A senior Russian finance ministry official spent nearly 24 hours adrift in the North Pacific after a routine wreck-diving excursion off Sakhalin Island went horribly wrong.
Elena Dorofeeva, a 63-year-old deputy director of a department in the finance ministry, was lost after signing up to explore the Anabar, a dredger that sank in the Tatar Strait in 2010. The wreck lies some 40 km/25 miles from Sakhalin, near the small island of Moneron. Reports confirm that she was an experienced diver.
Dorofeeva’s instructor, identified only as Pavel, planned for them to descend from the dive boat and regroup at a depth of 25m/82ft. Unfortunately, as he prepared to follow Dorofeeva underwater, Pavel realized he was underweighted and delayed his entry. Dorofeeva, spotting no guide, ascended and conducted a safety stop at 5m/16ft.
During this time, she was unaware that strong currents were sweeping her away. When she finally resurfaced, she found the dive boat roughly 500m/547 yards away, and no one on board was aware of her absence.
In a cascade of errors, Pavel initially assumed she had dived on with another guide. Only after she failed to reappear did he sound the alarm. A search operation involving a helicopter and divers kicked off immediately.
During the night, Dorofeeva could see shore lights and search beams but could not attract attention amid falling temperatures and rising seas. By morning, she had managed to fashion a makeshift flag by lashing an orange fin to a floating stick.
That is when the research vessel Otto Schmidt spotted the improvised signal and rescued her. Dorofeeva was brought ashore on Moneron, where she was found to be unharmed.
Sakhalin authorities have launched an investigation into the instructor’s assumptions and the safety procedures that failed to prevent her ordeal.
