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Fishermen find one dead, three survivors of missing group of divers in Belize

09:15 2005-10-25
A fishing vessel found three divers who had been missing since Saturday and the body of a fourth floating in the waters off Belize on Monday.

It was unclear whether the mishap was caused by Hurricane Wilma, which had passed by further out to sea hours before, or by engine problems aboard the boat which may have sparked a failed attempt to swim to shore.

The divers apparently had floatation devices that allowed them to keep afloat during their three-day ordeal at sea. No cause of death was provided for the diver found dead.

The survivors were flown to a small military hospital outside Belize City, after the Honduran fishing boat plucked them from the sea.

The three were to be taken later to the Universal Hospital, a private hospital in the capital, said police spokesman G. Michael Reed.

A Belizean military aircraft spotted the divers on a reconnaissance flight earlier in the day and alerted vessels in the area to rescue them.

No immediate information was available on the names and nationalities of the divers, two men and two women.

The group was part of a 12-person expedition which left South Silk Caye, 15 miles (25 kms) south of the southern resort community of Placencia, on Saturday morning despite a small craft warning and extremely rough seas and strong winds in the wake of Hurricane Wilma.

Part of the group had remained at the caye; the group's boat developed engine troubles, and some members the missing divers apparently tried to swim to a nearby island, and may have been swept away be currents, reports the AP.

More from Channel 7:

Rescued Divers Critical But Stable
They were lost at sea for 55 hours, but yesterday afternoon, three of the lost divers were found alive. The survivors are 34-year-old Japanese national Yutaka Maeda and Americans 38-year-old Nancy Masters and 50-year-old John Bain. 28-year-old Abigale Brinkman a medical student who did not have a wet suit, didn't make it. The divers were spotted by a BDF aerial search team about 23 miles southeast of Glover's Reef Atoll.

We will hear firsthand from the BDF pilots about their dramatic rescue in a few but first...tonight the three survivors are listed in critical but stable condition at the Universal Health Hospital in the city. They were airlifted by helicopter from Southwest Caye to Universal's Helipad where they were admitted into the intensive care unit. Universal's Dr. Victor Lizarraga attended to all three and he says that the divers are well on the way to recovery.

Dr. Victor Lizarraga, Universal Health Services
"They arrived in pretty bad shape. They were very dehydrated, hypothermic, badly sun burnt, and one was semi-conscious. They were brought directly to our emergency room where we started resuscitating measures. The most important thing was dehydration and hypothermia along with metabolic abnormalities because of drinking of sea water. They were severely burnt. They are clear skinned people and they had stayed in the water so especially the upper part of the body was damaged and at least one of them was exposed to bites from little jellyfish in the water. Today they are not as critical as yesterday, they are getting better, and they will do very well."

Keith Swift,
How longer would they have been able to survive out there?

Dr. Victor Lizarraga,
"Well I'll tell you they did very well to survive for two days, especially since the weather is pretty chilly right now with Wilma passing and so on. The waters would have cooled off tremendously so they are pretty tough."

Keith Swift,
How lucky are these people to be alive?

Dr. Victor Lizarraga,
"Very lucky, very lucky. They are lucky to have been found. They couldn't have lasted another day. Kudos to the BDF."

Abigale Brinkman was taken to the KHMH for a post mortem. Police note that bruises were found around her neck.






The Heroic Rescue That Almost Wasn't...
And as Lizarraga pointed out it is thanks to the BDF. In the two-day search, the BDF Air Wing flew over the search area for more than 20 hours under the leadership of Major Ganney Dortch. Today he told us that the Defender was just about to retreat for the night, because they were running out of fuel, when they spotted a female survivor. Major Dortch says the soldiers made a split second, life saving decision.

Major Ganney Dortch, BDF Pilot
"Just about the last 20 minutes of flight the pilot had declared his intention to bring in the search to a halt. He declared his fuel state as being low and on sighting the first body it brought life to us and it gave us some great sense of achievement and as a result of that we had to make a decision for that airplane to extend out and eventually it landed at Placencia with only a couple of gallons remaining in the tanks which proved to have been very fruitful."

Keith Swift,
What reaction did they have when they saw the plane overhead?

Major Ganney Dortch,
"On the initial contact, on declaration of possible sight of a body, the female that was sighted first took off her fins and started to wave in excitement and after that we could have actually heard the two pilots in the background with some sense of achievement. As a result of that we then started to go in the second stage of our searching method where, since we had located one person in that general vicinity we started to do a tighter search. The airplane then descended from 800 feet to approximately 500 feet and a dinghy was dropped to one of the survivors so she could have inflated it and eventually climb into it. Unfortunately, it is our belief, that she was a bit weak. She swam for approximately ten meters and she just saw the dinghy floating and couldn't do anything about it."

Keith Swift,
Do you guys feel like hero for saving these three lives?

Major Ganney Dortch,
"Firstly, being a military personnel I do not take rewards. We do what we are supposed to do the best of our knowledge and the best of our ability and that is what gives us great pride and a sense of achievement."

Keith Swift,
I know you met the survivors this morning. What did they say to you?

Major Ganney Dortch,
"Well one of the females mentioned that if she weren't in that condition, she would have gotten up and hugged us. You could have seen a great sense of thanks from these people. I literally couldn't bear the sight. I couldn't believe that these people had lasted some 40 plus hours out there at sea and I must at this stage commend them for a job well done. I think that they were responsible for saving their lives because living out there on the sea for 40 plus hours is a bit difficult."

We note that Placencia dive master Brian Young, who we interviewed last night, was also on the search mission which found the survivors. Major Dortch and the other pilots had to spend the night in Placencia because they were low on fuel after the successful rescue. This morning the first order of business when they landed in Belize City was to visit with the survivors at Universal Hospital.

Does any one know if the boat turned up? mo

Three missing divers rescued; one doesn't make it

When we signed off on this broadcast last night it was with the news that the four divers missing at sea since Saturday had been spotted by a B.D.F. aircraft. Tonight we can report that three of them have survived and are recovering at a Belize City hospital. Although the survivors have yet to tell their tale, today I was able to piece together some details of their ordeal and the implications of the tragedy.

Janelle Chanona, Reporting
After drifting at sea for more than two days, at approximately six thirty on Monday night, four scuba divers, last seen near Silk Caye, were pulled from the water some twenty miles south east of North East Caye on Glover's Reef. The four divers were found in the same area, but were floating separately from each other.

Terribly dehydrated and sunburnt, three of the divers had survived their traumatic ordeal at sea, but twenty-eight year old Abigail Brinkman, the only one not wearing a wetsuit, did not. Her body has been transported to the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital where a post-mortem was conducted this afternoon.

The survivors: thirty-eighth year old Nancy Masters, fifty year old John Bain, and thirty-four year old Yutaka Maeda were later airlifted by BATSUB helicopter from South Water Caye to Universal Health Services in Belize City.

Dr. Victor Lizarraga, Universal Health Services
"They were hypothermic, dehydrated, not only that, but had ingested quite a bit of salt water, badly sunburnt, all fair skinned people, no food, very hungry."

"They got disoriented after a while, so fortunately those that survived had on wet suits, and the one who did not survive didn't have a wet suit. And according to them, she passed with time, she just couldn't make it. But their ordeal was really terrible, they are lucky to alive."

Dr. Victor Lizarraga is one of the attending physicians treating the survivors.

Dr. Victor Lizarraga
"One was in bad shape, the smaller of the three, more hypothermic than the rest. At that point in time what we do is immediate resuscitative measures with intravenous fluid rehydration. One of the problems with ingesting seawater is that you get metabolic problems, so we had to check that right away and warm them up as quickly as possible. The big problem right now is the burns, the two days of sun; it will take a while for that to get fully recovered."

Janelle Chanona
"First, second, third degree?"

Dr. Victor Lizarraga
"The probably have second degree burns, it's sunray burns and mainly it's the upper part of the body, the exposed part of the body. But they are already drinking and eating, their other electrolyte and metabolic problems are being corrected right now. They should be in good shape tomorrow, better shape, I shouldn't say good, but better shape than they were when they came in."

It was nurse Nancy Masters who used what little strength she had left to wave to the B.D.F. defender flying overhead during a massive international search and rescue effort. That was at exactly three minutes to three on Monday afternoon. Officers on board the aircraft called in to the nearest land base, Northeast Caye, and using G.P.S. coordinates all boats in the area were immediately dispatched to the site.

Abigail Brinkman had arrived in Belize on Saturday, October first. A medical student from the U.S. state of Indiana, Brinkman was doing volunteer work in fulfilment of her degree requirements at the Jericho Hillside Clinic in Elridgeville in the Toledo District. Tonight we understand she was scheduled to leave the country this weekend. Co-workers at the clinic today remembered her love for diving and how excited she was after a series of dives off Ambergris Caye earlier this month.

Brinkman was part of a group that left Placencia around ten-thirty on Saturday morning. Six stayed on Silk Caye to snorkel, while the foursome left with dive master Henry "Bee Bee" Tucker to Gladden Spit. Sources tonight indicate that shortly after the group finished their first dive, Tucker discovered that the engine wouldn't start, apparently because water had gotten into the gas tank. This morning, Tucker told News Five that on directives of the Belize Police Department, he was unable to make an official comment on the incident. However, according to a press release issued by the Belize Tourism Industry Association on Monday afternoon, Tucker had asked the divers to stay on the boat until help came.

B.T.I.A. Press Release:
"He [Henry Mark Tucker] told the search party that against his persistent advice to stay with the boat and await rescue, the four divers, wearing full dive gear, decided to try and swim for Silk Caye while it was still within sight on Saturday."

This is the second time in less than a year in which Advance Diving has been involved in a diving mishap. On December twenty-ninth, 2004, owner/operator the dive shop Vance Cabral was behind the wheel of the same vessel, Advance One, when it capsized in rough seas near South Water Caye with ten divers on board. While no one was injured in that incident, the Belize Tour Operators Committee, a subsidiary of the Belize Tourism Board, had suspended Cabral's tour guide license for one month, put him on a one year probation, and mandated that standard safety measures be on board at all times. Tonight News Five understands that both Cabral and Tuckers' tour guide licenses were expired at the time of the latest incident. Although the B.T.B. could not confirm that information, Product Development Manager Anthony Mahler told News Five that the committee will meet this Friday to discuss the fate of Advance Diving.

Anthony Mahler, Product Dev. Mgr., Belize Tourism Board
"It doesn't look good for Mr. Cabral, I can say that. He's under probation at this point in time and according to the tourists that were onboard with him, most of the dive shops refused to take them out on that day and he chose to, knowing that this was a critical incident that happened a few months ago and he was still under probation. So it doesn't look good from my point at this time. But there is a committee made up of his peers and other public officers and we will decide that on Friday when we meet."

Janelle Chanona
"What would be the types of measures that you could take, another suspension?"

Anthony Mahler
"Well this one involves a loss of life and maybe a total revocation of license, and so he wouldn't be able to hold-I don't want to speculate on what would be the outcome of that, but those are along the lines. Maybe a revocation for a year who knows, but this is a serious incident and we don't take it very lightly and I'm sure he is going to be used as a guide on where we want the industry to go in terms of safety and standards. "

John Searle, PADI Course Director
"In general, Belize has very good safety standards. The standards are all in place. Most of the accidents that I am aware of have been things that really we could prevent."

In the aftermath of the maritime disaster, this afternoon, the country's first PADI course director John Searle, told News Five every diver should check for basic safety equipment on board before leaving the mainland. Communication equipment and life jackets are key, but things like wet suits, fluorescent flags, and signalling lights can make a big difference.

John Searle
"Things that I would be looking for would be emergency oxygen on board, certainly first aid kit, basic boating safety, items like your anchor, running lights, things like that as well."

"There are lots of dive accessories that you can use as signalling devices in the case that you were doing a drift dive and maybe the boat lost contact with you, things that you could signal the boat or signal someone on shore with. Things like that would be maybe an air horn, an audible device like an air horn or a whistle and also they have devices that we call signal tubes that you basically inflate with air and they extend maybe six feet above the surface of the water.

According to officials at the United States Embassy in Belize City, fifty year old John Bain is from Kansasville, Wisconsin. Nancy Masters is a visitor from Portland, Oregon; while Yutaka Maeda is a Japanese citizen. Before coming to Belize, Abigail Brinkman was living in Indianapolis, Indiana. The group of divers were spotted by the sharp eyes of Lieutenant Christopher Neal and Captain Raymond Shepherd of the Belize Defence Force. On behalf of the victims' families, we thank them and everyone else who participated in the rescue effort.

Great followup...Thank you.

The Heroic Rescue That Almost Wasn't...
posted (October 25, 2005)
And as Lizarraga pointed out it is thanks to the BDF. In the two-day
search, the BDF Air Wing flew over the search area for more than 20 hours
under the leadership of Major Ganney Dortch. Today he told us that the
Defender was just about to retreat for the night, because they were running
out of fuel, when they spotted a female survivor. Major Dortch says the
soldiers made a split second, life saving decision.

Major Ganney Dortch, BDF Pilot
"Just about the last 20 minutes of flight the pilot had declared his
intention to bring in the search to a halt. He declared his fuel state as
being low and on sighting the first body it brought life to us and it gave
us some great sense of achievement and as a result of that we had to make a
decision for that airplane to extend out and eventually it landed at
Placencia with only a couple of gallons remaining in the tanks which proved
to have been very fruitful."

Keith Swift,
What reaction did they have when they saw the plane overhead?

Major Ganney Dortch,
"On the initial contact, on declaration of possible sight of a body, the
female that was sighted first took off her fins and started to wave in
excitement and after that we could have actually heard the two pilots in the
background with some sense of achievement. As a result of that we then
started to go in the second stage of our searching method where, since we
had located one person in that general vicinity we started to do a tighter
search. The airplane then descended from 800 feet to approximately 500 feet
and a dinghy was dropped to one of the survivors so she could have inflated
it and eventually climb into it. Unfortunately, it is our belief, that she
was a bit weak. She swam for approximately ten meters and she just saw the
dinghy floating and couldn't do anything about it."

Keith Swift,
Do you guys feel like hero for saving these three lives?

Major Ganney Dortch,
"Firstly, being a military personnel I do not take rewards. We do what we
are supposed to do the best of our knowledge and the best of our ability and
that is what gives us great pride and a sense of achievement."

Keith Swift,
I know you met the survivors this morning. What did they say to you?

Major Ganney Dortch,
"Well one of the females mentioned that if she weren't in that condition,
she would have gotten up and hugged us. You could have seen a great sense of
thanks from these people. I literally couldn't bear the sight. I couldn't
believe that these people had lasted some 40 plus hours out there at sea and
I must at this stage commend them for a job well done. I think that they
were responsible for saving their lives because living out there on the sea
for 40 plus hours is a bit difficult."

We note that Placencia dive master Brian Young, who we interviewed last
night, was also on the search mission which found the survivors. Major
Dortch and the other pilots had to spend the night in Placencia because they
were low on fuel after the successful rescue. This morning the first order
of business when they landed in Belize City was to visit with the survivors
at Universal Hospital.

Scuba diver recalls horror of drifting at sea off Belize for three days
Powered by CDNN - CYBER DIVER News Network
by DEANNA MARTIN
PLACENCIA, Belize (26 Oct 2005) -- John Bain twice had watched the sun set as he drifted in the Caribbean Sea, and as a third sunset approached, he thought he might not survive another night.

Battered by waves, parched by the sun and saltwater and stung by a jellyfish, the 50-year-old Wisconsin lawyer thought of his family as he pondered how a weekend dive trip off Belize had ended with him and three other divers floating at sea for nearly three days, no dive boat or rescue in sight.

"There's a time or two when I wondered about giving it up," Bain said. "But I just didn't."

Bain spoke by phone from a Belize City hospital, where he was treated for hypothermia, sunburn and other injuries. He left the hospital Wednesday; two other divers, including one from Oregon, were still recovering.

The body of Columbus, Ind., native Abigail Brinkman, 28, was found floating in the area where Bain, along with Nancy Masters, 38, a nurse from Portland, Ore., and Yutaka Maeda, 34, a Japanese national, were rescued 2 � days after they went into the water.

The four were part of a 12-member dive trip that left South Silk Caye off the tiny Central American nation Saturday morning despite a small craft warning and rough seas in the wake of Hurricane Wilma.

After the boat began having mechanical problems, most of the expedition got off at an island, but the four divers continued on the trip.

"There were reports the anchor broke, the engine stopped, and the radio wasn't working," said Marco Prouty, an official with the U.S. Embassy in Belize. Belizean authorities were investigating.

Bain, a Racine, Wis., attorney, said the engine stopped once and was repaired, but then it stopped a second time and the boat began to drift. The divers decided to try to swim back to South Silk Caye, which he said was still in sight.

Bain, an experienced diver, said the water was still a "bit rough" from Hurricane Wilma, but he wasn't concerned about going out.

"If you're down diving, it really doesn't matter," he said of the surface conditions.

The group, however, found the conditions harsher than expected, Masters told Indianapolis television station WTHR.

"Once we got into the water, we realized that the waves were much larger than they even appeared," she said.

Bain said the group became separated. He said he and Maeda were together the first two days, strapped together at one point because Bain's buoyancy vest, which helps divers stay afloat, wasn't working properly.

The two eventually became separated, leaving Bain to face his third night at sea alone.

If it was like the others, he would spend it shivering uncontrollably, and wheezing from the salt water he had ingested. He would spend it trying to avoid being slammed by waves and blowing into his buoyancy vest every few minutes to keep it inflated.

As darkness approached, he saw what he thought was a search plane, which he said passed by at least twice in 40 minutes but apparently didn't see him.

Help finally arrived Monday evening, when a recreational boat pulled Bain aboard. The other two survivors were picked up by a Belize Defense Forces boat, which also recovered the body of Brinkman, who was not wearing a wetsuit.

Bain said thoughts of his family kept him going.

He said he'll probably dive again. But the memories of his days - and nights - in the water won't fade soon.

"You have no sense of direction," Bain said. "It gets cold, and there's nothing you can do but just wait it out. The nights last a long time."

American diver tells harrowing tale of being lost at sea
American Nancy Masters is lucky to be alive. She and three companions on a dive trip last weekend wound up spending three days and two nights floating in the waters off Silk Caye after their boat developed engine trouble and their guide seemed unable to remedy the situation. Unfortunately, one of the group, Abigail Brinkman, did not make it. Today Masters was finally recovered enough to speak with News Five, but because she is still suffering from the effects of a terrible sunburn and prolonged exposure to the elements, she did not want to appear on camera. But Masters's voice clearly expresses her fear, strength, frustration, and the exhaustion of the ordeal... not to mention her anger at the man who put them all at risk.

Nancy Masters, Survivor
"I don't think that Vance Cabral should be allowed to operate a dive company or be involved in one by any means. Somebody's died because of his negligence basically, not basically, they have. It starts out that he doesn't take care of his equipment and it's compounded by the fact that he ignores small craft advisory warnings and he's not truthful to his customers."

Janelle Chanona, Reporting
When thirty-eight year old Nancy Masters left on a dive trip on Saturday morning, she had no idea her life was about to change forever. Masters was one of ten people who left Placencia Village and headed for Silk Caye with Advance Diving, a tour operator based on the peninsula. Masters says before they even got to the dive site at Gladden Spit, things started to go wrong...and kept getting worse.

Nancy Masters
"The divers went out and just two or three minutes away from the caye, the motor died again. And after many attempts "Bee Bee" was unable to fix it at all. And he just kept trying to fix it and kept trying to fix it and in the meantime we are floating further and further away from the caye. I asked him if we shouldn't throw the anchor and he really didn't do too much about it and eventually we threw the anchor. And then he noticed that the anchor didn't seem to be working, so he went and checked on it and pulled it up and it had... it broke. Either it wasn't tied properly in the first place to actually hold the boat or it simply broke from the chain. I'm not sure."

"After the anchor broke, "Bee Bee" went back to try to take care of the motor and still no success, and I had asked him if the radio worked and it assured us that it did. And after a couple more minutes, another man that was on the boat, John, decided, you know we better get on the radio and call now. And the radio did not work. Three of us attempted to do something with it to make it work and that was not successful. So "Bee Bee" made a comment that we were basically floating to Jamaica because there was nothing else between where we were and Jamaica. And at this point, we could still see the caye quite well and so decided that we would dive it because the swells were somewhat large on top of the water, but diving underneath figured we'd miss. We all knew how to dive, we would just follow the compass and go."

Janelle Chanona
"Via an official press release from the Belize Tourism Industry Association, Henry "Bee Bee" Tucker has maintained that: "Against his persistent advice to stay with the boat and await rescue, the four divers, wearing full dive gear, decided to try and swim for Silk Caye while it was still within sight on Saturday."

Tonight Masters vehemently disputes Tucker's claim.

Nancy Masters
"He did not advise us not to go and he does have more information about that than we do, but it just makes me extremely disappointed that he's now lying about it, especially in the light of the fact that somebody died."

"Bee Bee" started to helping us get ready, getting our stuff on and at first I had decided to go and John was going to go with me and then the other two other people on board, Abby and Yutaka wanted to go too. And of course, part of the reason, obviously we didn't want to float out in the middle of sea, but also it was very uncomfortable in the boat, we were all starting to feel very sick. And so "Bee Bee" started getting stuff ready and he handed over tanks and the B.C. vests as they came up and the first one was the small one, which was Abby's, so she put that on and got in, and then John and then Yutaka. But prior to that, I asked-we all looked at the equipment and surprisingly there was no compass on any of the regulators or the equipment with the regulators."

"That's how we ended up in the water, we decided that we were going to try to navigate by the sun, but due to the wave action, the light was too diffused and we were unable to tell through diving. So at that point we decided to surface swim it, but after that amount of time, the distance of the caye had increased quite a bit and it just ended up being more than we could do."

Drifting on the endless sea, the four SCUBA divers watched hopelessly as darkness began to fall. More alarmingly, Masters soon found herself all alone in the water.

Nancy Masters
"Throughout the whole thing, even when it was difficult to swim, it never really, I never really believed that we wouldn't make it. And I just knew that we needed at least one person to make it, because obviously Vance wouldn't be out there with some form of communication, so somebody needed to make it to the caye. I saw that he had a cell phone, just to get out there to get help, to come help the people in the water and "Bee Bee" in the boat and I found out later that his cell phone wasn't charged."

"As it's getting dark actually I can't find Abby anymore because we had been swimming and the swells were getting larger. And so I started to, I wasn't sure if I should just keep trying to swim for the caye or find Abby. At this point I'm still thinking that one of us needs to make it, but when I realized that I wasn't going to make it, I tried to find Abby so that neither one of us would have to stay the night out there alone, which was certainly not an option that was preferred. So I actually swam back just a little bit and tried to look for her and never... she had on an orange swim cap so she had been pretty easy to see before that time and I didn't think that I would lose sight of her, but the sea can be pretty tough so I don't exactly where it took her from where it took me."

"The nights were really long, the nights felt like they went on for weeks. The days in comparison were not that bad because you could see. The next day I thought there would be boats and planes all over the place and I just figured, we all have to just get through this night and then we'll all be found in the morning. The next morning, I didn't see any of that. During the night your mind plays a lot of tricks on you when you are out there and I honestly, I truly, truly believed that the other three had been found. You kind of nod off for short times and I think I must have dreamed it, but I absolutely believed that they had been found."

"After the first night, I didn't think I could handle a second night, but I was sure that all the boats and planes would be out and I would be in found. So I told myself if when the sun sets tomorrow night and you're still out here then you can freak out, but in the meantime, that's not an option."

"I really thought Sunday night that I was going to get picked up by this trawler, I was so close. If I had swam that hard before it wouldn't have been... it was so close, and it wasn't moving and it was getting closer and closer and I was about, I'm not really good with, I was about fifty yards or so and it started to trawl...that hurt so bad!"

Masters said she realised she was in a shipping lane and was determined to get the attention of one of the captains. But then suddenly late Monday afternoon, there was the B.D.F. Defender.

Nancy Masters
"I heard it first and it went almost right over me, but gave no indication that it had seen me so I didn't think it had. And that was right up there with the fishing trawler; that hurt. And it was even more discouraging in some ways because I thought this guy is flying so low and he was almost right over me and he didn't see me, and if he didn't see me that close, nobody's ever going to see me in a plane."

2nd Lt. Christopher Neal and Capt. Raymond Shepherd had seen Nancy Masters, and within the hour all four SCUBA divers were pulled from the water.

Nancy Masters
"I am so grateful to those people, everybody and the people in Placencia that were taking care of our friends that were back in there, being kind to them and you know, and there boats from Honduras and Guatemala looking for us as well, so you can't really help but be really touched by what everybody from Belize and the other countries as well, but especially what the Belizean people put out trying to find us."

Tonight Masters says prior to leaving the peninsula, they were never informed that there was a small craft warning in effect for Belize's coastal waters.

Nancy Masters
"We have since learned that there was a small craft advisory, a warning, and we were not aware of that. Vance never mentioned to us that there was a warning. We chose Vance because we wanted to go to Glover's Reef originally and the person we wanted to go with didn't want to go for a day trip because it's kinda far for a day and she said that sometimes Vance would go for day, so she gave us his number and his location."

"We had heard from another couple who talked to somebody at Sea Horse that they weren't going out that day, but they told us because the visibility was poor and not because of the ocean being too rough."

"Basically you trust the divemaster, the captain of the boat isn't going to put a group of people and himself and his boat in danger. So we figured you know it was a little choppy, but we at no point felt that we were in danger when we left. We trusted the person who we're going out with."

Tonight as Masters continues her slow recovery from severe sunburn and metabolic shock, she remembers young Abigail Brinkman.

Nancy Masters
"She was just a beautiful person with a great spirit and she really loved Belize. She talked, I think that when we went out on dive, she was the person who was talking the most, just because she loved the area and she loved the country and the people and diving and life so much. She had a lot to give and she really appreciated everything that people were giving to her here. Her loss is so tragic and so unnecessary. Nobody should die because somebody isn't taking care of their equipment."

Masters and Yutaka Maeda departed the country today, while John Bain left earlier this week. Abigail Brinkman's body was flown out of the country today. Before leaving, Masters and Maeda met with the B.D.F. soldiers who participated in rescue.
Today a meeting of the tour operators review board was held at the B.T.B. office to decide what if any penalties would be levied against Advanced Diving. Present at that meeting were various agencies including the Belize Port Authority. According to the Tourism Board's Anthony Mahler, he cannot comment on the recommendations made today until Advanced Diving owner Vance Cabral has been informed in writing.

We will be going to Abby Brinkman calling hours at the funeral home in an hour and a half.
This has been a terrible tradgety for her family and we all should stop for a moment and say a prayer for them. " Columbus Indiana"

Dive Shop's License REVOKED!

The decision was made on Friday and today tour operator Vance Cabral got the news that the now deadly diving trip that he led two Saturdays ago in Placencia was his last.

On Friday the 9 member Tour Operators Licensing Committee met and voted unanimously to revoke the license held by Cabral's Advance Diving Shop. In making its decision, the board reviewed the Police Department's report on last Saturday's incident which left four tourists stranded in the water's off of Placencia for nearly 55 hours. One of the tourists never made it and the ones who survived say the boat had no radio and no back up engine.

The board also considered that less than a year ago on December 28th Cabral was in another diving accident. In that incident a boat with 10 people was returning from Glover's Reef when it overturned. At that time, Cabral's license was suspended for one month and he was placed on probation for one year starting in January of this year. At the time of last Saturday's ill-fated trip, Cabral was still on probation.

Cabral's tour guide license expired in December of last year and his sideman Mark Tucker's license expired in April of this year. That means that both men who led the ill-fated tour in rough seas were not licensed to do so. That is a criminal offence, and the police are expected to bring charges for it. The BTB says it will recommend that the tour guide licensing committee similarly revoke Mark Tucker's guide license. Vance Cabral and his dive shop Advanced Diving will also be summoned for hiring an unlicensed guide, which is Mark Tucker.

Meanwhile a memorial service the dive trip's only casualty Abigale Brinkman will be held tomorrow in her hometown.