Diver dead in Font Estramar, France

[Patoux01]

Un plongeur spéléo meurt dans les Pyrénées-Orientales

The 44-yo Finn was diving on Font Estramar this saturday. His teammate was rescued.

It happened at 200m depth, at noon, during a dive in Font d'Estramar. The diver had a technical failure preventing him from ascending, the exact cause is unknown yet and will be left to investigation. The diver did not lose consciousness.

His teammate was able to ask the support team for help during his deco. He is safe, but shocked. He is 45, the deceased was 44.

Divers from the fire brigade rapidly came for the research (note from me: This is likely to be way beyond their limitations). The divers were coming from Finland for this adventure, which requires careful preparation, comparing it to "a space walk". The team seemed very experienced and well equiped.

Font d'Estramar is one of deepest explored caves in Europe. It is also a deadly one, 5 divers have already died there since 1955. The last accident happened in january 2016.


A bit of a rough translation from me, I could do better if I spent more time on it, but it gives the essence... Sad, albeit pretty far off what most divers would ever do. Recovery is planned for tomorrow (Monday), there aren't many divers that are able to do such a deep dive, let alone making it a working dive.
From my understanding on the posts I got this info from, the site is closed until further notice.

 

[FinnMom]

Google does a fair job of it.

Google Kääntäjä

 

[Patoux01]

True, I'm used to it being a lot more broken than that.

 

[FinnMom]

Finnish news (iltasanomat) was corrected 20 min.s ago to say the diver had not been at 200m, but instead 200m from the mouth of the cave.

 

[Patoux01]

That's odd. Pretty advanced divers in the area said he was indeed at those depths. (Coming from sources that are part of the SSF: Speleo Secours Francais = French Spelunking Rescue)

 

[FinnMom]

Perhaps not on that dive, or perhaps the Finnish paper was told that the problem appeared 200m from the mouth of the cave and they drew a wrong conclusion about the depth of the dive. I have no sources other than the newspaper.

*** Added Monday 12.6.2018 *** (From a normal newssource, not a news tabloid as the above indeed was)
Source: Monday's papers: President on brewing gov't crisis, Finnish diver dies in France, warm weekend keeps police busy

Finnish diver dies in French cave
A 44 year-old Finnish man reportedly died while diving in an underwater cave in France on Saturday, evening tabloid Ilta-Sanomat reports. The paper reports that two Finnish nationals dove into the Font Estramar cave, in Salses-le-Château, in southern France, but for unknown reasons, one of the men did not resurface.

The paper writes that the accident took place 200 metres from the mouth of the cave. Both men were reportedly very experienced divers.

The surviving diver, 45 years old, was reportedly unharmed in the incident.

The Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs has confirmed the death, and French officials are investigating, according to the paper.

Font Estramar is one of the world's deepest underwater caves and the weekend's tragedy was not the first at the popular diving site. As recently as last year a diver died in the cave, according to the paper.

 

[ruiner]

I would not put any weight on the information presented in yellow press Finnish paper about events that took place in an other country. If local officials give information about accident happening in 200m depth, that is far more likely than accident happening 200m from the entrance. Above mentioned correction was a comment posted to the article, by a person who has no knowledge of the event.

Correction: The comment was in an other yellow press paper (Iltalehti) which was the first to report it in Finland and was quoted by Ilta-Sanomat, the original article has not been updated.

 

[FinnMom]

This says
"...The dive report says that the drowning diver's diving scooter broke at a depth of 200 meters..."

Google Kääntäjä

BTW when this Google translate version says "the couple", it means "the buddy" i.e. "the deceased diver's buddy'"

Original source: Ranskassa hukkuneen suomalaissukeltajan ryhmä kertoo vikaan menneestä sukelluksesta

 

[KevinNM]

What I can see of the story sounds insane. It sounds like they are saying they didn't have a backup scooter and the diver got killed trying to drag out their now flooded scooter.

 

[ruiner]

No. Deceased diver's scooter had imploded on the (I assume) vertical part of the cave making it extremely negatively buoyant. Diver had tried to unclip the scooter but failed and was trying to swim against the pull. His buddy was able to scooter to him and cut the line at which point they were at 214 meters depth. They then started the ascent but lost the guide line in silted water. On top of that diver that had problems with scooter got entangled to loose guidelines and his buddy was cutting him free but after a while noticed the diver had become unconscious and had to leave him there and start his ascent. It should be mentioned that co2 is extremely poisonous at those depths (you only need to see Dave Shaw video) and heavy exertion is extremely dangerous. Divers buddy informed the team diving behind (100 mins after) them about the events and they ascended all and fresh team surfaced to call for help. Total dive time of the surviving diver was 500 minutes.


There is a detailed fact based report in Finnish Diving Associations web-site (in Finnish though)