KETCHIKAN, Alaska (31 Oct 2003) -- The Ketchikan diver who drowned early this week while commercial fishing was using new gear he had just gotten acquainted with, according to his longtime friend and dive partner. Michael R. Anderson, a 33-year-old fisherman, had been diving since high school, but he hadn't been under water in several years, and he may have panicked, said his partner, Lawrence Carson III. Carson, 32, had known Anderson since they were in the third-grade together in Ketchikan. He and his friend were in 35 feet of water in Clarence Straight on Tuesday morning when Anderson, who was out of sight at the time, removed his diving mask for some reason, losing his air supply. Moments later, Carson saw his friend drifting downward, giving up the last air in his lungs before sinking to the bottom with 50 pounds in weights around his waist. "So many things could have happened," Carson said Wednesday by phone from Ketchikan. "And let me tell you, it's been running through my mind, and I probably never will figure it out. It's just a horrendous accident, and I lost a real good friend." Anderson's death has been investigated by the U.S. Coast Guard and Alaska State Troopers. The troopers have closed their case, ruling it an accident. "He never said anything about being in distress," said trooper Mark Eldridge in Ketchikan. "It's a mystery as to what happened under the water that caused Mr. Anderson to shed his mask and come to the surface." "No one has any idea what happened," said Petty Officer Thomas McKenzie, a Coast Guard spokesman. Anderson, Carson and an 18-year-old deck hand, Donald Doyon of Ketchikan, were fishing on the north end of the Blashke Islands, about 70 miles northwest of Ketchikan from Anderson's 37-foot diesel-powered fishing vessel, the Clearlight. They were participating in a two-day, 11-hour weekly fishery for sea cucumbers. On Monday, Anderson, who had done lots of recreational scuba diving, worked with what for him was a new kind of diving gear, a full-face mask whose air supply comes not from a tank of compressed air on his back, as in scuba diving, but from a compressor on the boat. The air hose from the compressor is wrapped together with two other lines, a communication wire and a tending line linked to a harness on the diver. The communication line allows the deckhand and the diver to talk to each other. The air hose splits in two, and after the split, each diver has about 100 feet of hose to move around underwater. Each man can talk to the deckhand but not directly to each other. Carson has been using the same diving gear for 15 years, he said. He walked Anderson through its use for an hour on Monday before leaving Anderson on his own. "Everything went really slick the first day," he said. "He hadn't done it in a while, and it was like he had been doing it a long time. It was just perfect for him." On Tuesday morning, they went down again. They walked along the bottom and among the rocks collecting the sea cucumbers and placing them in a bag. About 9 a.m., Carson heard Doyon talking to Anderson, telling Anderson his line had gotten wrapped around the anchor chain. "It's a common thing," Carson said. "The tide comes in, it swings the boat around," and the diver's line loops around the line holding the anchor. There's no pressure on the air hose, but the deckhand would not be able to pull the diver up to the boat unless the line were unwrapped, according to Carson. | | Carson stayed on the bottom but walked toward the rear of the boat, where Anderson was. He signaled with his hands to Anderson that he would go topside to help with the line if needed. Doyon was new to being a deckhand and might have needed help, Carson said. But there was no apparent distress from either of them. "Michael's fine," Carson said. A little later, "I looked up and Mike is up at the surface at the back of the boat. I thought, 'All is hunky-dory.' And then I see Mike's cucumber bag is floating away." He thought Anderson had dropped the bag, so he went after it. "By the time I grabbed the bag, I heard Donald say, 'You got to get back to Mike. Mike's in trouble.' " Anderson had come up suddenly to the surface without his mask and yelled to Doyon for help from 30 to 40 feet away, according to Eldridge, the Ketchikan trooper. "Doyon went to throw a line, but in seconds (Anderson) was back under the surface," Eldridge said. "He never told (Doyon) he was coming up. ... He never said anything about being in distress." When Carson turned back, he saw Anderson, weighted by his belt, sinking. "He was falling right to the bottom," Carson said. "He had no (mask), and he was letting go of his last bubbles of air. It was awful." Carson now panicked, he said. He grabbed his friend at the bottom and tried to lift him to the surface. But neither man wore flippers, and about 15 feet up he had to let go. "It was a lot of work to get him up to the surface," Carson said. "You lose your calmness when you see one of your friends dying. It exhausted every bit of my energy." Carson, who figures his friend was without air for five minutes, went to the surface, found the line to Anderson and handed it to Doyon, telling the boy to haul him up. No sooner was Anderson on deck than Carson began CPR. Doyon called the Coast Guard. In less than 20 minutes, another fishing vessel, the Motherlode was alongside, and a man Carson knew as Dusty pitched in. The Coast Guard later identified him as Dustin Cox but did not know his hometown. "He did (chest) compressions, and I did mouth-to-mouth," Carson said. "He was awesome. He kept me going through the whole thing." They worked on Anderson for two hours. Medics from Coffman Cove also helped, until a Coast Guard helicopter arrived with medics aboard. "I got the color back into his face," Carson said. "His pupils changed a little bit, and I thought I felt a pulse here and there, but I never got his lungs working again." The Coast Guard medics continued CPR, and staff at Ketchikan General Hospital worked on Anderson too. But he never revived. Carson's theory of what happened to Anderson goes like this: The air line got pinched somehow, and Anderson got scared when the mask "sucked into" his face. He forgot that he could breathe through a "bail-out" bottle of secondary air on his back by opening a valve. Instead, he ripped off the mask and tried to reach the surface. But he also forgot to drop his weight belt by pulling an easy quick-release handle at his side. "I think he panicked," Carson said. SOURCE - ADN |
