The day-to-day tasks of injury monitoring at Divers Alert Network include tracking dive fatalities by sifting through emails, news alerts, and social media to collect information about recent events. Our goal is to report to the dive community our findings on what people report to us or what we encounter in our research.
Since DAN was founded in 1980, we have tracked, monitored, and researched more than 4,000 dive-related incidents, not including emergency calls, nonemergency inquiries, and membership claims. Our scope includes fatal and nonfatal accidents involving open-circuit and rebreather diving, freediving, and snorkeling. DAN Research has relaunched the Diving Incident Reporting System (DIRS) to collect self-reported dive incidents, and our fatality and injury monitoring team continues to track dive fatalities around the world.
For dive incidents within the U.S., we’ve obtained investigative records that include law enforcement reports, incident reports, equipment analyses, autopsies, and toxicology reports. Our fatality and injury monitoring team carefully reviews these files and consults with pathologists to ascertain what may have triggered the event and what could be the cause of death. We aim to quantify these accident details so we can identify trends and suggest ways to make diving safer.
Drug use or drug smuggling while diving isn’t a significant trend based on the information we can access, but DAN Research has records of more than 15 fatal dive accidents in which intoxication or drug use was noted in the past five years. Two snorkeling fatalities reported to DAN in 2023 noted positive toxicology results for recreational drugs. Those toxicology screenings indicated the substances included alcohol, cannabis, and methamphetamine.
Our researchers noted a particular news alert: “Diver found dead amid portion of $20m Newcastle cocaine haul.” This sparked curiosity among the team, leading us to query how many dive incidents in our database were drug related. The news alert said that the diver was found unconscious in the water and could not be revived and about 110 pounds (50 kilograms) of yellow packages were floating in the water near the diver.
Reports noted the diver “had sophisticated equipment, including a rebreather apparatus,” and further investigation revealed the packages were originally hidden in the sea chest of a cargo ship found in the area at the time of the diver’s death. Detectives worked swiftly, and within days one suspect was arrested in connection with the smuggling.
The discord among the team centered mostly around the how instead of the why. It was theorized that it was most likely a pickup rather than a drop-off, based on where the diver was found. We discussed the logistics of lifting and swimming with that much weight for the long distance between the ship’s hull and the shoreline as we tried to figure out what had happened.
This report wasn’t the first recorded instance of diving and drug smuggling, and it won’t be the last. In 2015 a diver was apprehended in California while attempting to smuggle about 55 pounds (25 kg) of drugs. The diver was transporting the drugs through an underwater tunnel, and authorities patrolling the embankment near the tunnel exit caught the diver with several 1-pound, vacuum-sealed packages of cocaine.
Another case in 2013 involved a diver crossing the St. Clair River from Canada into the U.S. using a watertight PVC tube filled with more than 8 pounds (3.6 kg) of marijuana. In the same river in 2021, authorities found a diver tethered to 185 pounds (84 kg) of marijuana who had been using a small fleet of submarines and diver propulsion vehicles to carry out the operation en route to Detroit, Michigan. The diver was sentenced to 71 months in prison and will be deported back to Canada after serving his time.
The number of these kinds of incidents recorded in our database is likely significantly lower than what actually occurs since we rely on news alerts, social media, and self-reporting. We asked the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration for a comparison of their tally of drug smuggling diver fatalities against ours, but they declined to comment.
We rely heavily on our Diving Incident Reporting System (DIRS) to gather data, and it’s unlikely a diver smuggling drugs would report their own incidents. Even if they omitted key details about the task, our team would still question why they were diving alone at night and in less-than-ideal locations.
If you would like to help us close the gap in reporting so we can monitor these trends, you can report any dive incident to DAN Research through the DIRS at redcap.link/DAN-report-an-incident. It’s an anonymous online system, so nothing will identify the person making the report. If you have questions about the DIRS, please email .
To be clear, DAN does not condone the use of illegal substances or the transport and distribution of such substances, especially before, during, or after diving.
© Alert Diver – Q4 2024