Disturbing details found in autopsy of Byford dolphin accident

A 1988 article in the American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology describes the autopsies of the Byford’s dolphins. But proceed with caution, because the article includes pictures of the victims’ bodies and the body parts of one diver – Diver 4 – who was closest to the diving bell door when the chamber suddenly depressurized.

Diver 4 suffered perhaps the cruelest fate, but fortunately he felt nothing and didn’t even know what had happened. One of the diving bell’s two tenders – a person who positions it from outside – opened one of the clamps on the chamber’s door for an unknown reason, and Diver 4 shot through a 23-inch opening and “completely disintegrated.” There was such an enormous pressure difference between the inside and outside of the bell that some of the remains shot nearly 32 feet out of the water and landed on the deck of the ship above.

This victim was transported in four plastic bags for examination. His brain was missing and his remaining organs had been blown out of his torso along with his spine and ribs, leaving a hollow “empty sack” where everything had been. Not all of his parts were found, as some of him were simply blown into the sea and disappeared. The reassembled, remaining parts barely resembled a human being.