Boesmansgat Tragedy–Dave Shaw Disappears: Regular TWC readers will be familiar with world record deep diver Dave Shaw, who in October got to a stygian 270 meters (885.8 feet) during a dive in Bushman’s Cave (Boesmansgat) in South Africa. The dive was all the more remarkable because while at the bottom Shaw found the body of diver Deon Dreyer, who had died diving in Boesmansgat in 1994. Great guy that he was, Shaw organized a rescue dive attempt last week to retrieve Deon’s body for his grateful parents. On Saturday, Shaw slipped into the 64 degree, crystal clear water. The dive to the bottom took about 15 minutes, and Shaw had about 5 minutes to free Dreyer from his gear and start passing him from diver to diver (arrayed at seven depths) toward the surface. Then Shaw would have to spend about 11 hours working his way back to fresh air as he decompressed from the unbelievable depth. Diver Don Shirley was at 220 meters and the first link in the chain to get both Dreyer and Shaw back up. He waited and waited. No Dreyer. No Shaw. Shirley heroically descended to 250 meters to look for Shaw. But he immediately got hit by decompression sickness, and started vomiting. Disoriented he had to head for the surface, where he was immediately tossed into a portable decompression chamber. Any further rescue attempts were called off so no additional lives would be lost. Shaw was declared missing and dead. Tragic. You can read all about it here.

Shaw had become a friend of TWC, and we were looking forward to hearing from him after the dive was over. Of course, you can question his decision to risk his life to retrieve a body. He was planning to go to a world record depth (hard enough on its face) AND perform an intricate rescue (Dreyer’s gear was stuck into the bottom mud and Shaw had to try and cut him loose and put him in a body bag). But Shaw had no question that it was the right thing to do. As for the risk: “The dive is a huge challenge. I am quietly confident that we can get Deon up. I am not putting myself in any danger to get his body,” he said. Unfortunately, he was very, very wrong, and now there are two bodies at the bottom of Boesmansgat, and a widow with two young children grieving for Dave Shaw. If you want to learn more about Shaw, spend a few minutes paging through his website, and his report on his plans to recover Dreyer.



Dave Shaw, Diver and Human Being Extraordinaire…