DATELINE :- 23rd May 2000
CORNISH DEATH
Diver disappears off Lizard
In the first serious incident of the British diving season, a diver went missing and was presumed lost in mysterious circumstances after a dive off the Lizard in Cornwall over the May Day bank holiday weekend.
Diving from a hired dive centre RIB with friends from London, 39-year-old Paul Farrington disappeared during a dive on the Denise, a wreck off Mullion Island on the west side of the Lizard.
He and a buddy were nearing the end of their dive and, having dived to about 16m, had swum gradually into shallower water. They were in no more than 5m or so when the buddy, caught out by increasing buoyancy, ascended accidentally to the surface.
There he waited there and, when Farrington did not appear, reported him missing. Two pairs of surfaced divers descended again to look for Farrington and, when no trace of him could be found, the alarm was raised.
A six-hour lifeboat and helicopter search proved fruitless, as did a dive in the area of the wreck by a helicopter diver and a search by dive centre staff in an 80m-wide span around the diving shot.
The search was called off as, in conditions described as flat calm, it was judged that Farrington would have been spotted if he had surfaced and that, under water, he would have run out of air.
Gary Fox of Action Divers, which was on its third day fielding the group out of Porthoustock, described the divers as experienced. Farrington was a PADI Rescue Diver.
Fox told Diver: "It was a strange incident because, according to the buddy, nothing seemed wrong. It was in such shallow water and, just before they got separated, Paul, in a drysuit and wearing a twinset, had even enquired of the buddy, in a semi-dry suit and single cylinder, whether he wanted to carry on a bit longer."
Fox said the combination of weak currents and a network of restrictive gullies meant that, if unconscious, Farrington would not have drifted far, but that, by their nature, the gullies had also made searching a difficult operation."
"My hunch is that his body is still there, near the wreck," said Fox.