G at Australian Seachange Newsletter - Southern Freedivers

Diver tells of freak wave
capsize
Posted Wed May 6, 2009 1:46pm AEST
Updated Wed May 6, 2009 5:04pm AEST
The rescue boat returns to port with two men who were rescued off Ceduna on Tuesday
night. (West Coast Sentinel)
An abalone fisherman has spoken about his rescue off the coast of Ceduna in South
Australia after his boat capsized.
Greg Pickering was working with a deckhand about 20 kilometres offshore when a freak
wave struck late on Tuesday.
Mr Pickering says he was diving to about 12 metres when it happened.
"I'd been there for four hours and all of a sudden I just got pulled off the bottom and it just
kept pulling and pulling, 'cause I was on a dive hose that was connected to the boat," he
said.
"Then the air went off and I came up and the boat was upside down and the deckhand was
sitting on a capsized boat and he was okay."
The two men were found by rescue crews in a life raft about three hours later.
GREG’S ACCOUNT
Recently my Abalone boat was tipped over by a large wave while I was Abalone diving 25km’s off
Ceduna on the far West coast of South Australia. It could have been a very serious situation for my
deckhand and me but we were rescued very quickly due to safety procedures we had in place.
As the boat was up turned I had to make a number of dives to retrieve the safety gear including a
PAINS WESSEX 406 MHz EPIRB, flares and life raft.
The EPIRB worked extremely well and a spotter plane found us after 2 1/2 hours (it was dark by
then). We were safely tucked away in the life raft and as we heard the plane approaching we
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