Island residents are still walking the shore and checking beaches with their four wheelers this morning.
"Islanders just doing their thing," said Arron Titus, one of the many Islanders who has spent the last two days combing the water and shores of their community for a missing sea urchin diver.
Hope however of a finding Lawrence Collins alive all but evaporated last night when RCMP called off the search in and around Grand Passage.
[Related: Photos from Grand Passage] [Related:Diving conditions in Grand Passage ]
Corporal Blair Pemberton spoke to ground search and rescue volunteers after dark Thursday night, Feb. 23 at the Freeport Firehall.
While the searchers warmed up with chowder, sandwiches and hot drinks, Pemberton thanked them for their hard work and announced the ground search and rescue operations would not continue Friday morning.
"After all this time, there's no way we're thinking we can still find him alive," said Pemberton, incident commander for the search Thursday. "We're suspending the ground search and rescue operations and looking at this now as a recovery operation."
Pemberton said the RCMP would call out the searchers next week to make another sweep of the Island shorelines.
Collins, a 48-year-old diver from Ontario, failed to surface Wednesday afternoon sometime after 12 noon. He was diving for sea urchins in Grand Passage just north of the village of Westport.
Digby RCMP staff sergeant Phil Barrett said although Collins had 10 years' diving experience, he was not experienced in marine environments like the notoriously strong and unpredictable currents of Grand Passage.
Barrett says the decision to call off the search was based on the water temperature and the time of the year and environment the diver was lost in.
"This is not like someone lost in the woods," said Barrett. "Given 48 hours in that environment we determined we could no longer realistically continue a rescue operation."
Collins went down with two other divers near noon Wednesday, Feb. 15. Barrett says visibility on the bottom is only 10 to 15 feet and the divers have about 19 minutes air time on the bottom. When the divers surface the current may have pushed them 500m or more through the passage. The currents however do not necessarily push the divers in a straight-line.
When the divers surfaced, about a half later, they first realized Collins was missing.
The tide at that time was on the ebb or going down. Ebb tides cause a heavy southerly current in Grande Passage from the Bay of Fundy end towards St. Mary's Bay.
Another diver who went in to look for Collins was swept south through the passage more than a kilometer, as far as Peters Island. A local fishing boat, returning from hauling traps picked him up.
Resident's on Brier Island first knew something was wrong when they noticed the Water Queen circling in the passage with one crewmember on the top of the wheelhouse.
"You live by the water long enough and you know when something doesn't look right," said Titus. He and another fishermen took a boat out and joined the search with the Coast Guard and the Sea Quiz, another boat involved in sea urchin diving.
As word spread Wednesday, almost all the fishing boats on the Long and Brier Islands joined the search. Eventually boats even came from across St. Mary's Bay from Saulnierville, Meteghan and as far down as Salmon River.
The Coast Guard Westport assigned grids to the boats involved and they continued searching until late in the night Wednesday.
A Cormorant helicopter from CFB Greenwood was over the passage for several hours Wednesday afternoon and again briefly Thursday morning. Visibility was good with some haze although the sea was choppy.
An R.C.M.P helicopter arrived near 1 p.m. Thursday and spent several hours in the area with a local fisherman on board for a guide.
Meanwhile the RCMP and Fundy Ground Search and Rescue were coordinating shoreline searches. On Brier Island the Westport Fire Department walked the passage shores and the south end of the island both Wednesday afternoon and Thursday morning.
Locals continued to search the south and "back" (south westerly) end of Brier with four wheelers and on foot throughout the afternoon.
Thursday afternoon, Pemberton called in the Digby Area Search and Rescue to take over the search on Brier. They arrived with a couple dozen searchers and a mobile command centre near 3 p.m.
On Long Island, Fundy Ground Search and Rescue and many local volunteers walked the shores til dark Wednesday and were out again at low tide Thursday morning until dark.
The Freeport Fire Hall was open and providing warm drinks and homemade meals both days. Fire chief Gerald Moore, Lieutenant Helen Teed and a small army of local volunteers looked after the searchers, ran errands and answered the phones and kept the local community informed.
On Thursday, when Teed learned the Digby searchers were en route, one little post on Facebook and a couple phone calls brought in a deluge of sandwiches and chowders.
"The community response was incredible," says Teed. "Those searchers didn't know this poor man but you just think ‘What if he was my family member?'"
Barrett says Collins had recently moved to the area in answer to a job ad looking for a sea urchin diver. The RCMP have determined there was no criminal wrong-doing. The Nova Scotia Department of Labour is continuing with its investigation into this workplace incident.
jriley@digbycourier.ca
[Related: Photos from Grand Passage] [Related:Diving conditions in Grand Passage ]
