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Imagine taking a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Australia to scuba dive within the Great Barrier Reef to explore the otherworldly beauty of an underwater world. Now imagine breaking the surface of the water to realize, in horror, that the dive boat that took you to that location is nowhere to be seen.
You’re now floating within the endless blue ocean, your view reaches the horizon with not a soul in between. You feel disoriented, swivel around to see if maybe the boat is behind you when the reality of your situation sinks in; you’ve been abandoned in the vast, shark-infested waters of the Coral Sea. You’re left with nothing to do but desperately hope & pray that the dive boat company realizes their terrible error & comes back to save you, but hours drag by & help never comes. This, sadly, was the reality that Tom & Eileen Lonergan faced in 1998.
More than 27 years ago, in January 1998, husband & wife of nearly ten years, 33-year-old Tom & 28-year-old Eileen Lonergan, traveled to Australia to visit the Great Barrier Reef. The couple met at Louisiana State University where Tom studied psychology & Eileen studied biology & their mutual interest in outdoor activities quickly drew the couple together until they were eventually married in June 1988.
The couple had only just completed a nearly three-year tour with the Peace Corps where they were teaching underprivileged children in Tuvalu, an island country in the Pacific Ocean halfway between Hawaii & Australia as well as in Fiji, its neighboring island nation to the south. Their work in community development & education satisfied their desire to immerse themselves in other cultures while they made a positive impact in the world.
Their work on the islands brought them to the ocean which furthered their love for diving & underwater exploration. Eileen had already been a scuba diver, but after they were married, her love for the water rubbed off on Tom.
By early 1998, the couple was on a three-month backpacking trip through the South Pacific & Southeast Asia & planned to make Australia their final stop before they headed back to the United States. Some sources indicate that they planned to settle down in Hawaii while others indicate they were going back to their home state of Louisiana. They looked forward to ending their trip by exploring the incredible underwater beauty within the Great Barrier Reef.
The Great Barrier Reef stretches 1,429 miles (2300 km) over an area of about 133,000 square miles (214,000 km) & is the largest coral reef system in the world. It’s located off the coast of Queensland, Australia in the northeastern portion of the country within the Coral Sea. The reef is so expansive that it can be seen from space & is made up of 3,800 individual reefs that form the largest living structure on Earth.
On the morning of Sunday, January 25, 1998 the couple left the Gone Walkabout Hostel in Cairns (Cans) where they were staying & boarded a BTS Bus Company bus for an hour-long drive to a marina in Port Douglas, Queensland. They paid $160 for a scheduled dive charter on the boat, Outer Edge, a 12 meter boat licensed to carry at least 26 passengers. Some of the group going out that day were novice divers while others were far more experienced.
The boat was operated by Skipper Geoffrey “Jack” Nairn & his five crew members who were taking the passengers out diving along three popular sites at St. Crispin Reef, about 38 nautical miles northeast of Port Douglas.
Tom & Eileen enjoyed two 40-minute dives & started their third dive at a location known as Fish City because of the abundance of marine life.
According to local fisherman Mick Bird, who had been a few miles away that day, there were dozens of sharks around the reef at the time. Each time they threw out a line, they’d pull a shark in.
While some divers followed a dive master that day, Tom & Eileen toured their area on their own since they were more experienced divers.
British diver, Bryan Brogdan, was also on Outer Edge that day alongside Eileen & Tom & while they were diving at Fish City, he admired a giant clam that was embedded in the reef as well as the striking blue water that was illuminated with shafts of sunlight. While Brogdan returned to the boat, Tom & Eileen chose to stay down longer than the crew had instructed. When he last saw them, they were calmly swimming 12 meters (39 feet) down.
According to the boat’s skipper, Jack, at about 3 pm, when everyone was set to be back on board, he asked dive masters George Pyrohiw & Kathy Traverso to do a mandatory head count & he was told that all divers were accounted for. However, George later claimed that he informed Jack that only 24 of the 26 divers were accounted for during the head count that took place after the third & final dive of the day. Because two passengers had jumped into the water halfway through the count, there was confusion & Jack said, and two in the water makes 26 as he counted the two swimmers twice. Jack denies that this conversation ever happened & insists he would have ordered a recount had there been a discrepancy.
None of the crew members could recall who was in charge of the diver’s log book or who had done the first two sets of head counts during their first dives of the day. They all later testified that it was standard practice to assume a head count had been done if the boat’s engines were started.
From Fish City, Outer Edge made its way back to Port Douglas while Tom & Eileen were left behind in the vast open water. Not only had the headcount been done incorrectly, but no one seemed to notice that two sets of diving gear were missing. An inventory proved that the boat was missing two air tanks & two weightbelts, but no one investigated further.
After the boat docked at Port Douglas & all the passengers disembarked, the crew noticed two bags as well as shoes that were still on the boat. One was a plastic bag with the couple’s dry clothing & Tom’s glasses while the other was an empty dive bag. Sadly, the crew just assumed that a couple of divers accidentally left their things behind & would be back soon to collect them. These items were moved to another part of the boat & forgotten.
Norm Stigant was the bus driver responsible for taking passengers back to their hotels that day & sometime between 5:30-6 pm, he told his boss that Tom & Eileen hadn’t shown up for their ride. He looked for them in the ice cream parlor, coffee shop as well as the hotel & other areas, but he wasn’t able to find them. His boss called Outer Edge dive charters & spoke with who she believed was the owner, Jack Nairn & the gist of the conversation was that the driver shouldn’t worry & he should just head off on his way.
Because of these multiple mistakes, when Tom & Eileen likely broke the water’s surface shortly after 3 pm they would have realized in horror that they’d been left behind. According to records, the sun set four hours later in Port Douglas at 6:58 pm.
The following day, when the Outer Edge went back out to St. Crispin Reef with a new set of divers, the crew was still completely unaware of their fatal mistake. While divers took in the beauty of the reef & underwater life, one diver eventually came across six dive weights that were resting on the bottom of the sea. This was reported to Jack, but since he didn’t know the significance, the find was described as nothing more than a bonus.
It’s possible at that very moment in time that Tom & Eileen could have still been alive after the passage of 24 hours, maybe floating only a few miles away. Perhaps they used the empty dive belt to tether themselves together.
On Tuesday, the boat took a new group of eager divers to the reef & on their second return, nearly 50 hours had gone by since the Lonergans were forgotten. After they got back to the marina & the passengers disembarked, Skipper Jack Nairn realized that the unclaimed dive bags from Sunday’s trip were still on the boat.
As Jack opened the bags he found a wallet & ID documents that included passports as well as a shirt that Tom had been wearing on the day of his dive. As he stared at the bag’s contents, he finally realized their fatal mistake & he quickly reached for the phone.
51 hours after Tom & Eileen were last seen, police confirmed that the couple never returned to their hostel & their credit cards had not been used. With this realization, a massive air & sea search began that was carried out over the course of many days, but there was sadly no trace of the couple. Not only were the Australian Navy & police involved in the search, but also 17 aircrafts, helicopters as well as locals who jumped into their own boats to assist.
Being left behind wouldn’t have been an instant death sentence for Tom & Eileen. A man named Paul Lucas was left behind by a dive boat in northern New South Wales in January 2000 when he was a tourist with less than ten dives under his belt. He survived more than 40 hours in stormy seas.
Since Tom & Eileen were wearing inflatable life jackets, they could have inflated them using the air in their tanks. In Queensland, under the blazing heat of the sun with no fresh water, someone floating in the center of the ocean would have succumbed to dehydration far quicker than they would on land.
Ten days after they were left behind, Tom’s buoyancy jacket with his name neatly printed on the pocket was found 50 miles north of St. Crispin Reef with no tank attached. Eileen’s dive jacket marked with her name later washed ashore north of Port Douglas along with a tank which was still floating from the last remnants of air as well as one of Eileen’s fins.
None of their diving equipment suggested that the couple had met a violent end from a shark attack. Experts at the inquest speculate that they likely helplessly drifted back & forth with the tides, quickly dehydrating under the powerful sun.
A green & grey wetsuit that was Eileen’s size washed up in north Queensland in early February. Scientists measured the speed of barnacle growth on its zip that estimated it was lost on January 26, the day after the Lonergans went for their dive. There were tears in the material around the armpit & buttocks that appeared to have been caused by coral though some speculated they were from a shark attack.
Investigators know for certain that the couple survived their first night in the water as several months later, a fisherman who was 100 miles north of their dive site, found a dive slate in a coastal mangrove swamp that documented their thoughts & proved their desperation as dawn broke on Monday morning in a message that was believed to be written by Eileen.
A dive slate is a waterproof writing surface used by divers to communicate underwater or record information. The message read, Monday January 26, 1998 08 am. To anyone who can help us: We have been abandoned on Agincourt Reef by MV Outer Edge 25 Jan 98 03 pm, Please help us come to rescue us before we die. Help!!!
Some experts have wondered if the slate found was genuine or a sick, cruel hoax.
Sadly, the bodies of Tom & Eileen Lonergan have never been recovered. There have been various theories as to their fate after the boat left the reef that emerged during the investigation & the coroner’s inquest. In October 1998, the coroner ruled that Tom & Eileen died at sea from either drowning, exposure or shark attack sometime between 8 am on Monday, January 26, 1998 & February 2, 1998, eight days after they were left behind.
About two-thirds of a person’s body weight is water & since every cell in the body requires water to function, humans can only survive a short amount of time without water, generally three days depending on the conditions. Symptoms of dehydration begin with extreme thirst, fatigue & ultimately end in organ failure & death. Without water, the body cannot function & can result in severe complications that include altered mental status, kidney failure, shock liver, low blood pressure, lactic acidosis from an imbalance of pH in the body & death.
Australian winters are opposite from the northern hemisphere with summer being December through February & winter being June through August. In January, Tom & Eileen would have been exposed the the blazing sun in Queensland where daytime temperatures average 93℉ (34℃) without fresh water, potentially inadvertently consuming salt water paired with salt crystals that form on exposed areas of skin which evaporate in the sun & wind, further increasing dehydration.
At the inquest a few months after the couple were left behind, Detective Sergeant Paul Priest spoke about what they found in the hostel where Tom & Eileen had been staying in when they left for their dive. He described finding leather bound personal diaries with entries that were chillingly bizarre & prophetic though he ultimately dismissed them as the private thoughts of an introspective couple.
Tom wrote a passage in his journal on August 3, 1997, five months earlier, Like a student who has finished an exam, I feel that my life is complete & I am ready to die. As far as I can tell, from here my life can only get worse. It has peaked & it’s all downhill from here until my funeral.
Two weeks before their final dive, Eileen wrote an entry on January 9, 1998, (Tom) hopes to die a quick & painly (believed to mean painless) death & he hopes it happens soon. Tom’s not suicidal, but he’s got a death wish that could lead him to what he desires & I could get caught in that.
As word of these entries became public knowledge, rumors swirled around that Tom could have been responsible for a murder-suicide.
Another twist came from the captain of another dive boat who visited the reef one day after the Lonergans were left behind. He told investigators that the head count on his return trip was several over the number they left with. He also said he’d heard American voices among the all-Italian group on board. This made people wonder if the Lonergans staged their own disappearance by intentionally staying under water while their dive boat sped off without them in the afternoon before & later boarded with the group of Italians. To add fuel to this idea, dozens of people contacted investigators claiming to have seen Tom & Eileen at various pubs & other places across Australia.
Detective Priest insists that the investigation didn’t turn up one iota of evidence that Tom & Eileen planned either their own death or disappearance. While they remained underwater, enjoying the beauty of their last dive location, they would have had no way of anticipating that the boat’s crew would miscount the divers & leave them behind. Their money & their passports were left behind & they hadn’t utilized their bank accounts after they disappeared. They also couldn’t have anticipated that the other dive boat they allegedly boarded the following day would have come to the location where they just happened to be floating.
In October 1998, Skipper Jack Nairn was charged with manslaughter after he failed to ensure that safety measures were carried out on the vessel he was responsible for which led to the deaths of Tom & Eileen Lonergan.
During the trial which began on November 8, 1999, defense attorney Graham Houston argued it was possible that the couple feigned their disappearance & faked their deaths, referring to their journal entries, a fact that utterly disgusted Eileen’s grieving father, John Hains. He also suggested a planned joint suicide & suggested that Tom killed Eileen & then himself.
Nine witnesses were called to testify, claiming they’d seen Tom & Eileen in Queensland during the days following their disappearances, recognizing them because of media coverage of the case.
There were questions as to why the couple would have removed their buoyancy vests & tanks which would have helped them stay afloat while they remained at sea. The Great Barrier Reef is home to several species of predatory sharks while lack of visible teeth marks on the equipment recovered suggested that they likely did not succumb to a shark attack. On the day they were left behind, the sea was described as glassy & warm so some wonder why the young, fit couple hadn’t swam to safety or flagged down another tour or fishing boat in the area.
There were also well-lit diving platforms & coral outcrops within swimming distance of Fish City, something they were likely unable to see. These platforms are present for boats to tie to in order to drop off snorkelers, but according to an investigator, the Lonergans would have had to swim 3.7 miles (6 km) to the nearest refuge, a pontoon that was anchored at Agincourt Reef across a likely strong current that would have made it impossible to reach.
It’s unlikely they discarded their tanks immediately since they likely expected the boat to soon realize its error & come back for them. It’s theorized that as the sun began to set & it became apparent that the mistake had not been realized, they dropped their tanks at that point. If they were full, they would have sunk depending on the type of tank used. When an aluminum tank is full, it will sink (it floats when empty) while a steel tank remains negatively buoyant & sinks when full or empty. When one of their tanks was to shore it was said to be floating with remnants of air.
As Monday passed, they would have become very dehydrated from the heat & may have become delirious which caused them to remove their buoyancy vests. It’s also possible they took the vests off for better range of motion for swimming had they been attempting to swim to shore. Their wetsuits would have provided a degree of floatation as well.
Their likely cause of death was dehydration, while they could have also just fallen asleep & drowned. A shark may have attacked them, causing damage to Eileen’s wetsuit.
Jack testified that as the new owner of the boat, he accepted responsibility for leaving the couple behind, but argued that he had delegated responsibility for diver safety to the experienced crew he inherited when he took over the boat, placing the blame on George Pyrohiw & Kathy Traverso for miscounting the divers.
Some question the truth of a headcount being done at the third dive site as Richard Triggs, another diver on the boat that day, did not recall seeing a headcount done before they left Fish City.
Jack Nairn was ultimately found not guilty though his company, Outer Edge Dive, pleaded guilty to negligence & was fined. The company soon went out of business due to their legal debt & bad press.
Publicity surrounding the case made the potential for disaster within the Queensland dive industry where nearly 50,000 people are employed within Queensland’s $4.3 billion Barrier Reef tourist trade which hosts nearly 4 million day trips annually.
Because Tom & Eileen’s deaths were avoidable, the state of Queensland issued regulations for dive operations to reinforce how operators should be conducting head counts, maintaining lookouts & the fact that diving & snorkeling can worsen existing medical conditions.
Unfortunately, Tom & Eileen were not the first people left behind during a dive & they’ve not been the last. Two brothers, Ian Kensington & Ryan Chauhry were left off the coast of Perth while they were diving off the 12m catamaran, Wildcat, as recently as Sunday, March 2, 2025.
After they were underwater for about 35 minutes they heard a nearby boat engine start. As the vessel moved away, they reported being aggressively pushed back & when they surfaced, they saw Wildcat heading back to shore. Despite the fact that they frantically waved, screamed & used a strobe light, the boat continued to shore without them.
The brothers felt too vulnerable to attempt to swim back to shore due to shark activity paired with the fact that they felt they were too far offshore. They activated their ankle-mounted Shark Shield deterrent device & shed all non-essential equipment. A shark shield is an electronic device that creates a powerful three-dimensional electrical field around the person using it that overpowers a shark’s highly sensitive electroreceptors.
It’s estimated they were left at sea for about 40-60 minutes when they saw the Rottnest Island ferry heading in their direction. Thankfully with their waving & shouting, they were spotted & brought to safety. At this point, the Wildcat dive boat showed up & told the ferry they were there to pick up its divers.
The brothers have since secured lawyers to represent them, claiming that Perth Diving Academy (PDA) provided no duty of care either during the dive or after & describe the boat separation as negligence.
In 2003, the movie Open Water, was released & is based loosely off of Tom & Eileen’s case about a vacationing couple from America who were stranded during a dive within shark-infested seas off the Bahamas.
During the movie’s filming the lead actors, Blanchard Ryan & Daniel Travis, spent more than 120 hours in the water 31 miles (50 km) off Barbados amidst sea life that included bull sharks & grey reef sharks. They wore chain mail under their wetsuits for protection as shark experts & filmmakers manipulated their movements by throwing chunks of bloody tuna in as an alternative source of food.
Eileen’s father, John Hains, does not hold ill will against the crew & passengers of the Outer Edge & sees his daughter & son-in-law’s deaths as a tragic accident. Understandably, he struggles to come to terms that their bodies have never been found, but says, I suppose we have the Great Barrier Reef. They’re part of that.
References:
- Wikipedia: Tuvalu
- The New York Times: Film; Dying at sea. Probably.
- Australia’s Lonergan Trial – learning how to count heads
- The Age: A mystery resurfaces
- Daily Mail: Disturbing last diary entries of couple who vanished in shark-infested waters & were never seen again
- Peace Corps Online: The loss of Tuvalu RPCVs Eileen & Tom Lonergan at sea on the Great Barrier Reef
- Utterly Interesting: The disappearance of Tom & Eileen Lonergan: A tragic day on the Great Barrier Reef
- Diver Net: Divers left at sea consider negligence action
- Guardian: The cruel sea
- Medium: Couple accidentally abandoned at sea during scuba diving expedition
- The U.S. Sun: Sea Riddle: Eerie diary entry, ripped wetsuit & mysterious ‘help us’ note.. Haunting tale of couple who vanished on diving trip
- National Ocean Service: What is the Great Barrier Reef?
- Medical News Today: How long can you live without water?
- KOS Divers: Dehydration & diving
- Travel Scoop: Queensland Weather
- Spirit of Freedom: Dive seasons & weather
- Shark Shield user manual
- Scuba: Steel vs aluminum scuba tanks: Which should you get?
- Outside: A watery grave
