Boatie cleared in death of diver

By BRIDGET CARTER

A boatie who ran over a man who was out diving has been cleared of any criminal wrong-doing.

But the case has sparked a review of diving rules, after concern that the flags used to warn boaties about divers are often difficult to see.

Murrays Bay security firm owner Bernard Langton was killed on January 8.

He had been diving for scallops about 90m off Brownrigg Pt, on the south side of Kawau Island, when he was struck by the propeller of a boat travelling towards Bostaquet Bay.

Relatives on board two launches heard yelling from nearby boaties and found Mr Langton, 46, in the water surrounded by blood.

Maritime Police Senior Sergeant Martin Paget said the boatie responsible, who was also a diver, did not see the diver's warning flags, and he mistakenly thought people were calling out for him to slow down because they were fishing.

He had been travelling somewhere between 4 and 8 knots. The legal speed limit was 5 knots, but without a speed-reading device on board it was impossible to prove his exact speed.

The victim's wife, Maree Langton, said she was disappointed that the boat operator had been cleared.

Her husband was an experienced diving enthusiast who did everything correctly and she believed if the boat's operator had been more careful, the tragedy would never have occurred.

"I didn't want anything horrible to happen to him, but I would like to have had the acknowledgment that he had made a mistake," she said.

Speaking from her Murrays Bay home yesterday, Mrs Langton described how the tragedy unfolded during a fine summer day.

The family were on their new Vindex 40 launch, Bernie Langton was out on one of his frequent dives with 1m-tall dive flags up and she and the couple's children, Matthew, 9 and Alicia, 12, were enjoying themselves on board.

As she heard the yelling and realised what had happened, she shut her children in the cabin, made a mayday plea for help and went to her husband's aid with the help of other relatives, some of whom where on another nearby launch.

Mrs Langton said her husband did everything by the book.

"He was just one of those people that just wouldn't steal a peach off someone's tree that was hanging over the fence," she said.

He was a hard-working Northland-born man who always enjoyed the outdoors and diving - to the extent that he would take time off work during summer for weekly dive trips and would take diving gear with him on trips overseas.

He had dived for several years and used to put up dive flags before it became law to do so.

Mrs Langton said one of the things she wanted was for other boaties to show the common courtesy on the water that her husband would have shown, by slowing down, avoiding other boats and looking out for signs warning of hazards in the water.

Jim Lott, the nautical adviser for recreation boating at the Maritime Safety Authority, said that, sadly, there had been a case every few years of a diver being struck by a boat.

Police, the MSA and the diving community were looking at ways to make the signals warning that a diver was down below much clearer, by either changing the style of the flag or introducing a new symbol.

Dive flags were supposed to be displayed in a way that they could be seen 200m away, but that was not always easy.

It meant people had to wave a flag around or hold it out when there was no breeze.

The authority, police and the diving community were looking at ways to make the flags more visible.

Mr Lott said these sorts of accidents could happen even when boats were travelling at the slowest of speeds.

"Even when a boat is travelling at 2 knots and hits a diver, there could be a tragedy," he said.