Tonight, the Belize Coast Guard is giving us the official report on the 4 divers who were lost at sea last Thursday, April 2. The group were diving off Carrie Bow Caye and when they came up at 5:00 pm there was no boat waiting for them. That left them stranded and adrift at sea for 6 hours.
The Coast Guard was part of the search and they recounted what took place and detailed the current ongoing investigation:
Lt. Mark Choc, Operations Officer -BCG
"So the Belize Coast Guard received information around 6:30 pm on the second of April from a male person khown by the name of Denver from Island Adventure Tobacco Caye Paradise. Information received was that the captain of the vessel named Paradise Bound lost 3 divers and one master diver in the area of Carrie Bow Caye so the divers information received was that the divers were conducting scuba diving in the area where they were scheduled to resurface around 5:30pm on the same day however the captaín was unable to locate them when it was time to recover them, So immediately after, information received a search and rescue operation was immediately launched by the Belize Coast Guard at around 6:50pm so the coast guard stationed at twin caye deployed jointly with the members of the fisheries department to conduct a search and rescue operation for the missing divers. The search team conducted a thorough search of the area however they were unable to locate the divers at the time. So the coast guard continued their search in the area until around 11:50 pm. Information we received from a female from Alexandra Geban of tobacco caye where she had reported that she had received communication from a local captain in the area Mr. Dion Muschamp indicating that all four individuals had been successfully located in the blue ground range area so the Belize Coast Guard search team did further investigation and gathered information from Mr. George Cayetano who was the captain of the vessel on what really transpired. Later it was learned from the captain that the divers were lost in an area affected by sargassum approximately 1.5 miles of Carrie bow caye, he conducted an initial search but he was forced to discontinue due to low fuel and he subsequently returned to south water caye to contact law enforcement to conduct a search and rescue for the persons that were missing."
"Incidents like this doesn't happen often because I'm pretty sure that when divers deploy there's a lot of safety consideration and a duration of planning in place however accidents do happen. However this situation is under investigation we do not know the complete circumstances with how this incident happened but it's under investigation as we speak."
"Accident like these at sea, the risk is very high, if the search wasn't successful the likelihood of hypothermia would have kicked in and then obviously the elements of the sharks and so forth at sea the possibility of these accidents could have happened if the search would have continued and they won't be able to be found."
"I believe the divemasters, his skills and his experience was very key in this survival, he maintained the divers in a group, if they were separated it would have been a difficult task to locate them however they were kept together by the dive master that's a very good way to locate them."
We also spoke with the Director of Tourism, Evan Tillet, who explained that BTB is currently conducting a review, and looking at all angles of the incident. We'll let you know what comes out of that.
We have reached out to Tobacco Caye Paradise for comment but they directed us to the BTB.
