Diver saved after two and a half days in the sea but his teenage son is feared dead

A British diver who went missing at sea off the coast of Malaysia has been found alive after two and a half days in the water, but the search for his son has been called off.

Adrian Peter Chesters, 46, was found alongside French woman Alexia Alexandra Molina, 18, in the early hours of yesterday after drifting for nearly three days.

The Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency said Chesters had told them how he watched helplessly as his son became increasingly week and unable to stay afloat.

Molina and Chesters, an oil engineer, were found six miles north of Indonesia’s Bintan Island, which is about 60 miles from where they were reported missing on Wednesday, according to Mersing police chief Cyril Nuing. He said both are in a stable condition in hospital.

Chesters, who is from Sheffield, is understood to have only recently moved his family to the tourist hotspot. He previously worked as the senior engineer behind Shell’s Appomattox rig in the Gulf of Mexico.

The three were diving with their instructor, Kristine Grodem, about 50ft deep at an island off Mersing town in southern Johor state. Grodem, 35, was rescued on Thursday by a passing tugboat. She said the four of them surfaced safely on Wednesday afternoon but later drifted away from the boat and were separated by a strong current.

The Norwegian was training the other three, who were seeking to obtain advanced diving licences, maritime officials said. Emergency services in Malaysia and Indonesia had initially been hopeful of finding all the missing divers alive because they had significant diving experience.

The boat skipper was detained for further investigation after testing positive for methamphetamine. It is not clear if he was high on the drug at the time of the incident, but investigators are looking into any cases of negligence. Police also say they are assessing the dive equipment and location.

© AP

Diving activities off Mersing have been suspended. There are several islands off the town that are popular dive spots.

Two aircraft, nine boats and some 85 personnel as well as fishermen were involved in the search.

Malaysia’s borders reopened to foreigners on April 1 after being closed for more than two years during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The last fatal diving incident in Malaysia was in 2013 when a British tourist died when she was struck by a passing boat’s propeller near resort islands in the South China Sea. One of the most famous diving tragedies is that of American couple Tom and Eileen Lonergan, who went missing at the Great Barrier Reef in 1998.

The tourists had boarded a Port Douglas-based dive boat in Queensland and after three dives at St Crispin Reef, the vessel’s crew conducted a botched head count of passengers, concluded that everyone was on board, and headed back to shore leaving the Lonergans behind. The alarm was not raised until two days later.

A massive search was then launched involving both Navy and civilian vessels but they were never found.

Their dive gear washed up in the weeks following, including a slate which contained a plea for help.

Authorities later ruled the Lonergans died at sea, and the dive crew were blamed for the failed head count.

Skipper Geoff “Jack” Nairn was initially charged with their manslaughter but was found not guilty by a jury.

The tragedy inspired the 2003 thriller Open Water.