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A Taiwanese technical diver has died during an expedition to recover human remains from a flooded Second World War-era coal mine off the coast of western Japan.
The diver, who has been identified as 57-year-old Wei Hsu, also known as Victor Hsuwei, was part of a multinational team working at the Chōsei coal mine site off Ube City in Yamaguchi prefecture, part of a mission to recover the remains of 183 workers who were killed when the mine flooded in 1942.
According to local media, Hsu – who was diving on a rebreather – entered the water at around 11.30am on 7 February as part of a planned recovery dive. Shortly afterwards, at approximately 11.40am, he began suffering convulsions and lost consciousness while underwater.
Hsu was brought to the surface by members of his dive team, who began CPR until rescue personnel arrived at the site at around 12.30pm. He was transported to hospital and pronounced dead at approximately 2pm.
The recovery work involved six divers from Japan, Finland, Thailand, Indonesia and Taiwan, and had been scheduled to continue until 11 February, but has been suspended in the wake of the accident.
Although no official cause of death has so far been released, Taiwan’s United Daily News cited project leader Yoshitaka Isaji saying the incident ‘was related to equipment’, and that preliminary investigations suggested Wei had ‘suffered from hyperoxia during the dive, which triggered convulsions, causing his breathing apparatus to leave his mouth and leading to drowning.’
Although this has not been confirmed, it strongly implies that Wei had suffered from central nervous system (CNS) toxicity, caused by breathing a high partial pressure of oxygen at depth.
It is a known issue when diving with closed-circuit rebreathers (CCRs), in which pure oxygen is mixed with a ‘diluent’ – or dilutant – breathing gas to provide a constant partial pressure of oxygen to the diver.
CCRs greatly extend bottom times and reduce, or even remove, the need for decompression stops when surfacing, but equipment failure, or incorrect configuration of the rebreather’s computer controls, can cause pure oxygen to be delivered to the diver, resulting in a CNS hit and convulsions.
The Chōsei coal mine was the site of a fatal flooding accident in February 1942, during the Second World War, when seawater broke into the undersea tunnels during mining operations. A total of 183 workers were killed, 136 of whom were Korean, which was . Many of the bodies were never recovered.
Interest in recovery efforts was renewed after a Japanese civic group founded in 1991 began long-term research and launched salvage operations in 2024.
Bone fragments recovered last August, including material believed to be part of a skull, raised hopes that victims might eventually be identified through DNA testing. A new round of recovery work began earlier this month under the attention of both Japanese and South Korean authorities.
A memorial ceremony was held at the site on Saturday following the diver’s death, attended by bereaved families, lawmakers and officials from Japan and South Korea.
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