Divers Missing in Komodo
Five divers from the UK have gone missing in Komodo after a drift dive.
Fears grow for British divers missing in Indonesia
By Emily Dugan
Saturday, 7 June 2008
Rescuers are searching for three British scuba divers believed to have been were swept away by strong currents off a remote Indonesian island two days ago.
The divers, who were thought to be on a “drift dive” in the notoriously perilous waters of the Komodo National Park, were named as Kathleen Mitchison, Charlotte Allin and James Manning. Elena Neralairen, from Sweden, and Lauren Pinel, from France, were also missing.
Ms Mitchison, a qualified dive master, was leading an expedition of eight people through isolated waters near the Nusa Tenggara islands off the east coast of Bali. She went out at 3pm local time on Thursday in a boat called the Setuka, with an Indonesian captain and two crew, and has not been seen since.
It is understood that three of the divers returned to the boat, but the remaining five did not reappear. The dive was organised by Reefseekers, a company run jointly by Ms Mitchison and her husband Ernest Lewandowski on the nearby island of Flores.
Mr Lewandowski, also a dive master, said search efforts were being stalled by fuel difficulties. “We’ve got a big search operation happening here but we’re having trouble getting aircraft to fly because of fuel problems,” he told CNN.
Mr Lewandowski, who had been leading another dive onthe same day, only realised his wife and her dive group were missing when he came to thesurface an hour later, reports said. After a fruitless search by the dive teams, they called the emergency services.
Both the navy and local police have been involved in the search, but concern was mounting as no clues as to their whereabouts have been found. “A rescue team from the Indonesian police and navy conducted a search this morning for the five missing foreigners but there has been no result so far,” said Butje Hello, police chief of the Manggarai Barat district.
Recovery operations in the region are difficult to mobilise, as the nearest city is Bali’s capital, Denpasar, more than 200 miles to the east.
Simon Rogerson, editor of Dive Magazine, who has been on several diving expeditions in Komodo National Park, said: “To my knowledge, there’s no equivalent to the coastguard there. If you go missing in Britain you have amazing resources for people trying to find you, but such resources simply don’t exist in Indonesia; it’s horrible.”
The currents running between the islands are well-known to divers for their unpredictability. “It’s pretty wild,” said Mr Rogerson. “You have lots of ocean water running through a complex group of islands, which causes water to be funnelled in unpredictable and powerful currents.”
The dive site is known for its incredible biodiversity, caused by the convergence of the Indian and Pacific oceans. But the same meeting of waters has a far more treacherous consequence: it creates a series of strong and highly changeable currents.
Staff at the Reefseekers Dive Centre sounded panicked as they reiterated that there was no further news. “We’re still in the middle of an emergency operation,” a spokesperson said.
Mr Rogerson said rescuers were checking isolated beaches and coastal areas to see whether the group had made it to shore. “I’m hopeful that if they were at the surface they could be swept towards one of the small islands,” he said
A spokesperson for the Foreign Office said “We are providing the appropriate consular assistance, including liaison with local authorities in the search.”
Drift diving: a high-risk sport
*The Indonesian waters where the divers have disappeared are notorious “drift diving” sites. The high-risk sport uses the ocean’s currents to propel divers through the sea from one point to another. Unlike ordinary diving, which begins and ends at the same fixed point, it requires careful planning to ensure participants do not get lost. If the currents are strong, long distances can be covered in a very short space of time, making it difficult for a supporting boat to find divers when they return to the surface. Usually special surface marker buoys are inflated to alert boats to the whereabouts of the team, but even these are not a fail-safe if unexpected distances are covered. Tide charts and mapping are also used to predict where divers will reappear, but such measures are also not foolproof. The sport has been growing in popularity, as the effortless travel through the water recreates the sensation of flying.
The water of the Komodo National Park are particularly perilous for drift divers, as its currents are so unpredictable. The Indian and Pacific oceans meet to create changeable channels of water. For divers who are carried along by its more extreme currents they may emerge miles farther away than they predicted.
via The Independent