Around 7:40 p.m. on the evening of July 31, emergency services were contacted about a man who had gone missing in Lake Ontario off of Port Dalhousie near St. Catharines, Ont.
The man, a 37-year-old from Mississauga, had been tubing behind a motorboat when the tube flipped and the man was launched into the water. He did not resurface.
The St. Catharines Fire Service and the Canadian Coast Guard were brought in to search the area, along with officers from the Niagara Regional Police Service Marine/Under Water Search and Recovery Unit. Emergency personnel set off illumination flares throughout the night to help provide light.
At approximately 12:05 a.m., divers from the Under Water Search and Recovery Unit found the man not far from the area where he’d fallen off the tube. The coroner pronounced him dead at the scene.
A postmortem has been ordered, but the death is not being treated as suspicious.
At the moment, it’s unclear what safety precautions were in place when the man was tubing. Discover Boating, a boating resource operated by the National Marine Manufacturers Association advises that for any watersport towed behind a motorboat you should always:
- Wear a personal flotation device
- Use a spotter to indicate when riders have fallen
- Know the capabilities of your rider
- Know the limits of the equipment you’re using
- And drive responsibly
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