Over the weekend, the U.S. Coast Guard found a tethered diver who lost his life while exploring Lake Erie just east of Cleveland.
The diver was 70-year-old David Michael Vanzandt, who co-founded Cleveland Underwater Explorers, which is a group that studies, searches and documents shipwrecks and submerged cultural heritage of the Great Lakes, mainly focusing on Lake Erie.
On their Facebook page, the group said that David passed while exploring a shipwreck during their first dive of the season.
“I got a call Saturday afternoon that there was a person who was archaeologically diving,” said Sheriff Frank Leonbruno with the Lake County Sheriff’s Office.
During that exploration, the person waiting above the water told officials after two hours, David never resurfaced. So they called the Coast Guard and the Lake County sheriff's office to begin a rescue.
“Our diver went down 66 feet and followed the lines and located the diver and brought him to the surface,” said Sheriff Leonbruno.
The Lake County dive team arrived around 6:30 p.m. when they found David was still tethered to the anchor line of the boat; within an hour, they were able to find him, but he wasn’t alive.
“It's this was a very skilled diver and used all the security precautions. So, it seems that there was a medical emergency involved in this,” said Sheriff Leonbruno.
David was among a small, tight-knit Northeast Ohio diver community, which Stephen Bowles, the owner of Professional Diving Resources, is also a part of.
“He was a diver that came into the store. We knew him. I've been a fan of his; he's been a good guy,” said Bowels.
He tells News 5 that David had a huge impact on the diving community and his death will send shock waves.
“David's been an explorer his entire life.” Bowels continued, “To have somebody like that, that has also been so instrumental in finding shipwrecks and expanding the history of Lake Erie and creating an excitement in the diving industry. It's a loss.”
The medical examiner will determine how Vanzandt died, and the Ohio Department of Natural Resources is conducting an investigation into what happened.
