Cause of Student Diver’s Death Still Unknown

Officials have not determined what caused the death of a 22-year-old woman who was diving with five other students and two instructors from a Ventura diving school, a Los Angeles County coroner’s spokesman said Saturday.

Rochanak Saberzadeh of Chatsworth was discovered unconscious on the ocean floor near Santa Catalina Island with oxygen in her scuba tank, the spokesman said.

Saberzadeh had been diving Friday in about 90 feet of water in a popular diving area called Farnsworth Bank with a group from Ventura Dive & Sport, based in Ventura Harbor.

Although there was oxygen in the tank, the regulator that carries the oxygen to the diver was not in Saberzadeh’s mouth when she was found, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Sgt. Bob Wachsmuth said.

The lessons were part of a two-day excursion for advanced divers, said Bill Magee, owner of the boat, Peace, from which the group was diving. Magee said he has never had a serious diving accident in the six years he has owned the boat.

Magee said weather conditions were perfect for the dive and all the equipment seemed to be operating properly.

Several divers on the boat said Saberzadeh was a certified diver who had completed five or six open-water dives.

The exact cause of her death may not be determined until after Tuesday, when the next available freight vessel is scheduled to transport the body to the mainland, Wachsmuth said.

Saberzadeh’s body remains on the island at the County-USC Hyperbaric Dive Chamber, where she was taken after the accident Friday morning.

Wachsmuth said Saberzadeh’s death could have been caused by drowning or by a heart attack. But because she was diving in just 90 feet of water, he said, it is doubtful that she died of decompression illness, commonly called the bends.

“We will probably never know why the regulator came out of her mouth,” he said.

A special unit of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department began Saturday to investigate the death by examining Saberzadeh’s diving equipment and questioning the diving instructors.

However, an autopsy will not begin until the body is delivered to the coroner’s office in Los Angeles.

Although the Sheriff’s Department frequently uses helicopters to transport passengers to and from the island in emergencies, Wachsmuth said, the department does not use the helicopters to transport corpses.

The death was the first such accident for the diving school, which opened just over two years ago, said manager Drew DeFever.

Saberzadeh and the five other student divers were swimming at about 8:50 a.m. almost two miles off the west end of the island, Wachsmuth said.

The rest of the group was on the way up when they noticed that Saberzadeh was not with them, he said. When they submerged, they found her on the ocean floor.

The crew of the boat included an emergency medical technician, officials said.

Every year, there are between 16 and 20 diving accidents in the waters around Santa Catalina Island, and four or five of those are fatalities, said Chief Petty Officer Reid Crispino of the U.S. Coast Guard.

The number of accidents increases during the summer months, he said.