Long-dead diver spotted again?

-- MIKE WOLFE has been dead six years, his remains 36 fathoms deep. Police say a retrieval would be too risky. A diving companion of Wolfe's agrees. But his family would like closure.

EVERETT

Mark Wolfe's remains lie 220 feet beneath the waters of Port Gardner Bay, where he died six years ago during a treasure hunt on sunken ship. Wolfe, an avid and accomplished deedp-sea diver, had hoped to retrieve a teacup from the ship galley to add to his collection of souvenirs.

To try bringing Wolfe's body to the surface would imperil Everett police divers, who can safely dive 130 feet at best, authorities said on June 3, 1994, two days after Wolfe failed to surface with is tow diving partners and after two recovery attempts by volunteer divers had failed.

Wolfe's family in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, was left to mourn without a body to bury.

"He remained on the bottom in a dive suit," said Everett police spokesman Boyd Bryant. "He gets spotted from time to time."

Divers notified police about 4 p.m. that they'd seen the body of another diver. As police divers began assessing the situation and considering their options, they remembered Wolfe and that where the unidentified divers was seen was near the Al-Ind-Esk-A Sea, the ship that burned and sank in 1982 and 12 years later became Wolfe's water tomb.

Police said they had no reason to try to bring Wolfe's remain back to land.

"The depth presents a danger," Bryant said. "That danger hasn't passed. You're willing to risk a team of divers if you've got a submarine lost. Is it worth putting those folks at risk when a person has been deceased for six years?"

Bryant said the divers who said they saw the body had been at some distance from it and closer to the surface.

But Eric Rouse, a commercial diver, dive partner and close friend of Wolfe's, said he wondered whether the divers actually saw his friend, who worked in Olympia as an insurance adjuster and whose body he believes in no more.

"Maybe the divers saw Wolfe's diving suit and air tanks, Rouse said. Or maybe they saw a mirage.

"Maybe they were `narking' a little," Rouse said, referring to a disoriented state called nitrogen narcosis, which can strike divers in deep water.

"The chances of his still being there are pretty slim. The thing that seems odd to me is that (the divers) could see him, but they say it's too deep to go get him.

"

Rouse and Tom Michalski, who both had been diving with Wolfe the day he died, had tried to find their friend's body two days after he presumed dead.

"By the time I got to where Mark was, I was running out of time," Rouse said. "I had to decompress and get air or I would have joined him. And to tell the truth, I didn't really want to find him. We've pulled dead people out before. He's there, he's in water. It's a place that he loved. Let him stay there. If I die down there, leave me down there."

Rouse said innumerable things could have gone wrong and caused Wolfe's death: He could have had a heart attack, run out of air, lost his regulator or gotten entangle in the wreck.

And Rouse said he understood why authorities also thought it best to let Wolfe's remains stay in the sea.

"They don't have the equipment," he said, "and I don't think their insurance would cover it. He's fairly deep. If you think of it, it's like looking for a needle in a haystack. There are a ton of (commercial) people that can get there.

"But people willing to do that and bring someone back - it's traumatic - there are not a lot of us willing to do that."

Nancy Montgomery's phone message number is 425-745-7803. Her e-mail address is nmontgomery@seattletimes.com.