The diving equipment used by a British music producer who died during a scuba tour off Byron Bay was deemed “unsafe” by a police diver and a scuba technician, a court has heard.
Karl Bareham was found lying on the ocean floor 2.5km off the coast without his breathing equipment in his mouth, during a dive tour of Nguthungulli/Julian Rocks on 24 September 2019.
The 37-year-old had arrived in Australia the day before to tour with City and Colour musician Dallas Green.
On the second day of the coronial inquest into Bareham’s death, NSW police diver Sen Const Craig Dodd told magistrate David O’Neil his tests on Bareham’s rented dive gear at marine area command in Balmain at the end of October 2019 found the pressure in the breathing apparatus was above usual parameters.
Dodd said the air pressure in tests on the gear rented to Bareham by the Sundive dive shop in Byron Bay was “significantly high, so I knew there was an issue” and that he found the way the regulators were functioning “strange”.
In a dry chamber dive, Dodd then determined the “cracking effort” – the effort it takes to breathe through a second stage regulator – was unusually high.
“I noticed it got significantly harder to breathe off that regulator at about nine metres. I was having to suck in, [use] more effort to activate that regulator,” he told the court. Dodd deemed the regulators “unsafe for diving”.
He said one of Bareham’s mouthpiece lugs had been partly bitten through, indicating a possible seizure, but that the damage may have occurred before the day in question.
Steve Blume, who owns a business that services scuba equipment, also tested Bareham’s gear.
The court heard he found one of the Mares brand regulators used by Bareham had a cracking effort of almost double the lower limit recommended by the manufacturer.
Blume said salt or sand was unlikely to cause problems with the functioning of the regulators.
The counsel for Sundive and its two directors, Patrick Barry, questioned the accuracy of the experts’ measurements on the breathing apparatus, including the lack of examinations of the regulators’ internal components. Barry said omissions in the police exhibit custody report for the diving equipment meant the results could not be verified.
Under questioning, Dodd said the magnehelic gauge used in his tests was not calibrated within the manufacturer’s service requirements – raising the possibility his measurements may have been inexact.
On Monday, the court heard that while it was uncontested that Bareham was found lying face-up without his breathing equipment in his mouth, the exact circumstances of his death were controversial – including cause of death, the allocation of his dive buddy and whether his equipment functioned normally. Questions were also raised as to whether Bareham was hungover on the morning of the dive and affected by jet lag.
The inquest is scheduled to end on Friday. The court heard Bareham’s father, Keith, and sister, Lauren, had flown from the UK to be in court for the proceedings.
