived every moment fully, without compromise. He did not want to die doing what he loved – none of us do. He wanted to survive it, to grow old doing it. But when you live at the edge, sometimes the edge pushes back.”
