TWO deep-sea divers have told how they were forced to leave the body of their buddy at the bottom of the ocean after a tragic diving accident.

Sven Paepke has been lying on the sea floor off Bermagui, on the NSW south coast, for the past week after he lost consciousness and died during the 125m descent. Police have been unable to recover the 42-year-old Gymea man’s body because no police diver is qualified to dive to that depth. A search for Mr Paepke by two Victorian deep-sea divers was abandoned yesterday after one man had problems with his equipment.

The Sunday Telegraph can reveal that Mr Paepke died during an ill-fated expedition to identify a shipwreck believed to be the merchant vessel Iron Knight, sunk by a Japanese submarine in 1943. He was diving with six other members of the deep-sea diving club Sydney Project about 14km off Bermagui.

The tragic accident has devastated Mr Paepke’s wife, Pat. She said that although her husband of six years loved a challenge, safety came first. “He was so thorough - you should have seen his preparation,” Mrs Paepke said yesterday. “There is no way he would do anything stupid.”

Frits Breuseker, 53, was in the water beside Mr Paepke about 10.30am last Saturday when he discovered that his diving buddy was unconscious. “Sven lost consciousness at 90m or 100m. I tapped him on the back, and he didn’t respond,” Mr Breuseker told The Sunday Telegraph. “I swung him around and immediately saw that his eyes wereclosed and his mouthpiece wasn’t in his mouth. “I tried to push his mouthpiece back in and inflate his dry suit but I couldn’t achieve any change in buoyancy.”

Despite desperate attempts to stop their descent to the sea bed, Mr Breuseker and Mr Paepke, who was weighted down, reached the ocean floor just six minutes after entering the water.

Mr Breuseker - a veteran of more than 50 dives alongside Mr Paepke - said he tried to save his friend for as long as he could despite knowing he had died. “It’s a difficult thing. Subconsciously, I knew what had happened but I didn’t want to accept it.

“You say to yourself there’s a chance in a million that you can do something, but you really know it is over. It’s a tragedy.”

Diver Paul Garske, 43, described how attempts to force a regulator into Mr Paepke’s mouth and stop the descent failed. “We had one hand on the shot line and one on Sven trying to work on him,” Mr Garske said.

Both men were forced to make a heart-breaking decision to leave Mr Paepke’s body at the bottom of the ocean. Because of the depth, the divers could spend only 15 minutes on the sea floor. It took them three and a half hours, including decompression stops, to return to the surface. “We knew we had to make a decision. I knew he was dead at that point,” Mr Garske said.

On Friday, Victorian divers Craig Howell, 42, and John Dalla-Zuanna, 51, arrived at Bermagui to try to locate and retrieve Mr Paepke’s body. Despite an unsuccessful attempt yesterday, the two men will search again today.

Sergeant James Hinckley, of the Eden water police, said the two divers made the right decision by choosing to leave their mate at the bottom of the ocean and save their own lives. “It must have been the toughest decision in the world,” he said.