The woman who died off the NSW Central Coast was an experienced diver who was exploring a sunken warship with friends.
The 33-year-old diver was 30 metres below the surface at the popular HMAS Adelaide site off the Terrigal coast on Sunday morning when a friend noticed she was struggling.
Her friend dragged her to the surface, in an emergency ascent and pulled her onto the dive boat where members of the group carried out CPR.
The woman, from Bronte in Sydney's east, was taken to hospital for the bends - a decompression sickness suffered by divers where bubbles form in the blood stream due to changes in pressure.
She died in Prince of Wales Hospital about 4pm on Sunday.
Dive Centre Manly owner Richard Nicholls said the odds of someone dying from the bends during a recreational dive were close to 500,000 to one.
"It is very unusual that someone dies from the bends in a recreational dive scenario," Mr Nicholls said.
"But it much more dangerous if a person doesn't get to the surface when they're not breathing than it is to unsafely ascend from that depth."
Mr Nicholls said the maximum ascension rate for divers is 18 metres every minute, so it is likely there was a build up of gases in the woman's lungs which caused them to expand and cause internal injuries.
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