Van Schaik felt some reliefone of her two dead divers was alivebut glancing at the figures on the slate, she could see that Shirley had gone very deep and would run the risk of getting bent as he came up. Even so, Gomes honors Shaw as a fallen comrade. Shaw knew immediately who it was: Deon Dreyer, a 20-year-old South African who had blacked out deep in Bushmans ten years earlier and disappeared. At 164 feet they suddenly noticed a light below them. He almost certainly could feel the narcosis kicking in, as if he had downed four or five martinis. He decided to film the whole thing on a camera attached to his helmet, and when the day arrived, he travelled down and got to work. | It snags on his cave light, and Shaw pauses to clear it. Three months later, the two friends decide to come back and retrieve it. They call Deon Dreyer's parents and ask for their permission. "If you hike down the crater to the middle, there's this little tiny basin of water that almost looks like an oversized puddle. Giliomee desperately started swimming down but stopped when he realized the light below him was already more than 100 feet deeper and fading fast. David John Shaw (20 July 1954 8 January 2005) was an Australian scuba diver, technical diver, and airline pilot for Cathay Pacific, flying the Lockheed L-1011 Tristar, then the 747-400, and then the A330-300, A340-300, and A340-600. Shirley had asked her to run the dive as surface marshal, and van Schaik, who has magenta hair and a dolphin tattoo on her right ankle, was hoping she was going to have an easy day. On the surface, the Dreyers waited nervously. Shirleys eyebrows shot up inside his mask, and he reached out to shake his friends hand. When Herbst and Roux had lifted the shot line with the buoys, it had pulled the cave lineand with it Deon and Shawoff the bottom. 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As Shirley ascended, it occurred to him that Shaw would not be able to resist coming back to try to recover Deon. He carried six cylinders of gas, splayed alongside him like mutant appendages. As he reached his new depth, nausea hit him and he started to vomit. He and his wife, Ann, lived in Hong Kong, where they were members of a small Christian congregation. Your mind is clouded. We dont want to be recovered.. For a young cave diver like Deon Dreyer, it must have been irresistible. They planned a descent to 492 feet and asked Deon to dive support. Shaw had bought two in Hong Kong, loaded them with mixes he called Deep Cave 1 and Deep Cave 2, and given one to Shirley as a gift. Join Outside+ to get access to exclusive content, 1,000s of training plans, and more. Do you mind if I go dive your hole? Shirley sized up the bluff Aussie and liked what he saw. [2], On this record-breaking dive, Shaw discovered the body of Deon Dreyer, a South African diver who had died in Bushman's Hole ten years previously. He looked down: The Hammerhead controller on his left forearm was a wreck. Not if hes been down there so long.. She sent Gerhard Du Preez, 31, into the hole to find him, with instructions to check everyone on his way down. Shirley stopped him, then drew his hand across his throat. A minute later there is no movement. Approaching 400 feet, almost an hour into the dive, Shaw met up with his close friend Don Shirley, a 48-year-old British expat who runs a technical-diving school in Badplaas, South Africa. Get access to all of the Outside Classics when you sign up for Outside+. Shaw's first rebreather was an Inspiration closed circuit rebreather, with which he eventually dived to depths beyond its purported capability. On a beautiful evening in May, Don and Andre Shirley took a bottle of wine and a small wooden box to the summit of a mountain a short drive from their home. Its all over and Im fine. If he wasnt fine, he gently told Ann, he would arrange to have someone call Michael Vickers, their minister at Hong Kongs Anglican Resurrection Church. Once you 'step into this little puddle and push your way through the very claustrophobia-inducing entrance', you're rewarded with one of the largest freshwater caves in the world at 393 feet long, 328 feet wide and 927 feet deep. The bodies, Nel said. The helium and reduced nitrogen of his trimix would have limited the effect, but it was probably still as if he had downed four or five martinis. LOWER LEFT LEG HURT. Dave was going to go back, she says. Equipment can go to those depths, but your body might not be able to.. He closed his eyes, turned somersaults, and with relief discovered that the Big Dive had not taken one of the things he loves most. Shaw had been working with both hands, and so had been resting his can light on the cave floor. He quickly pushed past the standard reef tours and went wreck diving. This prompted him to not only purchase a Mk15.5 but to replace its analogue electronics with the digital ones of the Juergensen Marine Hammerhead, resulting in a specially modified POD designed to handle extreme pressures. [7][8][9], His death has been profiled in a number of documentary films, including the 2020 documentary feature Dave Not Coming Back. It read, DAVE NOT COMING BACK. Hes sticking with his plan. Recovering a body from the bottom of Bushmans Hole was a feat of extraordinary danger, combining extreme depth and physical work, and Shaw and Shirley were just the guys to pull it off. Du Preez, Laas, Sander, and Vingerling dived repeatedly that day, racking up three or four dives apiece despite the risk of getting the bends themselves. On his first dive, in 1999, with his then-17-year-old son, Steven, in the Philippines, Shaw had found a sport whose challenges he couldnt resist. One of Deons flippered feet fell off. A motionless diver at 886 feet is almost certainly a dead diver, but it was Dave Shaw down there. This was totally unexpected. [3] Dave went to 280 meters, touched the bottom and started exploring. At any rate, David Shaw died at the bottom of the cave during the recovery and the footage shows his last confused, excruciating moments before he expired. When he saw there was no movement from below, the diver went into rescue mode - but soon after he started swimming, he heard a strange sound and noticed his gauge had broken, a piece of kit that was vital to the dive. While the story ended in the most tragic way possible, Shaw continues to be remembered for his bravery - and for finally bringing closure to the Dreyer family. Breathe slower, man, breathe slower, he urged out loud. As Cronje carefully observed, Shirley sat with a CO2 monitor in his mouth and headphones on his ears, watching the video one more time. (Dreyer was lost on assent during his dive and never seen again.).

It took Shirley a full half-hour to bring his breathing back under control. To make sure you never miss out on your favourite NEW stories, we're happy to send you some reminders, Click 'OK' then 'Allow' to enable notifications, .css-o3g03s{color:black;}Published19:51,28 February 2023 GMT.css-1aaqh7x{color:#666666;}@media (min-width:1024px){.css-1aaqh7x{color:#666666;}}| Last updated19:53,28 February 2023 GMT, Warning: This article contains content which some readers may find upsetting. Shaws stocky five-foot-ten body was encased in a black crushed-neoprene drysuit.

Andrews took out an underwater slate and wrote, DID NOT MEET D + D, @ 150 [METERS] FOR 6 MIN. The forensics experts they consulted werent sure but guessed the corpse would be mostly bone. IM HERE TO TAKE YOU HOME, he wrote. It was the body of the 20-year old diver Deon Dreyer. The body was at a depth of 270 metres (890ft). And I think with Dave it became the body, the body, the body.. Anyway, I remember first reading about the story in an outdoor magazine and it made me sick to my stomach to read about both for Mr. Shaw and for the family of Deon Dryer as well. The single light meant there was trouble, and without hesitation Herbst descended past his target of 275 feet. He dived every spare minute he had, specializing in deep wrecks off the coast of Britain. He had been in Bushmans Hole almost 12 and a half hours. Deon grew up in the modest town of Vereeniging, about 35 miles south of Johannesburg, and loved adventure in all its forms. If he had missed, he would have drifted off, lost in the blackness. Andre Shirley arrived on Sunday, after driving all night from Badplaas, to take her husband for additional recompression treatments in Pretoria. [10], Shaw was a devout Christian. Yes, he becomes hypoxic. The Big Dive, as they started to call it, was set for early January, and one of the most elusive questions was the condition of Deons body. Having been advised that the Dreyers body would not float due to being skeletonized, Shaw was surprised when the young divers body began to float upwards as he disentangled it: The body had turned into adipocere in the wetsuit and was extremely buoyant. Two weeks before the expedition, Deons grandfather passed away. Still, Shaw keeps checking the time on his dive computer. Because now I have to do everything. All rights reserved. Im sure youll be impressed with my video footage as well. Everyone laughed. A cave diver should never let gear float loose. Which is what youve got to do. Still, when Shirley first saw the video, he couldnt stop himself from pleading, Leave it, leave it, leave the body now. For more information on Dave Not Coming Back, visit the films official website and Facebook page. Derek Hughes, an underwater cameraman who was working with Gordon Hiles, also left. Utter blackness pressed in on him from all sides, and he directed his high-intensity light downward, hoping for a flash of rock or mud. Every breath is now a sharp grunt. This is the entrance to Bushmans Hole. At least three ran into serious trouble in the process (including Nuno Gomes, who got stuck in the mud on the bottom of Bushmans Hole for two minutes before escaping). As explained by MrBallen: "Dave Shaw, who was a 50-year-old extremely audacious cave diver, was passing the 800-ft mark inside of Bushman's Hole. Suddenly he loses his footing on the sloping bottom. NSFW. Ann, who has a deep faith in God, tried to believe that there was some higher purpose in what was happening. Deon is rolling and turning in front of him, resisting Shaws efforts to get him into the bag. That same year he met the Melbourne-raised Ann Broughton at a youth camp in Perth. When it clears, Deons body, its head having fallen off, is floating in front of Shaw.

Boesmansgat, as it's officially known, is a deep submerged freshwater cave in the Northern Cape province of South Africa. Before the dive, Shaw had asked him to call Michael Vickers, the Shaws minister, if there was trouble. He did what he believed in, and Ive got to say he had a lot of courage, Gomes says. For the Dreyers, a day that had started out promising a recovery of their sons body was now going to end with Dave Shaw and Deon on the bottom of Bushmans Hole. This time they could see a light, but they couldnt tell who it was.

He emerged from the recompression chamber at Bushmans, which was pressurized to a depth of 98 feet to shrink the helium bubble in his head, after seven hours, disoriented and barely able to stand. When Herbst called to tell her that his body had been recovered, she was completely unnerved.

Its located on the privately owned Mount Carmel game farm, 11,000 acres of rolling, ocher-earthed veldt sparsely thatched with silky bushman grass and dotted with sun-baked termite mounds. Ann, a 49-year-old deputy head principal at Hong Kongs German Swiss International School, was nervous about the dangers her husband faced. On the evening of Saturday, January 1, Ann made the 45-minute drive to Hong Kongs Chep Lap Kok airport with 250 pounds of dive gear in her car. There was no time to waste. What's it like to see through the eyes of a man looking at death?\r\r\"David John Shaw (20 July 1954 8 January 2005) was an Australian scuba diver, technical diver, and airline pilot for Cathay Pacific, flying the Lockheed L-1011 Tristar, then the 747-400, and then the A330-300, A340-300, and A340-600. There was only one problem: The light wasnt moving. By this time, more than 20 minutes into his dive, Shaw should have been ascending. He fell in love with the place. He almost certainly could feel the narcosis kicking in. He checked Shirley again, and Shirley indicated that he should head up. Gomes is an open-circuit diver, and his priority is setting records. For the Dreyers it had been a tragic half-hour. "Shaw touched down on the sloping bottom of the cave, he detached from the cave reel, took out his flashlight and began swimming around the bottom.

Theo wrapped his arms around Marie, and they peered into the dark pool. Deon, as it turned out, was not completely skeletal, and he was no longer stuck in the silt. The divers clipped Shirley to the shot line in case he convulsed or passed out, unclipping him only to move him from one decompression stop to another. That was quite bad, he says, choking up. And for some reasonno one has an explanationthe body had become unstuck from the mud as soon as Shaw started working on it. On the way up, they passed Peter Herbst, and then Lo Vingerling, 60, another support diver, who were on their way down. He also flew agricultural aircraft in South Australia and New South Wales.Shaw died on 8 January 2005 while endeavoring to recover the body of Deon Dreyer.Shaw recorded his dive with an underwater camera, which allowed researchers to determine that he suffered from respiratory issues due to the high pressure. Herbst was exhausted, with a pounding headache. But more than anything, he wanted to see what was on that video. Shaw tried the device in the swimming pool at Mount Carmel and decided he was comfortable with the design and weight. In the gray predawn light, Shaw and Shirley began the ten-minute drive to the hole, listening to iPods to relax. [1] He flew for Cathay Pacific from 1989 until his death in 2005. Herbst, standing in the surface pool, had to cut Shaw out of his equipment. Two hundred meters [656 feet] was a damned deep dive on a rebreather. Notify me of follow-up comments by email. He said if he had a choice of how to go out in life, hed like to go out diving, recalls his father, Theo, 51, the owner of a business that sells and services two-way radios. In 1989, he settled in with Cathay Pacific, moving his family to Hong Kong. The group continued ascending. What are you waiting for? On a rebreather at that depth, it would have been very ineffective. Shirleys breathing became so distorted that by the time Shaw faded to just six breaths per minute and then lost consciousness, Shirley was also on the verge of blacking out. He also flew agricultural aircraft in South Australia and New South Wales. He is dying. Two weeks after the accident, Theo paid to bring in a small, remotely operated sub used by the De Beers mining company. See what? Herbst asked. It was Shirley. Herbst brought Deon out first. Resigning themselves to the idea that Deon would stay in the hole for eternity, Theo and Marie placed a commemorative plaque on a rock wall above the entry pool. It was a distressing job. Shirley and Herbst guess that Shaws narcosis was then closer to six or seven martinis. The divers gathered for one last briefing on Friday. For example, at depth, oxygen can become toxic, and nitrogen acts like a narcoticthe deeper you go, the stupider you get. You cannot do it, Gomes says. (More people have walked on the moon, Don Shirley likes to point out.) This is the entrance to Bushman's Hole," explained MrBallen. 206.81.17.78 Within minutes, the police divers surfaced, empty-handed. Thinking he should try to bring Deon back to the surface, Shaw wrapped his arms around the corpse and tried to lift. Two days later, Shirley, with Shaw just behind him, became the first diver to reach the very end of the mines deepest shaft, at 610 feet. Dont cut the drysuit, he managed to growl when he saw Du Preez coming at him with a pair of shears. He saw nothing, just blackness.

He needed to dive, and I accepted that, she says. For Marie and Theo, the nightmare started with a policemans knock at the door. There is no room for emotion or panic in the bowels of a dark hole. Gomes had turned immediately for the surface. Up close, he could see that Deons tanks and dive harness, snugged around a black-and-tan wetsuit, appeared to be intact. When Shaw reaches the body of Deon Dreyer, he is 12 minutes and 22 seconds into the dive, and hes been on the bottom for just over a minute. Dave Shaw flew his bride, Ann, from Perth to honeymoon at the seaside town of Albany, Australia, December 1974. Verna van Schaik, 35, a South African who had set the outright womens depth record of 725 feet at Bushmans in October, settled in with a large sheaf of dive tables. When Meintjies realized that up to nine divers would be in the water, and learned the depths they would be going to, he almost backed out. Don Shirley, an understated man with steel-frame glasses and a scraggly beard, was a kindred spirit. The ashes hung for an instant, a cloud of a man.

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He stuffed the regulator into his mouth, and as soon as he did, the cave started to spin around him. Herbst, listening intently through headphones, heard the steadily increasing distress in Shaws breathing and knew there was trouble coming. He flashed Shirley the OK sign and got one back.

More than anything, though, she was struck by how completely her life had changed in the brief time it took Vickers to relay the news. He peed happily into the water via a valve in his drysuit that had a catheter running to a condom (informally known as the Urinator), and topped up, intermittently pulling his regulator out of his mouth, on candy bars and water lowered in a string bag at shallow decompression stops.

On 28 October 2004, Shaw descended to a depth of 270m at Bushman's Hole, South Africa, breaking the following records: He used a Mk15.5 with Juergensen Marine Hammerhead electronics and the following gas mixtures: trimix 4/80, 10/70, 15/55, 17/40, 26/25, air, nitrox50, 100% oxygen. Both divers' bodies surfaced the next day. He was exhausted and approaching hypothermia, but he stayed there decompressing for almost two hours. Sitting around a barbecue with his family one night, Deon spoke with boyish hubris.

Its a recipe for disaster, says Shirley, who will always regret not being present when Shaw told Hiles he would put the light to the side at times. There was extreme hyperventilation, Cronje says. I know and he knew that the Lord would be right there ready to take him on to new adventures. It was from Shirley, and it had been raced to the surface by the next diver to reach him, Stephen Sander, 39, a former police-special-forces diver. Suddenly, he stopped. Thirteen minutes after Shaw submerged, Shirley got the go signal from van Schaik and dropped toward his rendezvous point with Shaw, at 725 feet. Unfortunately Shaw couldn't lift the body as the oxygen tanks were caught on something. Eventually Shirley was huffing through 36 shallow, extremely rapid breaths a minute. Soon Shaw was flying in regularly to dive, and Shirley went with him whenever he had time. The pace of his breathing keeps accelerating, and there is a tragic, gasping quality to it, so painful to listen to that Herbst and Shirley will no longer watch the video with sound. Today we're taking a look at the tragic story of cave diver who died while exploring the dangerous Bushman's Hole - and the man who died while trying to retrieve him. In 1988, he set an African depth record of just over 400 feet, and Bushmans reputation as a deep divers cave started to spread. Watching the video with a clear head, it is hard not to wonder why Shaw didnt just turn around right then and abandon the dive. They were his risks, and he took them., Every diver there that day will keep diving, and instead of second-guessing Shaw, they say they are proud of him. Ann continues to live and work in Hong Kong. Twenty-nine minutes after Shaw had gone under (and about six minutes after Shirley had seen that his light was not moving), support divers Dusan Stojakovic, 48, and Mark Andrews, 39, started their dive to rendezvous with Shaw at 492 feet. The entrance to Bushman's Hole doesn't hint at the vastness beneathit's the third-deepest freshwater cave in the world. [11] They had two children, Steven Shaw and Lisa (ne Shaw) Moyers. Ann thought the dive wasnt taking place until the next day, but as soon as she saw the somber group, she knew. Below them, the rich, pungent grasslands of Mpumalanga swept all the way to the distant horizon, and the Komati River glinted in the golden light. Your IP: Grim retrieved video footage shows diver Dave Shaw, who died on a mission to recover the body of a fellow diver, stopped moving and breathing exactly 26 minutes into the dive. Up or down, it wouldnt really have mattered. It found Deons dive helmet on the vast floor of Bushmans, but there was no sign of his body. He liked to carry a high-intensity light on the back of his hand, and if he needed both hands underwater, Shaw would normally sling the light and cable around his neck so it wouldnt snag on anything. At the time of Dreyers drowning, it was assumed his body would never be recovered because of the depth. Rest here, stay here. The group sang Amazing Grace as black clouds threatened rain. It was on its back, the arms reaching toward the surface.

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