A dive guide has tearfully recalled the moment she found a British music producer lying motionless on his back on the ocean floor during a scuba tour off the coast of Byron Bay in New South Wales.
Karl Bareham died during a dive tour of Ngnuthungulli/Julian Rocks on 24 September 2019. He had arrived in Australia the day before and was to tour with City and Colour musician Dallas Green.
On the fourth day of the inquest into Bareham’s death, the NSW coroner’s court heard that the 37-year-old had trouble equalising as he descended, then encountered problems with buoyancy. His guide, Yuko Inagaki, said she helped adjust Bareham’s buoyancy before leading the group of four divers towards a shallow area known as the nursery.
She said that Bareham was not more than four metres away when she saw he was lying on the ocean floor, partially obstructed by a rock that she guessed he was trying to look under.
She immediately swam to him and saw his regulator was out of his mouth. Initially, she thought he might be making a ring-shaped bubble, a diving trick. She was not concerned, she said, “until I saw his face.”
“His eyes were not smiling,” she said. “You can tell in a face that [someone’s having] fun, but it didn’t look like that at all”.
She attempted to put Bareham’s regulator back into his mouth “once or twice” before moving him into a vertical position and starting an emergency ascent with him.
While her four clients were buddied up in pairs, the counsel assisting the coroner, Rob Ranken, questioned why Inagaki did not dive with a buddy, as was usual diving protocol.
“If you got into some trouble, there was nobody who was responsible [for rendering aid to you]?” Ranken asked.
Earlier in the proceedings, the court heard that Bareham may have had an alcohol withdrawal syndrome seizure – in part evidenced by a partially bitten-through mouthpiece lug. Inagaki said she did not think there was any damage to the mouthpiece before the dive and Bareham did not say the mouthpiece was damaged.
Earlier on Thursday, magistrate David O’Neil heard that Sundive’s equipment was serviced by a staff member who was not a qualified to do so, and that the dive business had “imprecise” equipment logs.
At the time of Bareham’s death, there was no system for recording when a piece of equipment was being used and how many times it had been used, Sundive’s sub-contracted technician, Tom Hughes, confirmed.
The court heard that the diving equipment brand, Mares, specifies that its regulators should be serviced every 100 dives or every year, and should be given a complete overhaul every 200 dives or two years.
While regulators at the company were given an overhaul once a year, Ranken suggested the Sundive regulators may have been used as many times as 200 times a year – something that Hughes said was “very unlikely”.
Ranken suggested that maintaining accurate records was necessary, “particularly when members of the public are relying on that equipment.”
Hughes told the court he became aware of a staff member who was not a certified technician was servicing equipment without supervision. He had not instructed her to do so, he said, nor did he check the work she had carried out unsupervised.
He said that a Mares representative that had given him verbal approval to provide on-the-job training to the staff member. The court heard he was not certified to provide servicing training.
The barrister representing Sundive and its directors, Patrick Barry, questioned the wording of the Mares servicing instructions. Neither of the company’s directors serviced regulators, according to Hughes.
Hughes said a WorkSafe interview conducted in relation to Bareham’s death in 2020 was intimidating and pushed him to the verge of a panic attack.
Over the proceedings, the court has heard that Bareham’s chronic alcoholism may have triggered a medical episode while he was underwater. Parts of his hired regulator set were deemed to be working outside manufacturers’ specifications in tests by diving experts five weeks after the incident – though the court heard those measurements may have been inaccurate.
Five witnesses remain to take the stand. The inquest is scheduled to conclude on Friday.
