Jinting Guo, 35, went missing after setting out for a dive in Titahi Bay on 19 October 2023.
He was last seen alive by his wife at 9am that day and had taken his son to school that morning but failed to collect him at the end of the day.
Guo’s car was later found parked at a carpark on Terrace Road, a well-known diving spot in the area.
In the back of the car were empty dive gear bags and a towel, and diving gear was found in a neighbouring bay.
Guo’s body was never recovered, but police reported his disappearance to the coroner in February 2024, as they considered there were reasonable grounds to believe that Guo was deceased, and an inquiry was opened into his death.
Shin bone found
On 1 April 2025 a tibia or shin bone was found by two divers on the seabed at Rocky Bay.
Coroner Rachael Schmidt-McCleave said DNA testing determined the tibia belonged to Guo.
However she said the forensic pathologist who carried out a post-mortem of the tibia observed no injuries on the bone and could not determine a cause of death based on the tibia.
“I find that Jinting Guo died between 19 and 23 October 2023 in the sea off Rocky Bay, Titahi Bay, Porirua. The cause of his death was most likely due to drowning in accidental circumstances as a result of a mishap while freediving alone,” Schmidt-McCleave said.
“Apart from the tibia bone, Mr Guo’s body is missing and presumed irrecoverable,” she said.
Not thought to be missing at first
The coroner said Guo’s wife initially thought he was working or studying or had gone for a dive when he did not return home.
After receiving advice from the Chinese Embassy, she rang police on 22 October to report him missing.
Police said the delay in reporting him missing was due to his partner’s lack of English.
The coroner said Paula Drane, the owner of the Dive Wellington store on Marine Parade in Mana, gave evidence to police that she saw Guo the day before he went missing when he came into the store to collect some dive gear that he stored at the shop.
She said he told her he intended to go for a dive either that day or the next and that he would not go diving alone. On the Saturday he then did not show up for a dive he was booked for.
Meanwhile, a member of the public found a dive float along the Titahi Bay foreshore the day after Guo went missing. These were seized by police and later confirmed to belong to Guo.
Police deemed Guo unlikely to have survived
Police provided the coroner with a survivability report as part of the inquiry.
“That report deducted that, on the facts available, Mr Guo had most likely parked his vehicle at Terrace Road on the morning of 19 October 2023 and gone freediving alone somewhere along the nearby coastline,” Schmidt-McCleave said.
“It was likely that, if Mr Guo was still in the sea on the morning of 23 October 2023 when SAR were notified, he had been in the water for at least 96 hours. Survivability based on statistics for water temperature and time is likely to be about 30 hours only given a water temperature of 13-15C. If Mr Guo had remained adrift and afloat in the sea at that location, it is highly unlikely that he would have survived for more than 20 hours.”
Several searches of the area were conducted in the subsequent days, but nothing of interest was located.
The search for Guo was suspended on 5 January 2024 after it was concluded that further searching would not be likely to locate Guo alive.
Coroner reminds people not to dive alone
Schmidt-McCleave did not make any specific recommendations in her report, but reminded the public of the advice of Water Safety New Zealand to always dive with a buddy, constantly monitor each other and employ a one-up, one-down system.
Originally published on RNZ.co.nz
