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Off the local new wire: --------------------------- OCEAN CITY, Md. _ Searching for sunken treasure, a Virginia Beach scuba diver apparently lost consciousness at 170 feet under water Wednesday and was surfaced immediately by a fellow diver, risking the bends. He is in a Norfolk hospital. Tai Wilkerson, a diver with Lynnhaven Dive Shop, was assisting the hunt for the Juno, a Spanish treasure ship believed to have sunk off the Virginia coast, went the accident occurred about 3:10 p.m. After more than two hours of rescue efforts by fellow divers, the Navy and the Coast Guard, Wilkerson was taken by Coast Guard helicopter to Sentara Norfolk General Hospital. His condition was unavailable Wednesday night. Wilkerson was part of a team diving for the wreck, 40 miles off the coast of Assateague Island for Quicksilver, a Virginia Beach treasure hunting company. Quicksilver believes that the Juno rests at 180 feet. Such dives require highly experienced, technical divers. They must dive with a mixture of oxygen and helium at those depths. Wilkerson, in his early 40s, had dove to depths of more than 400 feet on previous occasions and is a certified and highly trained diver and pilot. The Lynnhaven Dive Center team is one of the most experienced deep water dive teams in the region. Wilkerson was making his second dive of the day when he apparently got in trouble. Mike Fantone, who dove with Wilkerson, said he saw that Wilkerson was in trouble and went to his aid. ``Right after that I looked at his eyes and they went out,'' Fantone said. ``His eyes got all dilated and he stopped breathing.'' The only way to get Wilkerson to the surface at that point was to inflate his buoyancy vest and hope for the best. After going to great depths, divers must make ``decompression'' stops at several points to avoid the bends -- when nitrogen in their bloodstream expands rapidly and chokes off the blood supply. It was the last dive of the day after several unsuccessful attempts to locate what Quicksilver hoped was a cannon spotted in earlier dives. After Wilkerson was taken to the hospital, the crew returned to Virginia Beach. ``There are very few people who went as far as (Wilkerson) did in their training,'' Mike Hillier, head of the Lynnhaven Dive Center team, said. ----------------------- So far this is all I know about this. Jim -- Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'. Send subscribe/unsubscribe requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'.
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