The body of a missing diver located in a cave in L'Escala, Spain

Please register or login

Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.

Benefits of registering include

  • Ability to post and comment on topics and discussions.
  • A Free photo gallery to share your dive photos with the world.
  • You can make this box go away

Joining is quick and easy. Log in or Register now!

vickobcn

Registered
Messages
45
Reaction score
2
Location
Barcelona, Spain
# of dives
200 - 499
Another diver death on the Costa Brava, this time the body was found in a cave.

Localizan muerto al submarinista desaparecido en una cueva de L'Escala
El submarinista desaparecido mientras buceaba en cuevas situadas entre la Punta de les Tres Coves y los islotes de Cala Farriol en el término municipal de L'Escala (Girona) ha sido localizado sin vida este jueves sobre las 13.30 horas.
Según han informado a Europa Press fuentes de la Guardia Civil, un grupo de Especialistas en Actividades Subacuáticas (Geas) ha sido quien ha encontrado el cadáver y le ha sacado del agua.
El operativo ha estado dirigido por la Guardia Civil, que tiene las competencias en el mar, y que desde este miércoles, cuando se dio por desaparecido al hombre, tiene a miembros del grupo de buceadores realizando inmersiones hasta avanzar unos 25 metros en la cueva.
Además, se estaba desplazado al lugar el Grupo Nacional de Espeleobuceo Avanzado de la Guardia Civil, desde varios puntos de España.
En la búsqueda han participado Bomberos de la Generalitat, Guardia Civil y Mossos d'Esquadra, desde este miércoles después de que unos compañeros perdiesen su rastro.
Los bomberos desplazaron este miércoles a tres dotaciones terrestres después de haber recibido aviso hacia las 12 horas de su desaparición.
El hombre, de nacionalidad española, estaba practicando espeleobuceo acompañado de su hijo y otros dos buceadores, uno suizo y otro español, en una cueva no cartografiada y prácticamente desconocida, próxima a la denominada Les Betes.
Todos los submarinistas consiguieron salir de la cueva menos la víctima, que quedó atrapada en el interior.

My translation:
The body of the missing diver found in a cave in L'Escala.
The diver who disappeared while diving the caves between la Punta de les Tres Coves (the point of three caves) and the islands of Cala Farriol in the municipal of L'Escala, Girona has been found dead on Thursday at around 13.30h.

According to information from the Guardia Civil, a group of Specialists in Submarine Activities (GEAS) were who found the body and removed it from the water.

The operation was directed by the Guardia Civil, who has jurisdiction over the sea, and who from Wednesday, when it was known that someone had disappeared, had members of the group diving up to 25 metres in the cave.

Members of the National Group of Advanced Cave Diving from the Guardia Civil had also arrived from various points of Spain.

Firemen from the Generalitat, Guardia Civil and Mossos d'Esquadra also participated in the search on Wednesday after the diver's companions lost track of him.

Firemen were moved to three terrestrial locations after receiving news, 12 hours after the man had disappeared.

The man, of Spanish nationality, was cave-diving with his son and two other divers, one Swiss and the other Spanish in an unmapped and practically unknown cave, close to the cave Les Betes.

All the divers managed to leave the cave minus the victim who was trapped inside.

And from the Catalan Press:
L'Escala
Localitzen el cos sense vida del submarinista desaparegut a l'Escala

Redacció Actualitzat a les 16:00 h
02/08/2012
Agents dels Grups Especials d'Activitats Subaquàtiques (GEAS) de la Guàrdia Civil han localitzat aquest dijous al migdia el cos sense vida del submarinista desaparegut aquest dimecres a la costa del Montgrí, entre l'Estartit i l'Escala. De tota manera, l'operatiu de rescat encara no el pot treure de l'aigua perquè està en una zona molt complicada.

Michael Astor, de 51 anys, nacionalitat espanyola i veí de Viladecans, estava passant uns dies a Torroella de Fluvià amb la família i dimecres va anar a practicar espeleobusseig amb tres persones més. Quan el grup va sortir a la superfície, els companys es van adonar que Astor no havia pujat i van alertar els serveis d'emergència.

El responsable de l'operatiu de recerca, Fernando Aguirre, ha explicat que la víctima i els seus companys van cometre una imprudència perquè es van endinsar en una cova que no està catalogada ni apareix als mapes de rutes, un lloc que ha qualificat de "forat sinistre". Sembla que es van endinsar en una cova sense tenir el material adequat ni la formació.

This article differs by saying that:
- The body still hasn't been removed due to difficult conditions.
- Diver was Michael Astor, 51 years old from Viladecans who was holidaying at Torroella de Fluvia with his family.
- When the divers surfaced and realised they were missing a diver they alerted Emergency Services.
- Head of Rescue Operations, Fernando Aguirre, explained that the victim and his diving companions had committed an imprudent act because they entered an uncatalogued cave that doesn't appear on maps, a place called a "sinister hole". It seems they entered the cave without adequate training or material.
 
Last edited:
By my calculations this is the 7th diver death in 4 months here. We're talking about a stretch of coast that is only 158km long with most of the diving concentrated in points around Cap de Creus, L'Escala, L'Estartit, Begur, Palamos and Llafranc. I just find this number absolutely astounding.

Another article (Hallado sin vida el submarinista desaparecido en Illes Medes) states that the body still hasn't been recovered due to the complexity of the cave and the fact that it's diameter is 80cm.

This article (Especialistas del GEAS se preparan para recuperar el cadver del submarinista - ABC.es - Noticias Agencias) says that the body is located at 45m depth and that the cave is filled with a great amount of sediment that is easily raised, dropping the visibility quickly. Also that the work being done today in the cave was in preparation to remove the body tomorrow without putting at risk the lives of the recovery divers.

"It seems they entered the cave without adequate training or material."

No surprise, unfortunately.


Unfortunately Devon Diver, you are absolutely correct.
 
It's sad because it was so preventable.
 
It's so unfortunate that people don't realise just what they are getting into. Everytime I read about someone not making it out of a cave it just gives me more incentive take additional instruction and to improve on what skills I have. I was in Chac Mool in late June, we passed through the section where they recovered the three divers from. I could not imagine the terror that the two O/W divers must have felt when they realized they were in trouble, or the dive guide for that matter. With training comes options, with options, there's hope. Without options, there is no hope. It would be hard to imagine what these people must go through.
 
Another article with a bit of info on the group set to recover the body. I've included the link and this is my translation.

Hayan en una cueva de difcil acceso el cuerpo de un submarinista desaparecido | Barcelona | elmundo.es

The body of a missing diver in a cave with difficult to access.
Marta Rodriguez Font | Girona
Last updated on Thursday 08/02/2012 18:49 hours

The agents from the Underwater Civil Guard (GEAS) will on Friday try to recover the body of diver who disappeared yesterday in L'Estartit (Girona) and who was located this afternoon in a cave that is difficult to access.

A dozen GEAS agents, including six trained in cave-diving, are preparing to enter the unknown cave which has an entrance of about 80 centimeters in diameter and many sediments, making recovery of the body a complex operation.

The body of Michael Astor, 51, was located at about 13.30h by two GEAS agents at about 45 metres deep in an unmapped and virtually unknown cave, near the area known as Les Betes, between the towns of l'Estartit and L'Escala.

The complexity of the size and features of this cave is added to the fact that it is an unknown cave, so that specialists are working to prepare up to the smallest detail of what will be a very complex operation, so as to be based overall in not putting at risk the lives of the specialists.

Michael Astor, 51, a Spanish national, was cave-diving with his son and two other divers, one from Switzerland and one Spanish. GEAS troops involved in this recovery have described as "terribly reckless" the fact that they entered the cave while lacking the experience, the required training and the technical support to do so without endangering their lives.

At around 12.00h on Wednesday, the group of four people involved in the dive near the Punta de les tres Coves, a Swiss citizen and two Spanish nationals managed to leave the cave, but the victim was trapped inside.

The Civil Guard, alerted by the Coast Guard, activated at once the GEAS based in Barcelona and l'Estartit (Girona), two of them members of the National Group for Cave Diving Underwater Rescue.

These two officers made a first penetration into the cave and managed to advance about 25 metres, and after analyzing the technical situation of the cave, saw the need to request activation of the National Group of Cave-diving Advanced Rescue Underwater from the Civil Guard.

This highly specialised group was created in 2001, and consists of 16 Civil Guards who are cave diving experts, serving in the GEAS in Barcelona, l’Estartit (Girona), Madrid, Valladolid, Huesca and Cuenca.

In addition to the rescues in the provinces where they are based, they can all be activated as a group to move immediately to anywhere in the country where their advanced training is needed for rescues of this nature and to be of assistance to citizens, as is the case of the person who yesterday disappeared in the cave in Torroella de Montgri.

Among their most important jobs is the recovery in September 2006 the body of a Belgian citizen in the “French Cave” in l'Estartit, 20 days after a laborious and complex job. A year later, they also participated in the rescue of a diver who died in 2007 in the “Cave of the Dolphin”, also near the Medes Islands, also in l'Estartit.

Here is a link to some information on the dive sites in this area, also describing various caves accessible to the general public.
AQUÀTICA. Submarinisme. Submarinismo. Buceo. Plongée. Diving. Tauchen. Duiken.

This is really sounding like a reckless dive gone horribly wrong but I do want to mention that my experience on the Costa Brava has been littered with dive ops that take boat loads of OW divers to these sites and just basically turn them loose without any regard to the fact that some of these dives in the Medes Islands and the Costa de Montgri are in fact dives with overhead restrictions, be it a cave or a tunnel. I think by law (and someone can correct me here if I'm wrong) that dives within the Medes Marine Reserve must be led by a dive guide for those divers with a OW cert level, whilst those on the Costa de Montgri (where this unfortunate dive was done) do not. Dive boats in this area have a schedule so that there is only one boat at each location at a time. This normally means that two dives are done in Medes and one in la Costa de Montgri by each boat every day. On one particular trip that I was on in the Medes, we had a diver clamber aboard our boat as we arrived to the site, he had been diving off another boat, dived through one of the tunnels to the other side of the small island and not had enough air to return to the boat through the tunnel. His boat had returned to shore without him (and without realising that they had lost him). Lucky for him, boat traffic to Medes is constant and he didn't have to wait long for our boat to show up on his side and radio his boat (who still didn't realise he was missing). All the poor guy could say was "I need a cigarette". I think this just illustrates the fact that the dive ops here may not be as rigorous in their safety measures as in other parts of the world. That is not to say that there aren't some great operators out there, and those are definitely the only boats that I dive with now...

I'm not really sure what I'm trying to get at here. I guess that every time I see an article about another dead diver on the Costa Brava, that it is upsetting to me but really, not altogether unexpected. Which I guess should be even more upsetting! The fact that these 4 divers seem to have entered an environment for which they were definitely not trained and didn't have the right gear in this area of the coast doesn't surprise me. And I think this speaks about the general practice of dive ops here.

---------- Post Merged at 04:35 AM ---------- Previous Post was at 12:12 AM ----------

A bit of additional/differing information:

http://ccaa.elpais.com/ccaa/2012/08/02/catalunya/1343939059_289422.html

This article says that:
- the body was located 45m from the entrance to the cave
- the 4 divers came from the Port of L'Escala with the express idea of cave-diving, first diving the Vetes Cave and that this dive was fine until they decided to explore the narrow and unexplored cave (I'm not sure if this was a second dive or the same dive) with an entrance of no more than 120cm tall and 80cm wide.
- The calcareous rock of the zone makes caves very common.
- The seafloor of limestone and sediment makes it very easy to raise sediment when disturbed by divers fins and can reduce visibility to zero very quickly.
- The Civil Guard found the body in a "mud-hole", 3 metres deep.
- His tank STILL had air.
- The sinuous gallery has a maximum width of 1.6m and height of 2m while in other parts it doesn't reach 80cm.
- In the last 4 months, 7 divers have died on this coast although Aguirre states that none of these deaths were due to the safety of dive centres.
- In the last 14 years the average number of diver deaths on the Costa Brava is 2.5 deaths per year with about 300,000 dives completed each year (according to the Civil Guard).
- Antoni Murray, from the Association of Dive Centres of the Costa Brava says that "The dives aren't dangerous but there is always a risk that must be minimised. We must know our own limits and be prepared physically".
- The recovery effort today will take place using a guide line to mark the way and connect the exterior with the cave. This line is called the life line of Ariadna's thread.

---------- Post Merged at 07:28 AM ---------- Previous Post was at 12:12 AM ----------

Body has been recovered and transported to L'Estartit where the Civil Guard will continue with their investigation.

http://www.europapress.es/catalunya...aparecido-cueva-torroella-20120803125824.html

If anyone is interested, the Civil Guard has posted a bit of video of the rescue operation. It is not in any way graphic footage but gives an idea of the visibility, the entrance to the cave, depth of entrance and the gear used by the rescue/recovery team.

http://www.guardiacivil.es/es/prensa/videos_descarga_medios/index.html
 
Last edited:
I watched the video of the entry and I can tell you right now even a full trained cave diver with hundreds of dives would have trouble with that place. That white cloud at the entrance would make even the best stop and reassess the situation, I can imagine how bad the interior must be.

Daru
 
Little bit more information on the incident.

Rescatado el cadáver del submarinista atrapado en una cueva del Montgrí | Cataluña | EL PAÍS

- Divers were on a dive boat from L'Escala.
- Captain of the boat tried to enter the cave to save the diver but was unable to.

Posts on a Spanish dive forum are speculating that this is a cave in which 3 French divers died about 10 years ago.
FORO DE BUCEO DEPORTIVO • Ver Tema - Otro submarinista muerto cala ferriola


thank you, excellent job on the translations
Thank you Angry Turtle. An unfortunate way to practice my Spanish and Catalan but any information that could potentially help a diver in the future is important to get out there. I know I have learnt a lot from this forum over the years...
 
The Spanish Press are calling it the "Black year of Diving" in Catalunya.

El buceo vive un año negro en Catalunya-Sociedad-El Periódico

We had another death this week of a skin-diver who tried to duck down to twenty metres to retrieve the fin that his buddy had dropped in the water. Really sad as this fellow was one of the guys in charge of the Medes Marine Reserve. Not sure if they had been diving on SCUBA before hand.

From the article:
- 8 divers have died this year in Catalunya (7 on SCUBA, 1 skin)
- in 2011 there was only 1 death
- Average of 2.5 deaths per year over the past 14 years (according to the Civil Guard)
 

Back
Top Bottom