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07/03/2005: "Powerhead burst"

Perhaps the worst case of powerhead mis-use involved a friend, Captain Wally Muller of Coralita the famous dive vessel that pioneered diving in The Coral Sea from 1970 onwards.

Wal wanted to collect a nice specimen of coral for a scientist friend. Deciding he'd blow-away the base of a small table coral (acopora) with the blast from a .303 powerhead! Not a good idea.

The powerhead detonated as planned and fired the spear back like a missile (as we now know they do). The end of the spear smashed the diver's face mask and punctured his face, in the cheek below his right eye, to a depth of some inches)!

Re-cap: This is the skipper of a dive boat 250 nautical miles offshore in The Coral Sea. To make a situation even worse, he was the only person aboard who knew how to run the engines.

For two and almost three days Wally lay on his bunk, too ill to move. The international diving guests, normally used to experiencing at least three different anchorage locations each day had to be content with not moving.

Eventually the captain recovered his strength and was able to stand on his feet long enough to continue the trip.

He came close to perhaps a more serious outcome. After that episode, powerheads were banned on future dive trips, and the trend spread to other ships. It wasn't the only accident people had, but it was a very serious lesson.

As stated elsewhere, powerheads are more of a serious hazard to divers than most sharks.

This above picture is from Fathom No.2.