A 31-year-old U.S. Army captain and West Point instructor died while scuba diving at a quarry lake near Bethlehem, in Northampton County, with the academy confirming his death remains under investigation and its cause still unknown. Stephen O. Adjei was training with a group of divers from the U.S. Military Academy at Lake Hydra, a 55-acre former limestone quarry that draws scuba enthusiasts from across the mid-Atlantic.
Who Was Stephen O. Adjei
According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, Adjei was originally from Ghana and had lived in Worcester, Massachusetts, before his work brought him to West Point, located in New York state. He had worked with the military academy since 2024, serving as an instructor within the institution. Records from the U.S. Military Academy show he was commissioned through the Army Reserve Officer Training Corps program at the University of Dubuque, Iowa, in May 2017, and later served in West Point's Department of Military Instruction as an MS100 instructor and branch representative.
Joe Katz said Adjei's dedication, his commitment to teammates, and his service left a lasting impact on the West Point community, per the same report. West Point divers were one of several diving groups present at Lake Hydra at the time, the outlet's reporting notes.
About 140 People Were at the Lake That Day
Roughly 140 people were at Lake Hydra on the day of the incident, the station's report states, in a lake that reaches a maximum depth of 100 feet. Divers routinely descend to around 60 feet at the site, and overcast weather made visibility difficult at those depths, the outlet reports. The quarry, previously known as Dutch Springs, also holds submerged airplanes, a helicopter, and a school bus on its bottom, along with large fish and wildlife, per the same account.
Dave Barnes, who runs Scubadelphia Diveseekers in Philadelphia, sent divers to help search once he learned a diver was missing, the article notes. Among those who responded were a paramedic and a physician from Philadelphia among his students, who helped render aid to Adjei once he reached shore, per the same reporting.
Lake Hydra's Rules and a Clean Safety Record Since 2022
Lake Hydra owner Ken Kraft said the site has not recorded a diving death since he took it over in 2022, adding that diving involves inherent risks, according to the outlet's report. Kraft also said the facility is open only for training, not to the general public, and requires a professional to be with each diver in training at all times.
That description lines up with Lake Hydra's own posted rules, which state that every person entering the water must be an insured, certified dive professional or supervised by one, according to Lake Hydra. The site's regulations also prohibit solo diving, even for insured instructors and dive masters, and advise divers not to go below 80 feet unless they meet specific training, equipment, or supervision conditions. Lake Hydra reopened for training and certification dives in 2024 under its current name, according to Scuba Diving magazine, which also reports that visibility at the site can range from more than 50 feet in spring down to as little as 5 feet during late-summer algal blooms.
What Comes Next in the Investigation
Lehigh County Coroner Daniel Buglio is working to determine how Adjei died, and it is not yet known whether his death resulted from an error or a medical condition, per the Inquirer's reporting. Kevin Pang, who co-owns South Jersey Scuba in Marlton, New Jersey, said the incident shocked the scuba-diving community but added that such events are rare. Scuba diving is generally considered a safe sport, and fatal incidents remain uncommon, according to the same account.
That assessment tracks with national data: the Divers Alert Network states that fatalities and serious diving injuries are rare and often associated with unsafe behaviors or hazardous conditions, though it notes they can occur without apparent cause. The organization tracks diving injuries and fatalities each year, summarizing and analyzing select cases in its annual reporting.
Quarry diving fatalities, while uncommon, are not unheard of in the region. A 38-year-old man, Eugene Fleysher of Saddle Brook, New Jersey, was found unresponsive while diving at the same lake when it was still called Dutch Springs and later died at a hospital, with the Lehigh County coroner at the time deferring a cause-of-death ruling pending toxicology results, according to NBC10 Philadelphia. That outlet also reported the quarry historically attracted about 30,000 divers a year. Elsewhere, a 24-year-old Ottawa man died scuba diving at Morrison's Quarry in Chelsea, Quebec, in July 2019, following a 2014 diving death and a 2015 fatal cliff-jumping incident at the same site, according to CBC News.
