June 2008    Download the Entire Issue (PDF)

Vol. 23, No. 6   What's this?

Divers Saved After 40 Hours at Sea

from the June, 2008 issue of Undercurrent  

While diving the Banshee Channel in southern Taiwan on April 26, eight Chinese divers were reported missing when the boat skipper couldn’t locate them and returned to port. The six men and two women were being carried by a current opposite of their intended direction, so they surfaced 20 minutes after they began the dive, but were too far away to alert the boat. A hunt was launched but after 30 hours at sea with no rescue, the divers separated into two groups, one to swim to land while the other would wait it out.

Ding Bo-Ling, a 32-year-old dive instructor, swam 10 hours until he hit shore Sunday night, nearly 50 miles from the original dive site. With Ding’s help, rescuers found five divers, clicking their underwater cameras’ flashes to get attention, at dawn, then found the remaining two later that morning.