Competition tribute to woman diver

A Suffolk woman who died in a diving accident will be remembered through a competition that aims to stop others losing their lives in the same way.

Penny Glover, 42, grew up in Toft Monks, near Beccles, where her parents still live, and went to Worlingham and Sir John Leman schools.

After diving around the world and training other divers in the latest techniques, she failed to surface from a dive last November off the south of France. Her dive buddy, Jacques Filippi, disappeared with her. Their bodies were not found for more than a month and the mystery of what went wrong has never been completely explained.

Now her sister, Fiona Denny, has organised a competition to design an underwater tracking device for divers. The DiveTrack competition, which has a prize of £5,000, is being launched tomorrow at the Dive Show at the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham.

Mrs Denny, who lives in Halesworth and works for the children's and young people's department of Suffolk County Council, said: “Penny was passionate about diving. She was a national and international coach, had over 2,000 recorded dives and regularly went to depths of over 100 metres using the latest technology to enable her to stay down longer and explore more of the ocean. It was while she was diving at a depth of 80 metres off the south of France that something went tragically wrong and she and her dive buddy were lost.”

As well as being a passionate diver, Miss Glover worked in satellite communications for companies across Europe, including the European Space Agency. At the time of her death she was managing director of a Canadian satellite communications company with responsibility for sales in Europe and North Africa.

The competition is sponsored by the Institution of Engineering and Technology and the British Sub Aqua Club - both organisations to which Miss Glover belonged.

Businesses, teams or individuals of any age and background can work together or individually to design an underwater locating device which can be worn by divers and used to communicate from depths of up to 200m with those on the surface. It needs to respond to an acoustic signal from a standard echo sounder, and also enable the diver to send a signal alerting those on the surface that a problem has occurred.