Divers to look for hiker’s body

ACADIA NATIONAL PARK – Divers today will try to find the body of Emil Lin of Hampden two days after he drowned in the pounding surf off Otter Cliffs while trying to retrieve a climbing boot. Rough seas Monday prevented divers from entering the water.

A team of divers from the joint Maine State Police and Maine Marine Patrol dive team, who come from across the state, will leave Northeast Harbor in Mount Desert at 7:30 a.m. and spend up to eight hours searching the Otter Cliffs area in Bar Harbor.

“Obviously the person has drowned, but we still would like to recover the body,” Sgt. John Williams of the Maine Marine Patrol said Monday.

Williams said if divers don’t find Lin’s body in the general area where he last was seen, then he is not likely to be found.

“They’ll know tomorrow,” Williams said. “If he’s not there, then he’s gone.”

Lin, 21, last was seen by a friend Sunday after he went into the rough waters off Otter Cliffs to retrieve a new boot that had come loose while the two friends were trying out some new climbing gear at about 1:30 p.m.

Lin had retrieved the boot and had made it back to an outcropping beneath the cliffs when a wave swept him back into the surf and under the water, according to officials.

Lin’s friend did not see him again after the wave swept him under.

Ensign John Hanley, spokesman for the U.S. Coast Guard group in Southwest Harbor, said Monday that searchers would have found Lin if he had been alive.

The Coast Guard, Maine Marine Patrol, the Bar Harbor harbor master and two whale watching vessels, the Friendship 5 and the Acadian, both out of Bar Harbor, worked in rough seas and 4- to 6-foot swells to search the coastline for Lin.

Acadia rangers and other search and rescue personnel searched on land for any sight of Lin, while the Coast Guard searched from the air in a helicopter and Falcon jet, officials said.

The Coast Guard called off the search at dark Sunday.

A few park employees and volunteers returned Monday to look some more.

A state diver surveyed the Otter Cliffs area Monday so the diving team will know how much personnel and equipment will be needed.

The divers, who rotate in and out of the water every hour, can search for eight or nine hours, Williams said.

“Since it’s a dangerous area, we wanted to know what we were getting into,” he said.

The water temperature was an estimated 48 degrees, giving Lin a potential three hours of survival time and less than two hours of “functional” time, according to Hanley, the Coast Guard spokesman. The Gulf of Maine Ocean Observing System buoy for western Penobscot Bay showed water temperatures running 51-52 degrees F.

Lin was wearing a T-shirt and jeans when he entered the water Sunday. He was not a strong swimmer, Hanley said.

“We see it again and again; people who underestimate the conditions here” along the Maine coast, Hanley said.

Hanley praised the crews of the private whale watching vessels that helped search the coastline for hours on Sunday. He said the family noticed their efforts as well.

“Such good people,” Lin’s mother said to Hanley on Sunday.