After more than a week of searching, the body of French diver Gerald Malaussena has been found beneath the sea ice near Dumont d’Urville Station in Antarctica.
Malaussena, a member of the French Polar Institute’s diving team, vanished on January 13 during a routine dive to check scientific equipment.
When he failed to return, surface teams and support divers did everything they could to find their missing colleague. Drilling teams cut holes into the ice near the dive site and his last known position. They dropped cameras into each hole, looking for signs of him. They also used sonar that could detect metal beneath the thick ice to try to locate his diving equipment.
Two days after the search began, four members of the U.S. Coast Guard arrived from McMurdo Station with a remotely operated underwater vehicle (ROV) to locate the body. Soon, a second ROV arrived, equipped with an extended-range sonar that reaches up to 300m. This allowed the search teams to access an unsearched area. There on the seabed, it located Malaussena’s body.
Under-ice diving, such as this, is one of the most technical and high-risk specialties in the diving world, even for the experienced. No details have been released regarding the depth of the dive or conditions at the time of the disappearance. An investigation is underway to decipher exactly what happened on January 13.
