Body of missing abalone diver identified

<p>Sunnyvale abalone diver Jonathan Su still had his heavy weight belt on when divers found his body Monday afternoon, about a quarter-mile off of a Fort Ross beach.</p><p>Su, 29, disappeared Nov. 9, while diving with a cousin in the area in rough seas. Positive identification of his remains came Tuesday.</p><p>Two state park lifeguards and three deputies from the Sonoma County sheriff’s helicopter crew spent about 90 minutes in the water Monday before Su’s body was found.</p><p>Lifeguard Nate Buck discovered the diver about 20 feet down, on the seabed in an area rich with abalone, said Sonoma County Sheriff’s Sgt. Eric Thomson, part of the dive team.</p><p>His bag had gotten tangled in kelp, which may have stopped the body from drifting further.</p><p>Su is the eighth person this year to die while hunting for abalone.</p><p>Abalone divers wear weight belts to help them stay down as they free dive to pluck abalone from rocks below. They wear varying amounts of weight.</p><p>What role the weight may have played will never be known, said Sonoma County Sheriff’s Sgt. Eric Thomson, part of the dive team. But he cautioned other divers about it.</p><p>“We find too many dead divers still wearing their weight belts,” Thomson said. “The first thing you do when you’re in trouble is to get rid of that.”</p><p>Abalone diving off the North Coast each year claims several lives.</p><p>Another factor often is the roughness of the water, Thomson said. It’s a risk people have been willing to take when they come here from out of the area with a hope of going home with a catch of abalone.</p><p>Some coves and beaches are more dangerous than others and Su and his cousin were diving in an area known by locals as a place to dive only in calm seas.</p><p>“It’s only diveable on nice days. That particular day, from what I’ve heard, it was thumping. It was not a day to dive,” Thomson said.</p><p>State park rangers have said the swells were about 14 feet that Sunday afternoon. When Su failed to surface from a dive, help was called but an immediate search failed to locate the missing diver.</p><p>An effort was made again last week to find the body, but the search was hampered by murky water, Thomson said. Monday the ocean was flat and the body was located.</p><p>Su worked as an environmental engineer in Fresno.</p><p>[</p>