Four Divers in North Carolina Rescued Far at Sea

When four divers were missing 52 nautical miles off Cape Fear, North Carolina, it was a diver's flashing emergency strobe that caught the eye of a crew member on a U.S. Coast Guard HC-130 four-engine search aircraft. It was 1:00 a.m., 12 hours after they went missing.

After a Sunday morning dive on August 13, Ben Wiggins (64), Luke Lodges (26), Daniel Williams (46), and his son Evan (16) surfaced in a strong current more than 150 yards from their boat and kept drifting. Willie Carter, Williams' friend and the captain of the boat, Big Bill, who was expecting the divers to surface elsewhere, didn't see them or hear their whistles. Soon, Carter contacted the Coast Guard, which launched a search.

Wiggins, a retired Navy diver, saw that the divers tethered together so they didn't get separated as they floated in their BCDs. They dropped their weights and tanks and the fish they had speared.

To find them, said a Coast Guard officer, was "like looking for a needle in a haystack," as from an altitude, people disappear from vision in the vast ocean and its swells. But, in the darkness, an airman spotted their strobe, and a Coast Guard helicopter arrived to drop them an inflatable raft so at least they could get out of the water. A naval warship, the destroyer USS. Porter, was alerted and steamed at full speed before dispatching a rescue RIB to pick them up two hours after they were sighted. Besides being thirsty, sunburned, and tired, they were healthy.

As we frequently write, more divers are lost at the surface by separating from their vessels than get lost underwater. While the boat crew should stay alert, they can miss a diver in the open ocean, as did this captain. A diver should carry a visible surface marker, a whistle - better yet, a noise maker louder than a whistle, such as a Dive Alert - and an emergency signaling light.

Sometimes, even they aren't sufficient.