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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. Together with Ann, he designed a silk bag with drawstrings, long enough to fit over Deons fins. He made the envelope bigger.. The body was not meant to be floating. Its a lot easier to slip a bag over an immobile body than a body floating and rolling in front of you at 886 feet. Thats certainly the case for late high level scuba-diver, David Shaw, whose generous gesture of providing closure for another scuba-divers family, which sadly proved to be the last thing he did, is highlighted in the new documentary, Dave Not Coming Back.. Shirley was so focused on what he was watching that he started mimicking Shaws breathing. Over the next two weeks, he endured ten more chamber sessions, for a total of 27 hours of treatment. The entrance to Bushman's Hole doesn't hint at the vastness beneathit's the third-deepest freshwater cave in the world. Shaw had been working with both hands, and so had been resting his can light on the cave floor. When she saw a fully fleshed-out body, her tears stopped, and she felt happy. It was more than a month before he could think clearly or walk down a crowded street without his perception and balance running haywire. Performance & security by Cloudflare. As support diver Mark Andrews puts it, If you asked me about the chances before the dive, Id have said there is a 99 percent chance of success, and a 1 percent chance hell have to leave the body. At that moment late last October, cocooned in more than a billion gallons of water, Dave Shaw was a very happy man. Just past 400 feet, Herbst pulled even. 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. 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. He does not manage to untangle himself and runs out of air at 270m. The resulting crater is hundreds of feet from rim to rim and walled on one side by a sheer cliff. The last time shed had that feeling was 30 years earlier, at 19, as she walked down the aisle to be married, with Dave Shaw, himself just 20, waiting for her at the altar. This is the entrance to Bushman's Hole," explained MrBallen. Shirley had asked his friend, If you have problems, do you want me to come down?, Shaw considered the question and answered, Yes, but only come down if I signal., Shirley and Shaw had one last message for the gathered team. Within minutes, the police divers surfaced, empty-handed. LOWER LEFT LEG HURT. Divers were dying. IM HERE TO TAKE YOU HOME, he wrote. 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. A motionless diver at 886 feet is almost certainly a dead diver, but it was Dave Shaw down there. What happened after Shaw promised to go back is nearly unbelievableunless you believe in ghosts. It had been a rough night for Shirley. A week after Shaw died, Gordon Hiles brought the video to a guest house in Pretoria, where Shirley was staying while undergoing recompression treatment at the Eugene Marais Hospital, and Shirley finally watched it.

Later that day, Shirley took the video to the hospital, where he met with Herbst and Dr. Frans Cronje, medical director of Divers Alert Network Southern Africa, who was overseeing Shirleys treatment and assisting with the official accident investigation. Whoever was underneath him might need help, and Shirley was one of his best friends.

Half of the scenes were shot in Don's diving centre, the Komati Springs cave, a multilevel underwater mine, 180-meter deep, with many kilometres of galleries. Shaw has been at it for two minutes, and the cave line is seemingly everywhere. Sitting around a barbecue with his family one night, Deon spoke with boyish hubris. All rights reserved. After a few minutes, Shaws light was swallowed by the darkness below him. Ten minutes into his dive, Dave Shaw started to look for the bottom. 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. 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. Then another diver, in the eerie glow of his submersible light, dragged his finger across his throat. Ann Shaw had hoped her husband would rest forever in Bushmans Hole. Soon after, Sander appeared. In an instant, the entire, noble enterprise fell apart. He is dying. Divers had been keeping an eye out for him ever since. Another of his passions was diving.

He fell in love with the place. 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. They call Deon Dreyer's parents and ask for their permission. ShockYa's Exclusive 'Dave Not Coming Back' Clip. It was on its back, the arms reaching toward the surface. Deon is rolling and turning in front of him, resisting Shaws efforts to get him into the bag. 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). "David John Shaw (20 July 1954 - 8 January 2005) was an Australian. Shaw agreed but gave Ann the impression the dive would be taking place a day later than scheduled. LOWER LEFT LEG HURT. Youre about to read one of the Outside Classics, a series highlighting the best stories weve ever published, along with author interviews, where-are-they-now updates, and other exclusive bonus materials. He had partnered up with South African documentary filmmaker Gordon Hiles to chronicle the recovery of Deon. Shaw starts fumbling and, for the first time, lets out an audible grunt of effort. It doesnt work. He immediately got in touch with Dreyer's parents and promised them he'd retrieve the body and bring their boy home. It showed he had come up to 114 feet.

Shirley had to see if there was anything he could do, or at least clip Shaw to the shot line so his body could be recovered. 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. Reflexively, he peered deep into the hole. It had been more than an hour since Shaw submerged, and the police divers were due to return with their sons body any minute. He knelt alongside Deon and went to work. (Dreyer was lost on assent during his dive and never seen again.). Video footage shot by Mr Shaw indicates that about 25 minutes after the world-record diver entered the freshwater cave last Sunday to recover the decade-old remains of Mr Dreyer, 20, Mr Shaw also was dead. Shaw and Shirley had logged more than a hundred hours underwater together in the nearly two and a half years theyd known each other. Before Andrews and Stojakovic started up, they peered once more into the void. 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. After more than two and a half minutes of workand three minutes and 49 seconds on the bottomShaw pulls his shears out, fumbling to open them. We dont want to be recovered.. Ask questions and trade tips with a diverse community of divers, from open water newbies to dive instructors, commercial divers and scientists from around the world. He needed to dive, and I accepted that, she says. Herbst brought Deon out first. But in the water, descending the shot line guiding him from the caves entrance to the bottom, he was weightless and graceful, a black creature with just a flash of skin showing behind his mask, gliding downward without emitting a single bubble to disrupt the ethereal silence.

Every movement brought a new round of vomiting. he wrote on a slate. Then he knelt alongside Deon and went to work. Lo Vingerling was the next diver to reach Shirley. You focus on the one thing. Andre, who had stayed behind at Komati Springs to run the dive center, had been getting regular updates. On his first visit, in 1981, the Johannesburg-based Gomes dived to almost 250 feet, dropping down through a narrow chimney that opens up into an enormous chamber below 150 feet. This guy went half as deep again. The one thing becomes everything. In the dark, all he could see with his light as he spun was black, followed by the flash of the cave roof, then black. If recovering Deon from the bottom of Bushmans Hole was a feat of extraordinary ambition and danger, combining extreme depth with demanding work, Shaw and Shirley were just the guys to pull it off. 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. Theme: Newsup by Themeansar. He dived every spare minute he had, specializing in deep wrecks off the coast of Britain. Yes he dies. NOT SURE DS LIGHT OFF. And if you ascend too quickly, all the nitrogen and helium that has been forced into your tissues under pressure can fizz into tiny bubbles, causing a condition known as the bends, which can result in severe pain, paralysis, and death. For more information on Dave Not Coming Back, visit the films official website and Facebook page. (In-helmet footage of a deep water SCUBA diver drowning while retrieving the body of another diver in 890 feet of water.). Herbst realized that Shaws light mustve gotten tangled in the cave line. Required fields are marked *. After five and a half minutes on the bottom, hes aware enough to know he has to leave, but he doesnt get far.

Soon Shaw was flying in regularly to dive, and Shirley went with him whenever he had time. Don Shirley survived that day, but he didnt walk away unscathed. He and his wife, Ann, lived in Hong Kong, where they were members of a small Christian congregation. He was exhausted and approaching hypothermia, but he stayed there decompressing for almost two hours. Ann, a 49-year-old deputy head principal at Hong Kongs German Swiss International School, was nervous about the dangers her husband faced. What are you waiting for? As a graduate of LIU Post with a B.F.A in Journalism, Print and Electronic, Karen Benardello serves as ShockYa's Senior Movies & Television Editor. That grab kept him alive. For Marie and Theo, the nightmare started with a policemans knock at the door. Boesmansgat, as it's officially known, is a deep submerged freshwater cave in the Northern Cape province of South Africa. The dive would go off on the coming Saturday, January 8, and Shirleys dive plan was like an underwater symphony.

As the sun dipped low, they opened the box and threw Shaws ashes into the air. Share your stories, pictures and video to have discussions with a subreddit full of people who love the underwater world and dream fishy dreams. On October 28, 2004, two cave divers and long-time friends, Don Shirley and David Shaw, planned a dive at Boesmansgat. Little did they know that, from that second dive, Dave would not be coming back. [1] He flew for Cathay Pacific from 1989 until his death in 2005.

Shirley also speaks about how Shaw felt like the brother he never had, especially since they approached scuba diving in the same way.

Cloudflare Ray ID: 7d18b52edb1a9213 He does not manage to untangle himself and runs out of air at 270m.

The camera will follow them throughout the preparation and the dive, including to the bottom of the cave. And two have since died: American Sheck Exley, who drowned while diving the worlds deepest sinkhole, Mexicos 1,080-foot-deep Zacatn, in April 1994; and Britains John Bennett, who disappeared while diving a wreck off the coast of South Korea in March 2004. Then he set about diving his custom rig to successively greater depths. Your email address will not be published. Reddit, Inc. 2023. He told Hiles that, instead of slinging his light around his neck, he would occasionally set it out to the side. 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. The one thing becomes everything. Shirley stayed calm, his actions becoming almost automatic. Helium is no better; it can send you into nervous, twitching fits. 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. If Dave doesnt make it, if I dont make it, we stay there, said Shirley. Up or down, it wouldnt really have mattered. 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. He quickly pushed past the standard reef tours and went wreck diving. 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. Yes, he becomes hypoxic. He was also already a minute over his planned bottom time. Download the app. Hi, Im Dave Shaw, the man said. Shaw is not far, though. Needless to say, if you're claustrophobic in any way, you might want to grab your nearest support cushion while you read through this. (More people have walked on the moon, Don Shirley likes to point out.) Bushman's Hole has taken a number of lives over the years, including Deon Dreyer, an enthusiastic scuba diver from South Africa. Still, Shaw felt remarkably relaxed, sweeping his light left and right, reveling in the fact that he was the first human ever to lay line at this depth. He was in a washing machine, and off the shot line. 10 years after Dreyer's fateful dive, deep diver David Shaw discovered his body while diving in Bushman's hole and decided to mount a recovery effort for Deon.