letter from University of Central Florida
related news articles - UCF Grad Student Missing in Ocean After Diving for Sea Turtle - Body found in same area researcher disappeared while tagging giant turtle - Body Found Of UCF Student Lost Off Atlantic Coast
I received a call from Melissa Ellis with Bay Area Recovery K-9s (BARK) Saturday, August 12th asking for assistance with a recovery search at Melbourne Beach, Florida. Mac and I responded and had the opportunity for some Atlantic Ocean shoreline search time. The Staff and Students that helped us couldn't have been better. Thanks Melissa, appreciate the call.
btw - Sunday while Mac and I worked the shoreline, Melissa and team mate Ken Rupp with his dog Tessa worked the boats - The day before Melissa had called three Sasha hits that were GPS marked and proved to be close to the recovery area -
Melissa and SashaSEBASTIAN, FL (AP) -- Authorities are searching today for the body of a University of Central Florida graduate student who never emerged from a dive into the Atlantic Ocean after a 300-pound sea turtle.
Authorities say 37-year-old Boyd Lyon of Melbourne Beach dove after the turtle into murky waters 400 yards offshore Thursday afternoon about three miles north of the Sebastian Inlet. He was wearing a wet suit, weight belt, flippers and mask, but no snorkel or air tank.
The US Coast Guard suspended its search last night. Broward County divers joined the Brevard Sheriff's Office in its search today. Lyon was supposed to jump onto the turtle, grab onto its shell and bring it to the surface where other researchers could tag it.
Lyon was described as an experienced diver who had hand-captured dozens of sea turtles. He was researching adult male green sea turtles for a master's degree; unlike adult females of the species, the males never come to land.
Associated Press
red dot is PLS (place where Boyd Lyon entered the water and disappeared)
red square is side sonar search area
August 15, 2006
The body of a graduate student who disappeared in the ocean Thursday while trying to capture a 300-pound green sea turtle was found floating Monday near Sebastian Inlet, about a half-mile south of where he was last seen grabbing onto the back of the giant reptile.
Brevard County sheriff's Detective Gary Harrell said Boyd Lyon's body was spotted from a helicopter about 11:30 a.m. Monday, 300 yards off the coast. The body yielded no clues as to what happened to the 37-year-old research student who had found a niche in the "hand capture" of male sea turtles.
"There's no indication to suggest what happened to him," Harrell said.
Lyon was still wearing his dive suit, flippers, mask, a glove on his right hand and a 12-pound dive-weight belt. Lyon was not using an air tank when he vanished while attempting to force the turtle to swim to the surface so it could be brought onto a research boat. It was a technique he had used dozens of times before off the Galapagos Islands, California and the Florida Keys, friends said. Friends and fellow divers suspect Lyon might have been the victim of a shallow-water blackout, in which oxygen starvation causes a diver holding his breath to lose consciousness suddenly.
The condition strikes most commonly within 15 feet of the surface when the oxygen-hungry lungs suck oxygen from the diver's blood. It rarely affects beginners, more often claiming intermediate and advanced divers who are able to go deeper and dive for a longer period of time each time they get in the water. Diving experts say death from shallow-water blackout occurs quickly and without warning.
Capt. Scott Petersohn, of the Volusia County Beach Patrol and the county's dive team, said a person suffering from a blackout would no longer be able to hold his breath and would therefore inhale water and drown. Wearing a weight belt would eliminate any chance of the unconscious person floating to the surface. "He would have rocketed to the bottom," said Petersohn, who was not involved in the search for Lyon.
Sea turtles tend to become spooked during a hand-capture attempt and dive straight down, researchers said. The diver tries to point the turtle toward the surface. Wallace J. Nichols, a friend of Lyon's and a senior researcher at the Ocean Conservancy, said a 300-pound adult green sea turtle is a remarkably strong animal with well-developed swimming muscles. "They can take you where they want," he said.
Harrell, of the Brevard Sheriff's Office, said he suspects Lyon's body was drifting along the bottom of the ocean until gases built up and caused it to float to the surface. When a helicopter flew over at 8 a.m. Monday, there was no sight of the diver, but three hours later he was clearly visible facedown in the water. An autopsy will be performed this morning to determine how Lyon died.
Lyon was an avid scuba diver who friends said was an athletic 170 pounds. He also was determined to break new ground in marine-turtle research by corralling male turtles to bring them aboard a boat for tagging. Little research has been done on male green sea turtles because unlike females they do not come ashore to nest.
On Thursday, he and other UCF students and researchers were out near Sebastian Inlet in three boats. The group spotted a sea turtle a few inches below the surface, and Lyon slipped into the 36-foot-deep water. He grasped the giant turtle, and then both vanished.
Lyon had joined UCF's acclaimed marine-turtle program in January and planned
to continue his research in Hawaii after receiving his doctorate, his friend
said. "He was doing his life's love, being in the water . . . with turtles,"
Shaun Roberts said from Hawaii.
sun-sentinel.com & Orlando Sentinel
Posted August 14 2006, 1:15 PM EDT
SEBASTIAN -- There were reports on Monday that a missing graduate
student's body had been found floating in Atlantic waters several hundred
yards from the mouth of the same inlet where he disappeared while
trying to tag a giant sea turtle.
Brevard Sheriff's Office deputies, the Coast Guard and others have been searching
the same area for Boyd Lyon, a 37-year-old University of Central Florida graduate
student and researcher, who disappeared last Thursday while trying to tag
a huge turtle about 300 yards offshore.
Officers aboard a Brevard sheriff's helicopter spotted what appears
to be the body of the missing student around 11:30 a.m. on Monday
"We are about 99 percent sure it is him,'' sheriff's Lt. Andrew Walters said of Lyon.
Brevard deputies were reported in the process of transferring the body that was found around midday from the sea to shore. They were expected to provide an identification of the victim later in the day.
Lyon, who lived in Melbourne, was aboard a 19-foot Boston Whaler when he
went overboard while trying to tag a 300-pound green sea turtle. Witnesses
said Lyon dove after the turtle about 400 yards offshore while during a research
project. He was not using dive gear.
