A British man in his 60s has died while diving on the Great Barrier Reef, making it the third death among visitors to the Australian tourist attraction in three days.
The man was found without his breathing device during a tandem scuba dive at Agincourt reef, 100km north of Cairns, on Friday. He was on his second certified dive of the day and was spotted on the sea floor at a depth of 15 metres with his regulator out of his mouth, according to Col McKenzie of the Association of Marine Park Tourism Operators.
A nurse on board the tour vessel Silversonic attempted to revive him with a defibrillator, but a doctor who flew to the scene could not resuscitate him. The man, who has not been named, was accompanied by his wife and had travelled to the reef with tour operator Quicksilver, the Cairns Post reported.
The latest death follows the deaths of two French tourists on Wednesday. Jacques Goron, 76, and Danielle Franck, 74, died within minutes of each other while snorkelling at Michaelmas Cay, also near Cairns. Both had pre-existing medical conditions and are believed to have suffered heart attacks. An Australian cardiologist has speculated whether they were stung by highly venomous Irukandji jellyfish, but a dive industry representative said there was no sign of jellyfish at the scene.
McKenzie described three deaths in three days as an exceptional turn of events, but said it was difficult to draw lessons from what appeared to be a tragic coincidence. "I don’t think I’ve seen anything like this in so long, and you look and think, what can we learn from this? It is really difficult to see how we could have done anything else, to be perfectly frank."
The last comparable rash of reef fatalities was in the late 1980s, which led to requirements for advanced medical aiders, defibrillators and oxygen equipment on vessels. McKenzie noted that Queensland's safety record remains strong: "The worldwide average for people having a fatality when diving is one fatality per 100,000 dives. In Queensland, we have one fatality for 450,000 dives – so we have a record that is four and a half times better than the worldwide industry average."
