A pearling company has been fined $60,000 after a 22-year-old worker drowned while drift diving for pearls in Western Australia's Kimberley region.
Experienced scuba diver Jarrod Hampton drowned off Eighty Mile Beach, south of Broome, in April 2012.
Mr Hampton did not have experience as a drift diver, but had passed a medical examination and completed a pearl diving induction course in Darwin months earlier.
He was one of several divers who were manually collecting pearls from the sea floor for Paspaley Pearling Company as they were towed by a slow-moving vessel, connected only by airline secured to their weight belt.
Mr Hampton was doing his eighth drift dive for the day in up to 15 metres of water when a crew member saw him surface early, but he then went back under.
The skipper called off the dive and a deckhand began pulling Mr Hampton's airline towards the vessel, but when he appeared, he was unconscious and could not be revived.
The company was fined on Monday after pleading guilty in Broome Magistrates Court to failing to provide and maintain a safe working environment, and was also ordered to pay costs of $5000.
WorkSafe WA said that at the time, the company did not have a written emergency procedure for the rescue of an incapacitated diver and the crew had not practised any emergency drills.
Commissioner Lex McCulloch said working underwater was a high-risk operation with potentially fatal consequences if anything goes wrong.
"Employers should have procedures which quickly identify a diver in trouble and facilitate a retrieval of the diver from the water onto the boat," he said.
The company has since introduced standard operating procedures and an emergency plan that allocates a role to each crew member for the recovery of an incapacitated drift driver, either underwater or on the surface.
An inquest into the death is yet to be held.
Mr Hampton's father Tony said in August last year that he and his wife were gutted the charge was not more serious.
In a statement, Paspaley Pearling Company said no charges were laid that suggested the company had caused or was responsible for Mr Hampton's death.
