Diver airlifted from salmon cleanup site in Fortune Bay, stop-work order issued
By CADC Admin ~ October 11th, 2019. Filed under: Latest Diving News, Press Release, Safety.
A stop-work order has been issued on diving operations at the salmon farm cleanup site on Newfoundland’s south coast after a diver had to be airlifted from Botwood to St. John’s.
The diver was working deep inside one of the dead salmon pens in Fortune Bay on Saturday and rose too quickly, apparently suffering decompression sickness, which is also known as the bends.
Northern Harvest Sea Farms hired several dive teams to empty its open-net pens, following a massive fish die-off that left thousands of pounds of salmon to rot.
In a statement Monday morning, a spokesman for Northern Harvest Sea Farms said the divers are employed by third-party companies, and one of those companies reported an incident requiring occupational health and safety to get involved.
Using an underwater camera, CBC News was able to get a closer look at the white substance that has flooded the ocean surface near the cleaning site. (Garrett Barry/CBC)
The suspension of dive operations is a serious blow to ongoing cleanup efforts, but the company insists its “cleanup activity can continue despite dive activity being temporarily stopped.”
Service NL said the stop-work order was issued over the weekend “until more information becomes available.”
The stop-work order was issued to Northern Harvest, as principal contractor at the site, Service NL said, and another order was issued to Strickland Diving for dive operations at all sites.
October 25th, 2019 at 1:46 am
Airlifting on SCUBA…not a safe practice. No comms to the surface, uncontrolled ascents, an air embolism waiting to happen. Why are they allowed to do it? Lots of unreported bends speaking to divers onsite. Where are the knowledgable diving inspectors? Newfoundland has adopted the CSA diving standards, and this contravenes most of the safe diving practices.
Time for a revisit their HSE policies before there is a fatality.
October 25th, 2019 at 9:26 am
Hello. I happen to know first hand knowledge of this and all of the dive crew were following 275.2 fully and the Dciem tables. This might have been a result of too many days in a row diving I was told by the diver who was surprised himself that he felt symptoms that evening a few hours after the incident. He was not airlifted from the site but due to where he lived he needed to be flown from his town to St Jonhs. I’m proud of the supervisor how he handled the call in the evening and to be safe arranged the flight to St Johns once the local hospital didnt know what to do. It was unfortunate this happened but was handled 100% professionally.
December 11th, 2019 at 3:39 am
They also pump on scuba