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Editor: Rod Sullivan
Profession: Maritime Attorney

Category: Boating Accidents

Rusty Mason was a 54 year old employee of Florida's Department of Environmental Protection Office of Coastal and Aquatic Managed Areas. He died last month while working on a coral reef restoration project in the Dry Tortugas.

Mason, who was a certified dive instructor, was one of seven people working aboard the Key West-based PV (patrol vessel) Peter Gladding, a NOAA vessel. He was working with another diver when he lost consciousness during a 3 to 5 minute decompression stop at about 15 feet below the surface. The other diver, Raul Peña-Lopez, of Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, tried to keep Mason alive by giving him air from his own tank, but eventually he had to let Mason go.

When Peña-Lopez returned to the surface, two other divers immediately went down and recovered Mason from the bottom, 100 feet below. The members of the crew of the MV Peter Gladding took turns giving him CPR during the 15-mile boat trip to Fort Jefferson and a 75-mile rescue helicopter flight to the Lower Keys Medical Center near Key West.

Last October the 430 foot long Bahamian registered refrigerated cargo vessel MV Green Chile illegally anchored in the coral reef off of Dry Tortugas. The area is protected under the National Marine Sanctuaries Act. The location was declared a no-anchor area by NOAA in 1977 to protect the coral-reef environment there.

Mason graduated from the Florida Institute of Technology in 1976 with a BA in Oceanographic Technology. He moved to the Keys in 1990 to work at the Looe Key Reef Resort as a vessel operator and dive instructor. In 2002, he went to work for the Florida DEP's Office of Coastal and Aquatic Managed Areas.