A commercial shark-dive client has been missing since Sunday, July 13, when the U.S. Coast Guard at 8 p.m. The diver, identified as John E. Petty, 63, was aboard controversial Jim Abernethy鈥檚 yacht .

On Saturday, Petty boarded the boat along with eight other divers and four crew in Palm Beach, Florida, for an eight-night expedition to Tiger Beach, a 20-foot-deep site about 20 miles off Grand Bahama鈥檚 West End. Their goal was to dive with a resident population of tiger sharks that hang out in the area.

For now, it鈥檚 hard to say what happened, but the most immediate possibility is that Petty got disoriented or accidentally swam into a swift current and was swept away before anybody noticed he was gone.

鈥淚t was a night dive, so getting lost is an option, as is unintentionally swimming out to the Gulf Stream and being caught in the current,鈥� says Andy Dehart, shark adviser for the Discovery Channel and longtime Tiger Beach diver. Dehart also thinks a medical emergency, such as a heart attack, is a possibility.

In 2003, two divers off the Great Barrier Reef were left behind by a dive boat after the captain miscounted his passengers. That episode became the basis for the film Open Water, a true-life horror film chronicling the divers鈥� long drift to a slow death.

Though Abernethy wasn鈥檛 answering his phone on Tuesday, one of his instructors was available. 鈥淭he exact location where we dive varies,鈥� says April Mai, a boat captain and dive master for the outfitter. 鈥淚t depends on currents and where the best action is.鈥�

Typical shark-diving protocol is to keep the motor idling while tossing chum and fish blood overboard until shadows appear below. Unlike many shark-diving outfits, Abernethy鈥檚 Scuba 国产吃瓜黑料s doesn鈥檛 use cages and advertises this trip as only for divers with advanced open-water training. According to scuba certifying agency PADI, Petty received his advanced open-water certification earlier this month.

Abernethy has from the dive community in the past for promoting dangerous dives with shark species known to pose a threat to humans. Tiger sharks account for a large percentage of the relatively small number of shark attacks on people each year. Abernethy lost a diver to a shark attack in 2008 and has himself been bitten.

For now, information about Petty鈥檚 disappearance is slim. After fielding the distress call Sunday night, the Coast Guard, operating out of Miami, deployed an immediate air-and-sea search operation consisting of a cutter, a fixed-wing aircraft, and a helicopter. The only clues found so far don鈥檛 lend much hope.

鈥淭hey found the mask and camera on the seafloor one nautical mile from where the incident was called in,鈥� says Mark Barney, a spokesman for the Coast Guard.

Still, Petty Officer Jon-Paul Rios remains hopeful. 鈥淚 can鈥檛 say how long we will be searching. It could be one more day, or it could be a week.鈥�

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