Diver who died off LI loved to explore

Jeffrey Gershen, an avid scuba diver who died Saturday during a shipwreck expedition off the South Shore, loved the thrill of exploring sunken history and the peacefulness of the waters.

But his wife, Diane, always worried about his safety.

"He knew that I was worried about it, but I didn't stop him," she said Sunday as she mourned the 65-year-old real-estate developer. "I was worried that this day would happen for a lot of years -- and now it has."

Gershen -- a father of three from Somers, in Westchester -- made his final dive Saturday morning, when he apparently stopped breathing underwater and could not be revived, authorities said.

"Something went wrong," Diane Gershen said.

He was aboard an expedition that departed from Freeport about 6 a.m., said Captain John Gorman of the Freeport-based Lockness Dive Boat, who provided this account of Gershen's final hours:

The 32-mile or so journey to their destination, -- the coal-fired steam ship Oregon that sunk in 1886 -- is about a 21/2 hours' boat ride southeast of Freeport, he said.

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Gershen and nine other divers jumped in about 10:30 a.m. and, soon afterward, Gershen appears to have lost consciousness.

One of the other divers spotted Gershen by the shipwreck, about 120 feet below sea level, and struggled to put Gershen's breathing device -- which was out of his mouth -- back in, Gorman said.

"He was just laying there, lifeless," Gorman said.

The diver then brought Gershen to the surface by inflating Gershen's dry suit. Medics removed Gershen's gear aboard the vessel and began efforts to resuscitate him.

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"He was unresponsive," Gorman said. "They gave him CPR for over two hours."

They couldn't get a helicopter because of the fog, Gorman said.

Gershen was pronounced dead at 2:07 p.m. at Good Samaritan Hospital in West Islip, said a spokesman for the Suffolk County police, which is investigating the death.

Authorities do not suspect criminality. Diane Gershen -- a diver herself -- said she is waiting for the results of an autopsy to determine the cause of death.

Even as Gershen's family mourns, it's a small solace that he died doing what he loved: Gershen, who learned to dive in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War era, had done dozens of dives with Lockness Dive Boat alone.

"He very much did not want to die a cancer death," Diane Gershen said of her husband, who had battled prostate cancer for years. "He wanted to go out a big scuba hero."