A search operation is underway for a man who went missing during a cave dive in County Galway.The experienced Polish diver Artur Kozlowski was exploring Pollonora hole n°10. A secondary sink located in Ireland, north of Gort, in a place called Killartan. The cave is 810m long and 52m deep.
"The cave diver was fully equipped with all the necessary diving equipment and had sufficient compressed air and mixed gases with him."Following correct cave exploration protocol, the cave diver informed two colleagues of his planned cave-diving trip and when he did not return at the expected time, the Irish Cave Rescue Organisation (ICRO) was immediately alerted."
It is understood he went diving in at 3pm yesterday afternoon and had enough oxygen to last until 9.30pm last night.
The search began when he did not resurface and another diver attached to Doolin Coast Guard went into the caves at 11pm.
He resurfaced at 1am with no sign of the missing man.
He resurfaced at 1am with no sign of the missing man.
The search will resume at midday.
Conor McGrath is a warden with the Irish Cave Rescue Organisation:“He was undertaking an exploratory dive to try and extend the known limits of this particular cave. He was a very experienced diver and had been into this cave before. The cave is completely flooded under any conditions so the fact that is was raining or flooding didn’t really concern them, that was actually to their advantage for what they wanted to do.”
Conor McGrath is a warden with the Irish Cave Rescue Organisation:“He was undertaking an exploratory dive to try and extend the known limits of this particular cave. He was a very experienced diver and had been into this cave before. The cave is completely flooded under any conditions so the fact that is was raining or flooding didn’t really concern them, that was actually to their advantage for what they wanted to do.”
"From our point of view this is very difficult," he said."As time is passing, we are more and more concerned."
Artur was born in Poland in 1977 and came to Ireland in 2006 with 13 warm water dives under his belt. He started learning cave diving with Welsh cave diving instructor Martyn Farr in 2007.
In 2008 Artur explored pollatoomary and recorded the deepest underwater cave dive in Ireland and Britain, at -103m. Since that time his main interest has shifted to largely unexplored, massive underwater cave systems underlying the Gort Lowlands in Co. Clare.
In 2009 he started using a rebreather which resulted in spectacular discoveries in the Gort area - over 6km of new underwater passages found together with Jim Warny. At the same time Artur is actively sustaining tradional style cave diving exploration - dry caving with sidemount sump diving, mostly in challenging caves in the north of the country.
The year the exploration in the north saw the Marble Arch System length increased from 4.5km to 12km through various underwater connections.
In 2010 he plunged to new depths in epic 4km underwater adventure. Read more about it here.
Artur is a PADI and DSAT Tec Deep Instructor.