A DIVER has been taken to hospital suffering from the bends.

The 49-year-old man had been diving off Mull and complained of a skin rash associated with the bends after surfacing.

Oban Lifeboat was launched at 10.56am yesterday and met the dive boat Gaelic Rose off Lochaline.

The lifeboat took the diver to Oban where an ambulance ferried him to the town's Lorn & Islands District General Hospital and then to the Dunstaffnage hyperbaric chamber. His condition is unknown.

The lifeboat had been launched only an hour earlier to refloat a yacht, with two people on board, which had gone aground on Easdale Island.

Meanwhile Tobermory Lifeboat went at 1.45pm to the aid of a de-masted catamaran, with two people on board, a mile off Mull. It was towed to Tobermory.