Even though 28 people searched for David Byles
after he tragically disappeared during a Cayman
dive on January 19, police stated that he was
extremely unlikely to be found alive. Even though he
was diving with a group, and his tank, BCD and an
item of clothing were found at the dive site, no one
has any idea what happened to him -- his body has
not been found.
Byles, 57, of Pinehurst, NC, was diving with Sunset
Divers at Barracuda Wall when he disappeared. He
was last seen surfacing with his wife and swimming
toward the boat, roughly 100 yards away. Keith Sahm,
Sunset Divers' general manager, told the Cayman
Compass that Byles had shown no signs of distress after
reaching the surface. He said Byles' wife thought Byles
had boarded the boat ahead of her, and only raised the
alarm when she realized it wasn't the case.
When I read this, my journalistic senses started
tingling. It's hard to imagine the guy pulling off his
gear, given the dive boat wasn't that far away. He's in
calm Cayman waters, and there were other divers in
the water, especially his wife, so why wasn't he found?
I'm reminded of a couple past Undercurrent stories
about divers who staged a disappearance; one was
found years later relaxing in the Maldives.
To get a level-headed opinion, I asked our Bret
Gilliam, who has been hired as an expert witness in
269 diving lawsuits, for his view. Nothing strange
about it, he says. "It sounds to me like a fairly typical
inexperienced diver panicking on the surface. This
manifests in initial stressors usually caused by getting
splashed in the face while swimming, interruption of
the breathing cycle, failure to inflate BCD, increased
panic scenarios . . . then jettisoning gear and attempting
to stay on the surface. Frequently, this triggers
other idiosyncratic medical events, such as heart attack
or stroke. Diver sinks and disappears. Such a scenario
is consistent with the victim's age. More divers now
die from heart-related incidents than any other single
factor. It's an aging demographic, and one that does
not have much physical conditioning. Diving is also
promoted widely as something for everyone and as
you know, the industry tends to influence relatively
inexperienced divers to think they are 'advanced' or
'master' divers."
However, Gilliam, too, is surprised that Byles' body
never showed up. "There is usually no problem in
finding and retrieving it. Unless the body went over
the dropoff wall, it would end up prostrate on the bottom.
There is little current in that area, and the dive
staff should have found him. The average customers
for Cayman dive operators are not exactly Navy
SEALs. None of this really surprises me except for no
one being able to find the body."
So some mystery, at least, still remains . . .