Diver found alive after three days missing at sea

Searchers found a New Zealand diver alive after he’d been missing at sea for three days.

Former navy diver Robert Hewitt was found floating wearing only the bottom of his dive suit and “very cold,” said Bruce Johnson, a police search and rescue official.

Hewitt, 38, had survived on crawfish and kina, a type of sea urchin, he had caught while diving.

The diver, who disappeared on Sunday near Mana island north of the capital, Wellington, was “alive, conscious, dehydrated and needing medical attention,” Johnson said.

He was lifted from the water into an inflatable rescue boat and transferred to a police launch.

Weeping family members watched as he was placed in an ambulance on shore and taken to Wellington Hospital.

His brother Norm Hewitt – former player for New Zealand’s national All Blacks rugby team – said the extended family had gathered on Monday at the family “marae,” or “meeting house” in the language of the country’s indigenous Maori people.

The family, who are part Maori, had since been praying to Tangaroa, the Maori sea god, for their relative’s return.

“Monday felt surreal, when we thought we had lost him. Today feels surreal. Our prayers have been answered,” Norm Hewitt said.

Prime Minister Helen Clark, in Australia for talks with counterpart John Howard, said she was “blown away with relief for the family".

“People had thought it was a very, very different fate,” she said.