By Patrick Robinson and David Rosen
UPDATE: 7:25 Tuesday Feb. 21

The diver who died will diving off Seacrest in a deep water dive has been identified. He was Tareq Saade, 29, and his cause of death was accidental drowning, according to the King County Medical Examiner’s Office. Saade had previously made 50 dives.

UPDATE: 8:30 pm Feb. 19

The body of a diver, reportedly 29 years old, according the Seattle Fire Department that went missing in a training dive around 11am today was discovered in about 130 feet of water about 250 to 300 yards off shore by a civilian diver named Johanna Raupe. Raupe, who is a veteran of more than 700 dives was diving near Cove 2 off Seacrest Park late this afternoon. Another set of divers had already come in after doing a grid search of the area but did not see the missing diver's body.

Raupe surfaced and called out to those on shore to call 911 but may have surfaced too rapidly and emergency personnel who responded to the scene rushed her to Virginia Mason hospital for observation in the event she had suffered the effects of rapid decompression. The hospital has hyperbaric chamber to treat the condition.

Raupe told the West Seattle Herald that she brought the body about 30 yards closer to the shore and, "left it near a piling so it would be easier to find."

Seattle Fire Department and Seattle Police divers arrived about 20 minutes after the call went out and the Seattle Fire Department vessel the Leschi was brought in and docked at the Seacrest Pier where divers boarded. They began the recovery operation after other civilian divers went back out and tagged the body with a reflective buoy so it could more easily be recovered. The body was brought aboard the Leschi and then brought up at Seacrest Pier.

Original report
A diver was reported missing off Seacrest Park in West Seattle around 11 am Sunday, Feb. 19. The diver was first reported missing 100 feet from shore, in 80 feet of water, having not been seen for fifteen minutes.

13 units of the Seattle Fire Department responded including rescue divers. A ladder truck extended the ladder to get a higher angle view of the water as divers began the search.

A Coast Guard helicopter was called in to search from the air.

After more than an hour and 30 minutes of searching the SFD divers came out of the water.

Kyle Moore the Public Information Officer for SFD said the search had been turned over to the Seattle Police Department.

Moore said, "Just after 11:00 am we got a 911 call reported that a diver was in trouble out here in West Seattle, What had happened is there was a group of three divers that went out, an instructor and two other divers and when they were coming back in they decided one of the men started surfacing pretty quickly, one of the other divers mentioned that he looked a little bit panicked. She followed him up but he was going up too fast so she ascended at a normal rate and when she got to the surface and started heading to shore he was no where in sight. So the divers and instructor waved to the shore and people called 911 and brought us out here and we got in the water. Where the person was essentially missing is where that white buoy is. We got our divers in the water. What we did is circles around that buoy .We did about 75ft around twice and no sign of him. What we know he was a diver that had done 50 dives so he is an experienced diver and was born in 1983. Essentially they were going out to what they call an I-beam. They got almost out there. They were in the water for 10 minutes when the divers started feeling cold.
They were wearing dry suits so they wanted to start coming back.
The diving instructor had a signal that he showed to all of the divers to let them know that they were going to come back and they said ok and that’s when the man started to surface. After over an hour of us searching the area not only us but also Seattle Police divers no sign of him. So we're switching it over to a recovery operation. You may also have noticed that we had the US Coast Guard came out here with their helicopter they searched by air as well .vWe threw up our ladder and had a firefighter searching from that. No sign of this gentleman .What we know he was wearing an all black dry suit with a grey tank and that’s all we know."

Traffic was blocked on Harbor Ave. s.w. from Seacrest to Salty's Restaurant but was cleared around 1:10pm