Earlier this year I came across a story about five divers from Finland who travelled to Norway to explore a deep water cave in Plurdalen. They faced problems during the dive, which led to the death of two of the divers, their bodies left at 130m depth. The other three spent time at hospital due to having to cut their decompression stops short.
After the accident several authorities got involved as well as a British expert team with experience in difficult recoveries, but sadly they decided that it was too dangerous to try to recover the two divers from that depth.
A lot of discussions started, with several experienced divers claiming it could be done safely, whilst others said it was pretty much a suicide mission to attempt it.
The authorities in Norway decided to ban diving at that site until decisions could be made.
However, a few days ago a team of divers from Finland decided to ignore the ban, and they successfully managed to recover their friends from the cave, at least to an opening where they deemed it was safe to send a rescue team to pick them up the last bit.
The group will most likely be facing charges for this act, however the Norwegian government says that it’s not going to be a high priority case, and that it’ll most likely be dropped further on.
I’m happy to read that the bodies now can be returned to their families, but it saddens me that diving once again has taken a few lifes.
Diving will never be a completely safe sport, and if you go into technical diving and especially cave, it becomes even more dangerous.
I’ve included a link to the description of their dive below, written by the team involved.
There’s also a few news links, although they’re in Norwegian or Swedish.
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-iDm0Pmt3MYU3hxb0tZS3llTGpWVnZ0RWlPeDY5NTJybFVF/edit
http://www.vg.no/nyheter/innenriks/omkomne-dykkere-hentet-opp-fra-pluragrotta/a/10138537
http://svenska.yle.fi/artikel/2014/03/27/finska-dykare-tog-upp-doda-vanner-i-norge
