Two Taiwanese were confirmed dead on Sunday after going scuba diving off Onna Village in Japan’s Okinawa Prefecture.
The Japan Broadcasting Corporation reported that the Nago Coast Guard Office received a call from a dive boat captain at about 3pm, saying that two divers had gone missing about 800m north of Onna Village’s Manza Beach.
Japan Coast Guard units from Nago and Ishikawa jointly launched a rescue operation, locating the two divers about 2.5 hours later in a cave 30m below the surface. Both were found unconscious and later pronounced dead after emergency treatment at a local hospital, the reports said.
The victims were identified as a Taiwanese tourist surnamed Chang (張), 28, and a Taiwanese scuba-diving coach, 24, based in Okinawa, investigators said.
They had been diving with three of Chang’s relatives and had entered the water for their third dive of the day. The two were reported missing after about 10 minutes underwater, they said.
The three other divers were rescued by an instructor from another diving shop, officials said. The Nago Coast Guard Office is continuing to investigate the cause of the incident.
Weather conditions at the time were reported as sunny, with wave heights of about 0.5m, the Japan Coast Guard said.
The Naha branch of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in Japan confirmed that the Taiwanese tourists had joined a local diving tour in Naha and were not part of a package group organized by Taiwanese travel agencies.
Taiwan is a major source of visitors to Okinawa, with about 84 percent of Taiwanese tourists returning for repeat trips. Onna Village, with its 27km coastline, is especially popular among water sports enthusiasts, but it also records multiple diving and drowning incidents each year.
Cape Maeda, one of Okinawa’s best-known attractions, is near the village and has the highest concentration of dive sites on the prefecture’s main island.
The area is home to numerous shops offering scuba diving and other water sports tours, some of which highlight Mandarin-speaking instructors.
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