TOKYO, June 19 (Xinhua) -- Japan's Coast Guard said Monday all seven divers who went missing in waters north of a coral reef in the southernmost prefecture of Okinawa have been rescued.
According to the 11th Regional Coast Guard Headquarters, by 3:00 p.m. local time the missing divers had been located following an aerial search and rescued unharmed.
At around 11:50 a.m. a diving instructor said that seven people who had gone diving had gone missing in waters around 600 meters northeast of the Rukan Reef, off Itoman City, in the south of Okinawa's main island, according to the Coast Guard.
The Coast Guard said that according to the reports, of the seven missing divers, five were taking part in a diving tour, while the other two comprising the group were instructors.
Of the group, three were males, three females, while the gender of the seventh diver has yet to be reported, the officials said.
By around 2:00 p.m. six of the missing divers had been found in seas about 5 kilometers southeast of the reef following a helicopter and patrol boat search by the Coast Guard.
According to the Okinawa Prefectural Police Headquarters, around 2:40 p.m., in the waters off the coast of Itoman City, where seven divers had temporarily gone missing, the seventh missing diver was also found.
Television broadcasts of the incident showed aerial footage shot from a helicopter belonging to public broadcaster NHK at around 2:55 p.m. showing a diver floating in the ocean about 7 kilometers southeast of the reef.
The diver was grabbing hold of a signal float and was waving as he was floated on the surface of the water, before being rescued by a patrol boat.
According to the Japan Coast Guard headquarters, the seven people who went missing were doing a type of diving near the reef known as "drift diving", which is an advanced form of diving.
Depending on the time of a day, the tide can be extremely powerful, hence diving around the reef is only for advanced divers. Lesser skilled divers, as could have been the case here, could be pulled away by a powerful tide and underwater drifts, a man who runs a diving shop in the area said. ■
