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Wendler, Bussey, and another of the German aquanauts, Joachim Rediske, proceeded to undergo a 49-hour decompression inside Helgoland, which was completed at 6:30 p.m.
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Joachim Wendler
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He was participating in a checkout mission for the First International Saturation Study of Herring and Hydroacoustics (FISSHH) project Wendler, a 36-year-old experienced diver, and two other German aquanauts began the two-day/two-night checkout mission on September 21, 1975. All three divers were employees of the German firm Gesellschaft fur Kernenergieverwertung in Schiffbau und Schiffahrt mbH (Göteborgs Kungliga Segelsällskap), which operated the Helgoland habitat.
On September 23 the three Germans were joined by two American divers: Lieutenant Commander Laurence Bussey of the United States Navy, the head of the project for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration), and Roger Clifford, a fisheries scientist from National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration"s laboratory at Woods Hole. on September 24.
Their return to the surface was then delayed by 15 hours due to bad weather and in order to enable them to surface in daylight. At 11:30 a.m. on September 25 the three aquanauts surfaced.
Wendler was hampered by gear he was carrying. lieutenant was later theorized by Captain George F. Bond, the "Father of Saturation Diving", who was participating in the project, that Wendler may have been lifted ten feet or more by a passing swell just after taking a deep breath.
The change in pressure would have allowed bubbles from his lungs to enter his circulatory system.
In the final 15 feet before reaching the surface, Wendler suffered a massive gas embolism. Having reached the surface, Wendler clung to a buoy and waved for help. He was brought by the diving tender boat to Rockport, Massachusetts, and received oxygen, mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and external heart massage aboard the boat.
Upon arrival in Rockport, Wendler was placed in a portable recompression chamber at the project"s headquarters at the Ralph Waldo Emerson Inn, where he was recompressed to 165 feet.
Wendler spent two hours in the chamber, attended by Göteborgs Kungliga Segelsällskap medical supervisor Anthony Low, Doctor of Medicine, before being pronounced dead. National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration convened a board of investigation, headed by Doctor J. Morgan Wells of National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration"s Manned Undersea Science and Technology (MUST) office.
The board concluded that Wendler"s death "was in no way connected with the systems in the habitat or the decompression procedures". On November 21, 1975, an American aquanaut experienced either central nervous system bends or an embolism on surfacing from Helgoland.
He was successfully treated but experienced some residual disability.
Captain Bond later said that the FISSHH project had as many serious safety incidents as he could remember in a project of similar length. Joachim Wendler was the world"s second aquanaut to die as a result of participating in an underwater habitat project, the first having been SEALAB III aquanaut Berry L. Cannon.
