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Tag: Scuba diving and snorkeling

  • Years after fire engulfed scuba dive boat killing 34 people, captain’s trial begins

    Years after fire engulfed scuba dive boat killing 34 people, captain’s trial begins

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    LOS ANGELES — By the time the scuba dive boat sank off the Southern California coast after catching fire, 34 people had been killed in the deadliest maritime disaster in recent U.S. history.

    The Labor Day tragedy in 2019 spurred changes to maritime regulations, congressional reform and civil lawsuits. Now four years later, a federal trial for the Conception’s captain, Jerry Boylan, is set to begin Tuesday with jury selection in Los Angeles.

    It’s been a long, frustrating wait for the families of those who perished. They say a judge’s ruling that their loved ones should not be called “victims” at trial has only added to their pain.

    “The past four years have been like living in a nightmare that you don’t wake up from,” said Kathleen McIlvain, whose 44-year-old son Charles was killed.

    The 75-foot (23-meter) boat was anchored off the Channel Islands, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) south of Santa Barbara, on Sept. 2, 2019, when it caught fire before dawn on the last day of a three-day excursion, sinking less than 100 feet (30 meters) from shore.

    The National Transportation Safety Board blamed Boylan for the tragedy, saying his failure to post a roving night watchman allowed the fire to quickly spread undetected, trapping the 33 passengers and one crew member below.

    Those on board included a new deckhand who’d landed her dream job and an environmental scientist who did research in Antarctica, along with a globe-trotting couple, a Singaporean data scientist, three sisters, their father and his wife.

    U.S. District Judge George Wu on Oct. 12 granted Boylan’s request to bar most if not all references to “victims” — which the captain’s attorneys say is a prejudicial term that jeopardizes his right to a fair trial. It’s the latest setback for the prosecution.

    A grand jury in 2020 initially indicted Boylan on 34 counts of a pre-Civil War statute colloquially known as “seaman’s manslaughter” that was designed to hold steamboat captains and crew responsible for maritime disasters. Each count carries up to 10 years in prison in a conviction, for a total of 340 years.

    Defense lawyers sought to dismiss those charges, arguing the deaths were the result of a single incident and not separate crimes. Prosecutors got a superseding indictment charging Boylan with only one count.

    Then in 2022, Wu ruled the superseding indictment failed to specify that Boylan acted with gross negligence, saying that was a required element to prove the crime of seaman’s manslaughter. He dismissed that indictment, forcing prosecutors to go before a grand jury again.

    Boylan is now charged with one count of misconduct or neglect of ship officer. The single count means he faces only 10 years behind bars if convicted.

    He has pleaded not guilty and denied any wrongdoing. His federal public defenders did not return The Associated Press’ repeated requests for comment, and a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office declined to comment.

    Some of the dead were wearing shoes, prompting investigators to believe they were awake and trying to escape. Both exits from the below-deck bunkroom were blocked by flames. Coroner’s reports list smoke inhalation as the cause of death, though official autopsies were never conducted.

    What exactly started the predawn fire remains unknown. Early official scrutiny appeared to focus on a spot where divers plugged in phones and other electronics. But a Los Angeles Times story, citing a confidential report by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said the blaze began in a plastic trash can on the main deck though an official cause remains undetermined.

    Boylan and four crew members sleeping in the upper deck told investigators they tried to save the others but were ultimately forced to jump overboard to survive. Boylan made a mayday call at 3:14 a.m. just before abandoning ship.

    Dozens of family members have since formed “Advocacy34” to push for strengthened boating regulations. While seeking answers, they’ve comforted each other during loved ones’ missed birthdays and mourned each anniversary.

    “We have no idea when we’ll get those answers, or if we ever will,” McIlvain said.

    At the time of the fire, no owner, operator or charterer had been cited or fined for failure to post a roving patrol since 1991, Coast Guard records showed.

    The NTSB faulted the Coast Guard for not enforcing that requirement and recommended it develop a program to ensure boats with overnight passengers actually have the watchman.

    The Coast Guard has since enacted new regulations regarding fire detection systems, extinguishers, escape routes and other safety measures as mandated by Congress. But it has yet to implement a comprehensive safety management system after industry advocates pushed back, citing costs.

    Victims’ families have sued the Coast Guard in one of several ongoing civil suits.

    Three days after the inferno, Truth Aquatics Inc., which belongs to the Conception’s owners, Glen and Dana Fritzler, filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles under a pre-Civil War provision of maritime law that allows it to limit its liability to the remains of the boat, which was a total loss. The time-tested legal maneuver has been successfully employed by the owners of the Titanic and other vessels, and requires the Fritzlers show they were not at fault.

    The couple’s attorneys did not respond to requests for comment.

    In response to the families’ outcry, federal lawmakers last year updated the Limitation of Liability Act of 1851 so owners can be held liable for damages regardless of the boat’s value afterward.

    The law is not retroactive, however, and will not apply in the case of the Conception.

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  • In New York City, scuba divers’ passion for the sport becomes a mission to collect undersea litter

    In New York City, scuba divers’ passion for the sport becomes a mission to collect undersea litter

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    NEW YORK — On a recent Sunday afternoon, the divers arrived on a thin strip of sand at the furthest, watery edge of New York City. Oxygen tanks strapped to their backs, they waded into the sea and descended into an environment far different from their usual terrestrial surroundings of concrete, traffic and trash-strewn sidewalks.

    Horseshoe crabs and other crustaceans crawl on a seabed encrusted with barnacles and colonies of coral. Spiny-finned sea robin, blackfish and wayward angelfish swim in the murky ocean tinted green by sheets of algae.

    Not all is pretty. Plastic bottles, candy wrappers and miles and miles of fishing line drift with the tides, endangering sea life.

    The undersea litter isn’t always visible from the shore. But it has long been a concern of Nicole Zelek, a diving instructor who four years ago launched monthly cleanups at this small cove in the community of Far Rockaway, where New York City meets the Atlantic Ocean, about 4 miles (6.4 kilometers) south of John F. Kennedy International Airport in Queens.

    A throwaway culture of single-use plastics and other hard-to-degrade material has sullied the world’s waters over the decades, posing a danger to marine life such as seals and seabirds. By 2025, some 250 million tons (226.7 million metric tons) of plastic will have found its way into the oceans, according to the PADI AWARE Foundation, a conservation group sponsoring a global project called Dive Against Debris.

    Dive by dive, small groups like Zelek’s have been trying to undo some of the damage.

    “Every month we have a prize for the weirdest find,” she said. They have included the occasional goat skull, perhaps used as part of some ritual, Zelek surmises.

    “The best find of all time was an actual ATM machine. Unfortunately, it was empty,” she said.

    The divers’ haul one late-summer Sunday wasn’t much, but there were clumps and clumps of fishing line untangled from underwater objects. What the divers can’t pull away by hand is cut with scissors.

    “Unfortunately, tons of crabs and horseshoe crabs — which are under threat — get tangled in the fishing line and then they die,” Zelek said.

    While more ambitious projects are underway to scoop up huge accumulations of floating debris in deeper waters, small-scale coastal cleanups like Zelek’s are an important part of the battle against ocean pollution, said Nick Mallos, vice president of conservation for Ocean Conservancy.

    “The science is very clear and that’s to tackle our global plastic pollution crisis,” he said. “We have to do it all.”

    Every September, the conservancy holds monthlong international coastal cleanups. Since its inception nearly four decades ago, the cleanups have retrieved about 400 million pounds (181.4 million kilograms) of trash from coastal areas around the world.

    The best way to combat plastics going into the oceans, Mallos said, is to reduce the globe’s dependence on them, particularly in packaging consumer products. But human-powered cleanup is the least costly of all cleanup options.

    The Dive Against Debris project invites what organizers call “citizen scientists” to survey their diving sites to help catalog the myriad items that don’t belong in oceans, lakes and other bodies of water. By the group’s count, more than 90,000 participants have conducted more than 21,000 such surveys and removed 2.2 million pieces of junk, big and small.

    Zelek and her fellow divers have contributed their finds to the project.

    Surface trash might be easy enough to clear with a rake, but the task is more challenging beneath the water. Over the years, the layers of monofilament fishing line have accumulated. And until a few years ago, no one was scooping out the line, hooks and lead weights.

    Untangled, a pound of medium-weight fishing filament would stretch to a bit more than 4 miles (6.4 kilometers). It’s anybody’s guess how many miles of fishing line remain on the channel’s bottom.

    “Those small things are really what start to accumulate and become a much larger and bigger problem,” said Tanasia Swift, who has been with the group for a year and works for an environmental nonprofit focused on restoring the health of New York City’s waters.

    “If there’s anything that we see that doesn’t belong in the water, we take it out,” she said.

    While the drivers work, fishermen cast their lines from a ledge where the city’s concrete stops. The beach is frequented mostly by residents who live nearby.

    Raquel Gonzalez is one such resident, and she’s been coming to the beach for years. She and a neighbor brought a rake with them on the same Sunday the divers were there.

    “Needs a lot of cleanup here. There’s nobody that does any cleanup around here. We have to clean it up ourselves,” she said.

    “I love this spot, I love the scuba divers,” Gonzalez said. “Look at all the good people here.”

    ___

    Associated Press journalist Cedar Attanasio contributed and is a volunteer with the scuba team featured in this report.

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  • Underwater music show in the Florida Keys promotes awareness of coral reef protection

    Underwater music show in the Florida Keys promotes awareness of coral reef protection

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    Hundreds of divers and snorkelers listened to an underwater concert that advocated coral reef protection in the Florida Keys

    In this photo provided by the Florida Keys News Bureau, Kristen Livengood, left, pretends to sing underwater, Saturday, July 8, 2023, at the Lower Keys Underwater Music Festival in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary near Big Pine Key, Fla. Several hundred divers and snorkelers submerged along a portion of the continental United States’ only living coral barrier reef to listen to a local radio station’s four-hour broadcast, piped beneath the sea to promote coral reef preservation. (Frazier Nivens/Florida Keys News Bureau via AP)

    The Associated Press

    BIG PINE KEY, Fla. — Hundreds of divers and snorkelers listened to an underwater concert that advocated coral reef protection Saturday in the Florida Keys.

    The Lower Keys Underwater Music Festival, which also spotlighted eco-conscious diving, took place at Looe Key Reef, an area of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary located about 6 miles (10 kilometers) south of Big Pine Key.

    Established in 1990, the sanctuary protects 3,800 square miles (9,800 square kilometers) of waters including the barrier reef that parallels the 125-mile-long (201-kilometer-long) island chain.

    Participants swam among Looe Key’s colorful marine life and coral formations while listening to water-themed music broadcast by a local radio station. The music was piped undersea through waterproof speakers suspended beneath boats above the reef.

    The oceanic playlist included the Beatles’ “Yellow Submarine,” Jimmy Buffett’s “Fins” and the theme from “The Little Mermaid.”

    Tunes were interspersed with diver awareness messages about ways to minimize environmental impacts on the world’s coral reefs, whose rich biodiversity has led them to be called the rainforests of the sea.

    While the festival’s primary purpose was to encourage reef preservation, it also afforded a singular underwater experience. “Mermaids” and other costumed characters added unique visual elements to the auditory offering on part of the continental United States’ only living coral barrier reef.

    The four-hour musical event was staged by local radio station 104.1 FM and the Lower Keys Chamber of Commerce.

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  • He likes to be, under the sea: Florida man sets record for living underwater

    He likes to be, under the sea: Florida man sets record for living underwater

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    An underwater researcher in the Florida Keys is now the world record holder for living underwater at ambient pressure

    KEY LARGO, Fla. — An underwater researcher broke a record for the longest time living underwater at ambient pressure this weekend at a Florida Keys lodge for scuba divers.

    Dr. Joseph Dituri’s 74th day residing in Jules’ Undersea Lodge, situated at the bottom of a 30-foot-deep lagoon in Key Largo, wasn’t much different than his previous days there since he submerged March 1.

    He ate a protein-heavy meal of eggs and salmon prepared using a microwave, exercised with resistance bands, did his daily pushups and took an hour-long nap.

    The previous record of 73 days, two hours and 34 minutes was set by two Tennessee professors — Bruce Cantrell and Jessica Fain — at the same location in 2014.

    But Dituri isn’t just settling for the record and resurfacing: He plans to stay at the lodge until June 9, when he reaches 100 days and completes an underwater mission dubbed Project Neptune 100.

    The mission combines medical and ocean research along with educational outreach and was organized by the Marine Resources Development Foundation, owner of the habitat.

    “The record is a small bump and I really appreciate it,” said Dituri, a University of South Florida educator. “I’m honored to have it, but we still have more science to do.”

    His research includes daily experiments in physiology to monitor how the human body responds to long-term exposure to extreme pressure.

    “The idea here is to populate the world’s oceans, to take care of them by living in them and really treating them well,” Dituri said.

    The outreach portion of Dituri’s mission includes conducting online classes and broadcast interviews from his digital studio beneath the sea. During the past 74 days, he has reached over 2,500 students through online classes in marine science and more with his regular biomedical engineering courses at the University of South Florida.

    While he says he loves living under the ocean, there is one thing he really misses.

    “The thing that I miss the most about being on the surface is literally the sun,” Dituri said. “The sun has been a major factor in my life – I usually go to the gym at five and then I come back out and watch the sunrise.”

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