Tragic Death Of Marine Expert In Gran Canaria Ship Graveyard

A 30-year-old female scuba diver who was an expert in water currents has died after being trapped in a room in a wrecked vessel that is in a ship’s graveyard at the bottom of the ocean off the coast of Gran Canaria.

Maria Casanova Masjoan, 30, died at the wreckage of the Soo Yang which is one of several ship’s located deep underwater in an area known as El Narcotico.

The Soo Yang was built in 1974 in Huelva, in the southern Spanish region of Andalusia and sailed under the Korean flag until 1980 when ownership changed and it moved to the sailing under the Moroccan flag with a different name, the Ain Jemaa. It was sunk on 15th December 1990.

It is located in a ship’s graveyard called Los Narcoticos that has at least two other shipwrecks, the El Ifafa and the El Clavado.

Soo Yang was 65 meters (213 feet) in length and the reason it sank remain unknown.

The wreckage lies 131 feet below the surface off the coast of the Port of Las Palmas in Gran Canaria in the Spanish Canary Islands.

The victim’s colleagues notified the emergency services at around 11 am on Saturday (10th October) when she failed to surface, and a rescue team was sent to the scene.

After several hours, the first rescue attempt had to be cancelled due to difficulties reaching the young woman’s position in the wreck, as can be seen in the video of the search.

According to the Spanish Civil Guard, the victim’s body was found trapped in slime, metal structures, old ropes and other equipment. It was only recovered the following day.

The local police are investigating the dive manager for negligence.

The investigation is ongoing and so far nobody has been arrested.

The University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria said in a statement that the victim was doing her PhD and was finishing a project on marine currents when she died.

She had recently published an article in an international magazine on the currents around the Canary Islands.