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The Bayesian luxury yacht disaster in Sicily has once again demonstrated the risks taken by salvage divers when recovering victims from a shipwreck. The vessel sank in 164 feet (50 m) of water, meaning they could only work in 12-minute shifts before having to surface. Scattered debris further hampered the operation. The physical and physiological effects on the body when working in such conditions requires the skills of highly-trained individuals and, while technological advances have made the job far easier, the task of underwater recovery can still be a grim and thankless one.

Click through and find out more about the unique and often dangerous role of the salvage diver.

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Pictured: divers of the Vigili del Fuoco, the Italian Corps of Firefighters, arrive with a body bag in Porticello near Palermo, Sicily, on August 21, 2024, two days after the British-flagged luxury yacht Bayesian sank. Seven people died in the tragedy, the operation to retrieve bodies described as "complex," with divers limited to 12-minute underwater shifts because of the depth involved, around 164 feet (50 m), and the fact that debris was obstructing access to the stricken vessel.

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The salvage diving story begins with the invention of the diving bell in the 16th century, or at least crude versions of it.

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The man credited with developing the forerunner of the modern diving bell is Edmond Halley, who in 1691 unveiled his diving apparatus. The bell was made of wood, with the outer side covered with lead. Stale air was replenished by atmosphere delivered via weighted barrels of air sent down from the surface.

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Reaching a wreck was one thing, raising it was quite another. This early 18th-century illustration depicts the traditional method of raising a wreck with the help of anchors and ships or hulks as pontoons, basically the same method that was used to raise the Swedish 17th-century warship Vasa, salvaged in 1961.

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In 1775, Charles Spalding, an Edinburgh confectioner and amateur engineer, improved on Halley's design by adding a system of balance-weights to ease the raising and lowering of the bell. Unfortunately, Spalding became a victim of his own success, drowning while undertaking salvage work on a shipwreck off the coast of Dublin in 1783.

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A few years later, two brothers, John and Charles Deane, were commissioned by the Admiralty in London to explore the Royal George, which sank in 1782 while at anchor in the Solent off Spithead. The stricken vessel lay in 60 feet (18 m) of water. The Deanes had devised a diving apparatus consisting of a weighted helmet, into which air was pumped via a hose from a surface vessel. The diver used a weighted ladder to descend, and had a signal line for communicating with the surface. Between 1832 and 1839, the brothers salvaged various items from the wreck, and John Deane also pinpointed the possible wreck site of the Mary Rose.

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The Deane brothers had effectively invented the diving helmet, a rigid head enclosure the modern versions of which are still worn by professional divers engaged in surface-supplied diving. In this image, a diver, wearing a full diving suit, is preparing to dive during a salvage expedition of wrecked battleship USS Maine that sank in Havana Harbor in Havana, Cuba, in 1898. The sinking of the Maine led to the outbreak of the Spanish–American War.

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Salvage divers were deployed to considerable effect during the First World War, sent below the surface to help retrieve bodies and recover sensitive equipment if depths allowed. In Scotland, British Royal Navy divers helped salvage the German fleet which was sunk at Scapa Flow.

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In the early 20th century, technology advanced to the point where new oxygen breathing apparatus designed specifically to be worn by divers recovering victims of drownings had been devised. Lightweight and streamlined, the equipment helped enable divers to work quickly and efficiently in often dangerous conditions. Pictured in 1933 is a Red Cross rescuer in New York demonstrating the equipment.

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Throughout the Second World War, divers from both sides of the divide were used extensively in recovery operations. In fact, since the end of WWII, deep sea divers and underwater salvage personnel have a accounted for the recovery of millions of dollars worth of valuable military equipment, blasting or cutting their way while reclaiming ships, planes, and countless other items.

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For example, Royal Navy divers were deployed to clear the Suez Canal of blockships sunk by Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser's government during the crisis of 1956.

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Here, a US Navy diver is seen dredging an excavation site during an underwater recovery operation, searching for personnel who went missing during the Second World War off the coast of Koror in the Pacific Ocean.

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One maritime incident where salvage divers were not required was the sinking in July 1956 of the transatlantic ocean liner SS Andrea Doria after she collided with another passenger liner, Stockholm. The incident is remembered for the remarkably successful rescue of 1,660 of Andrea Doria's 1,706 passengers and crew: 46 people on the ship died as a direct consequence of the collision.

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Twelve years later, a diving team did reach the Andrea Doria to place a commemorative plaque on the wreck of the liner, lying on the seabed 45 miles (72 km) off the coast of Nantucket, Massachusetts.

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Salvage divers were deployed throughout the Apollo spaceflight program to receive returning astronauts. But special precautions had to be taken. Here, the crew of Apollo 11 sit in a raft before recovery. All are wearing biological isolation garments, as is the United States Navy underwater demolition team swimmer sent to meet them.

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John Deane had estimated the location of the Mary Rose in 1782, but it wasn't until 1971 that King Henry VIII's flagship was definitively located. The historic vessel was salvaged in 1982, raised from the seabed off the coast of Portsmouth, England, in a giant 500-ton cradle after 437 years at the bottom of the sea.

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Salvage diving has its rewards. In 1985, the wreck of the Nuestra Señora de Atocha was discovered by American treasure hunter Mel Fisher. The Spanish galleon had sunk in a hurricane off the Florida Keys in 1622. In 2014, the vessel was added to the Guinness Book of World Records for being the most valuable shipwreck to be recovered, its precious cargo worth anywhere between US$250 and $500 million.

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Another equally famous shipwreck was discovered in 1985 by Robert Ballard and his team, that of RMS Titanic. Pictured are sets of breakfast dishes from the sunken vessel, which went down in the North Atlantic on April 15, 1912, after striking an iceberg.

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The work of the salvage diver is an often grim and thankless task. For example, after the MS Herald of Free Enterprise capsized on the night of March 6, 1987, divers were tasked with recovering the bodies of 193 passengers and crew killed in the disaster.

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When 852 people died after the cruise ferry MS Estonia sank on September 28, 1994, during a crossing between Tallinn, Estonia, and Sweden in the Baltic Sea, maritime recovery technology was still being advanced. In 2022, a photogrammetric survey to investigate the sinking—one of the worst maritime disasters of the 20th century—was carried out by a state-of-the-art ROV (remotely operated vehicle).

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In 1996 the salvage of artifacts from the Titanic yielded the most significant item from the vessel—the ship's bell, sounded on the night of the disaster.

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This photo from June 1997 shows underwater archaeologists carrying an ancient Indian granite slab recovered at the wreck site of the British vessel Earl Temple in Thitu Reef in the disputed South China Sea. The British vessel belonging to the English East India company sunk in 1763, carrying passengers and cargo en route from Britain to the Philippines.

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On January 11, 2000, the trawler fishing vessel Solway Harvester sank in heavy seas 12 miles (19 km) off the coast of the Isle of Man in the Irish Sea. Salvage divers had the unenviable task of recovering the bodies of the seven crewmen, who were all found onboard.

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On February 9, 2001, in a tragedy that garnered widespread publicity, the submarine USS Greeneville collided with the Japanese fishery high-school training ship Ehime Maru off the coast of Honolulu, Hawaii. Nine of the 35 people aboard Ehime Maru were killed.

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Divers needed to sit in a recompression chamber after taking part in the recovery operation to rid the buildup of nitrogen inside their bodies, such was the depth of water in which the vessel sank. Among the many challenges faced by salvage divers is the risk of decompression sickness, or "the bends."

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The salvaging in 2002 of the civil war-era ironclad warship USS Monitor was eagerly followed by many in the United States. The famed warship sank 240 feet (73 m) to the ocean floor during a heavy storm off Cape Hatteras on December 31, 1862. Four officers and 12 men were lost. Pictured is the vessel's revolving gun turret being raised.

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A salvage diving crew was dispatched to the River Clyde near Glasgow in Scotland after the tugboat Flying Phantom sank while towing a cargo vessel on December 19, 2007. The limited visibility in murky waters, where navigation and recovery efforts were hindered by reduced sightlines, proved especially challenging.

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The notorious capsizing of the cruise ship Costa Concordia on January 13, 2012, in Giglio Porto, Italy, caused the deaths of 32 people. The recovery operation was especially dangerous given that the passenger liner was lying on her side in an unsteady position near an underwater ledge.

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On May 29, 2019, in the worst disaster on the Danube in more than half a century, a tourist boat called Mermaid, with 35 people on board, sank after being hit by a larger boat under a bridge in Budapest during heavy rain. Twenty-seven people died in the accident, with salvage divers challenged by fast-moving water as they attempted to recover the victims.

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Sometimes conditions are so bad that the use of divers simply isn't an option. When a container ship struck one of the piers of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore on March 26, 2024, the underwater sonar imaging tool known as CODA Octopus was used to survey the damage. CODA is the primary survey tool used by divers when visibility is clouded to just one to two feet (0.5 m). In this case, mud and the loose bottom of the Patapsco River forced divers to work in virtual darkness because when lit, their view is similar as if driving through a heavy snowfall at night with high-beam headlights on.

Sources: (BBC) (CNN)