Diver missing in Cumbria lake - UK

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DandyDon

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Wastwater is the deepest lake in England, reaching 79 meters...

North West Evening Mail | Home | Search underway for missing diver in west Cumbria
EMERGENCY services are searching for a diver reported missing in Wastwater. A spokesman from Liverpool Coastguard said they received a phone call at around 3pm reporting a diver missing in the water.
A helicopter from RAF Valley is currently on the scene, and Cumbria Police, Whitehaven Coastguard and Wasdale Mountain Rescue are involved in the search.
Cumbria Fire and Rescue Service have also been searching the shores of the lake.
The alarm was raised by the diver's companion following a planned 40 minute dive, and emergency services were subsequently informed.
Stuart Atkinson, duty officer with Liverpool Coastguard, said the search is taking place in an area where communication is difficult.
 
Body found in Wastwater as police hunt for missing diver


1:52pm Tuesday 29th January 2013 in News
CUMBRIA Police has confirmed that the North West Police Underwater Search Team recovered a body of a man from Wastwater this morning.


The body was discovered following a large scale search in and around Wastwater after a diver failed to surface on Sunday afternoon.


A search of the shore was mounted on Sunday and a police underwater search team from Lancashire attended and searched the area from 11pm on Sunday 27 January until 6.30am on Monday 28 January 2013.


A police spokesman said: "The Underwater Search Unit began searching again this morning (Tuesday 29th) and, sadly, recovered a body of a man."
 
The lake once was home to a "Gnome Garden" that had been placed as a diver attraction, removed after some earlier diver deaths as it was suspected that they had spent too much time too deep searching for it - and one article suggested he was lost in that area.

From before recovery: Diver goes missing near underwater garden in deepest lake - Telegraph
A major search operation was launched after the man in his 30s failed to resurface following a planned 40-minute dive in Wastwater, west Cumbria, on Sunday.

He is understood to have disappeared near where divers had set up an underwater garden at the bottom of the lake, complete with gnomes and a picket fence.

The garden was removed in 2005 amid fears it was distracting divers, who were spending too much time looking for it, but it is believed to have since been replaced.

At the time of its removal, Pc Kenny McMahon of the North West Police Underwater Search Unit, said: “Wastwater is quite clear at the bottom, but there's nothing to see. At a depth of about 48m, divers had taken gnomes down and put a picket fence around them.

"But several years ago there were a number of fatalities and the Lake District National Park Authority asked us to get rid of them.”
 
"Pc Kenny McMahon of the North West Police Underwater Search Unit, said: “Wastwater is quite clear at the bottom, but there's nothing to see. At a depth of about 48m, divers had taken gnomes down and put a picket fence around them."


"The garden was removed in 2005 amid fears it was distracting divers, who were spending too much time looking for it, but it is believed to have since been replaced."


???

They removed the only thing interesting to see in the lake? There has got to be more to the story.

Perhaps they should remove all that interesting coral and sea life creating a dangerous diving distraction in the Caribbean.
 
I know absolutely nothing about this case, and although I've been to Wastwater many times I've never attempted to dive it. But I want to make a comment about "he was an instructor". I've dived with instructors who clearly had very limited experience and were a danger to themselves and others when out of their familiar environment. At one time in the '90's most fatal accidents in the Blue Hole in Dahab were of instructors who believed their own hype and thought the laws of physics didn't apply to them. I dived from a liveaboard at Tiran when one instructor, a girl, routinely went down to 70+ metres by herself with a single tank. I was going to those depths there, but with two (sometimes three) tanks and a buddy. I know one instructor who has spent her entire diving career diving in the one flooded quarry. No experience with the sea, rough water, currents, etc. To me "instructor" means very little unless I know the agency they're an instructor for, and with some agencies it still means very little. Tech diving cards tell me far more. Sorry Don, not getting at you - this is a particular beef of mine!

Let me add that in this particular case it seems probable that the victim did have proper experience of the waters he was diving in. If he was an instructor in that area then he was probably with BSAC, and that instructor ticket means something.
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/perdix-ai/

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