S
COTTISH DIVER Andy Phillips,
46, the manager of Utila Dive
Centre in Honduras, has died on
a dive in Canada’s St Lawrence river.
The PADI Platinum Course Director
and technical instructor-trainer had
been on an early-morning shore-dive
at a submerged lock system near
MacDonell Island in Ontario on 11
June. His buddy came back ashore
at around 9am but Phillips failed to
resurface, for what police described as
“reasons under investigation”.
Emergency services scoured the
area until 17 June, when Phillips was
declared missing, presumed dead.
Police and fire services, US Customs
& Border Protection, the Canadian
Coast Guard and a Joint Rescue
Co-ordination Centre helicopter were
all involved in the six-day search.
Phillips’ body was eventually found
on 22 June, about eight miles
downstream from where he had gone
missing, and was identified at the
regional coroner’s office.
Phillips was a highly experienced
diver well-known in the internationaldiving community. Originally from
Inverness, he had been a scuba diver
for seven years when he started
working as a divemaster in Thailand in
1997, and qualified as an instructor at
Utila Dive Centre the following year.
He left to spend a short time
working in Costa Rica and Egypt,
where he took up technical diving, but
then returned to settle in Utila.
By 2002 he was a PADI Course
Director, later reaching Platinum level.Among his many diving qualifications
he was a trimix, rebreather and DAN
instructor-trainer. “For 20 years, Andy
Phillips developed and fostered both
the diving community and industry
on Utila and by extension Central
America,” said the instructor
development centre in a statement.
“Utila as we know it – unique and
exuberant – exists as it does because
of him.”
“The tens of thousands of students,
countless professional designations
and accolades and the carcasses of
nearly as many lionfish – Andy was an
unsurpassed ambassador and icon for
an industry he helped pioneer.”
The centre stated that Phillips had
made “an immeasurable impact to the
community, the conservation and
preservation of marine environment
and notably the development of
professional scuba divers throughout
the world”.
It described him as a “thoughtful
dive-buddy, meaningful mentor and
best friend to so many that will now
miss him dearly”. nDIVER NEWS
divEr 8 divErNEt.com
THE MANY DIVERSfamiliar with
north Wales centre Anglesey
Divers have been shocked by the
sudden death of its co-owner
Caroline Sampson, aged 51.
The BSAC Advanced Instructor
died on 8 June, within a fortnight
of being diagnosed with
pancreatic cancer.
“I am heartbroken to
announce that my wife, soul-
mate, business partner and
mother of my wonderful children
Daniel and Emma has passed
away,” said her husband of 34
years and Anglesey Divers
co-owner Martin Sampson in
a statement. “The disease was
devastating in its progress.
“As a diving instructor,
expedition leader, Slimming
World consultant and recently
promoted team-developer,
her life was characterised by
encouraging and enabling
people to do the things they
wouldn’t otherwise believe that
they could do. Her fundamental
role was helping people regain
self-esteem.”
”Vivacious, beautiful, witty
and with a smile that could melt
the coldest of hearts, how could
I have been anything but
hopelessly in love with her?”
The couple, who came from
Bristol and had met in the mid-
1980s as members of Bristol
Diving Club, moved to Holyhead
in Anglesey in 1989 and took
over Anglesey Diver Training
College two years later.
They expanded the school,
which took its present name in
1996, and were acknowledged
for their progressive approach,
providing at an early stage
facilities for technical and
rebreather diving.
In 2008 Caroline Sampson
became company secretary
of Anglesey Maritime Safety,
formed by the couple to provide
health & safety services for the
industrial, marine, and
renewable-energy sectors.nClean-up record in Florida & UK volunteer call
Utila Course Director Andy
Phillips lost on river dive
AN UNDERWATER CLEAN-UPon
Florida’s east coast on 15 June has
resulted in a new Guinness World
Record for number of scuba-divers
taking part in such an event.
A team of 633 divers broke a
four-year-old record of 615 during
an event hosted by dive-centre Dixie
Divers around a fishing-pier in
Deerfield Beach.
Although the record is for Most
Participants in an Underwater
Clean-up in 24 Hours (Single Venue),
the divers took only two hours to
achieve their goal. A GWR adjudicator
was on the spot to verify the record.
The 760kg of rubbish collected was
recorded using Project AWARE’s Dive
Against Debris data-collection
programme for citizen-scientists.
The previous record had been set
by divers in the Red Sea in June, 2015.
Last year 386 divers set the GWR
Longest Human Chain Underwater
record in Deerfield Beach.
In the UK, meanwhile, volunteers
are being urged to “adopt a beach”
and organise a clean-up. The move is
part of the Marine ConservationSociety’s four-day Great British Beach
Clean event, set for 20-23 September.
Last year’s clean-ups attracted
record numbers of volunteers, with
almost 15,000 taking part – double
the turn-out in 2017, says the MCS.
More beaches were cleaned too,
up 155 to 494, and more than 600
items of litter were picked up for
every 100m of coastline surveyed.
“Cleaning so many individual
beaches last year was a fabulous
achievement... but we know that it’s
only the tip of the iceberg,” said MCS
Beachwatch Officer Lizzie Prior.
“There are hundreds of beaches
around our coasts that have neverbeen cleaned and surveyed – and it’s
the collection of this data that is so
important.” Data amassed over 25
years of beach-cleans is said to have
been instrumental in the adoption of
new legislation, such as single-use
carrier bag charges.
“This year we’re appealing for more
people to adopt a beach and become
one of our army of beach-clean
organisers,” said Prior.
“It’s an absolutely vital role because
the more beaches we have litter data
for, the clearer the picture we will have
of where it all comes from and what
needs to be targeted next.”
Find out more at mcsuk.org nAnglesey
Divers’
Caroline
Sampson
dies at 51
DIXIE DIVERS