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Hey man great videos! Subscribed! Just wanted to let you know about an error I found At 14:00 you say but deon is not prepared for depth When it should be don
Don is a superhero for keeping himself alive under that situation, then on top of that dealing with your best friend dying. Compartmentalize like a professional athlete
Only one error here, I think. Don did not turn around because the necessity of sticking to the plan prevailed; he retreated because his dive computer cracked and broke as he attempted to descend to Dave's level. He knew he would be doomed if he didn't start heading back up. Dave had been explicit that you should take care of yourself first, even if it meant leaving him behind, and that's what Don had to do.
The plaque reads at 5:55, "In loving memory of our son who brought nothing but sunshine and laughter into our lives. You have only been lent to us for a short time and the time for our joy."
I just watched the documentary "Dave Not Coming Back" and know very little about deep diving so I was confused but your video helped so much. After watching the documentary your video showed on the right hand side and I clicked it. Very clear and easy to understand even for us non divers. Thank you and RIP Dave Shaw and Deon Dryer.
I almost died at 10yrs old by a riptide in boca grande, my sister who was 18 swam outta the current then came back for me sealing her fate too. Some how a lil old boat with two old salts were going by at a distance and seen our flailing and screaming for help. Old boys snatched us out of the water just before certain death. Knowing your going to die then being saved is an unfathomable string of emotions.
*Two huge lapses of judgement.* 1) Deviating from the set-up he was familiar with and restricting the use of both hands in order to wear a helmet cam. 2) over-committing to the dive, so that even after things started to go very wrong he refused to abort. A literal sunk cost fallacy.
So easy to make a judgement like this afterwards. Sure you have to learn from past accidents, but these guys were all pros and this just shows the nature of these pursuits.
@@frikkied2638 Restricting your freedom of movement just looks like a bad move on the face of it, and what does 'being a pro' even mean if that experience doesn't benefit your decision making? A lot of the time I see that after a certain point additional experience actually begins to actively hurt a diver's capacity for good decision making, because they begin to forget that the sea is something that they absolutely SHOULD be afraid of.
Not necessarily a sunk cost fallacy. He may have thought that he was still alright under those conditions. The probable nitrogen narcosis wouldn't have helped much on that front. As you said, his experience might have worked against him there. I thought the real error was failing to consider the possibility of a buoyant body. That was never out of the question, yet it seemed not to have been a consideration. This massively compounded the problem you raised in your first point, as it turned what would have been a relatively straightforward procedure into a chaotic operation. A chaotic operation with an unfamiliar and messy setup is a recipe for disaster. Poor bloke.
There was no reason to go back down for the body to begin with, other than getting the footage and chasing the glory. Without the camera on him it was a mute point, he had already broken the record. He was there to break depth records to begin with.
I have seen David's story told multiple times over YT, but yours went more in depth and showed some never before seen (to me). Thank you ❣️ I am a new fan of your channel ❣️
Talking of ‘death spiral’ I think Dave didn’t try to abort mission at the first time things started getting out of plan because he knew it would take huge amount of time, money and efforts of so many people to go dive again some other day. So he got fixated to do it on that attempt itself.
I have seen a video a few years ago by two well known experts on deep sea diving and they watched Dave Shaw camera footage of his dive to do the body recovery at Boesmansgat Cave. They did comment that they could see how he checked his dive watch when he reached the bottom, and they was very alarmed that he only had 5 minutes left before had to go back. It was very sad to see that how his hands has stopped moving while the minutes ticked by. It was on the local news when it happened. Greetings from South Africa
I don’t think the full video showing his demise has ever actually been released, just snippets and cuts of it for Tv stations and interviews etc. The guy who has the footage, his friend, said it is like a snuff film because it shows his death
whats really brutal about this incident is that the very item that inadvertently caused him to get tangled up was the thing recording his death in real time. If he wasn't wearing a camera and helmet, he would not have gotten tangled up with the body because he would have been able to wrap the cord of his flashlight around the back of his neck.
when they went down to remove all the staged gear from the cave, one diver was pulling on the main drop line, and noticed it went from tension to it floating up in the water column. daves body was buoyant, and his dive light/torch was entangled with deons body, they both floated to the ceiling of the cave. amazing they didnt have to leave them down there.
Your story telling of these factual events , although sad , reminds me of how precious life is and puts my silly little life issues into perspective, thank you 😊
Your life is normal. The people that do this type of reckless nonsense deserve their fate... Keep doing the best you can. Make the those in your world smile. That's much more important than removing the soulless goo corpse of a random idiot.
It's fine, i ain't mad about it, im just curious, why are people so OBSESSED with burying dead bodies in the dirt? Some do cremation, vast majority want buried. But what's the difference? I think it'd be pretty cool to have a unique "resting" place, like 900ft deep in a cave, tallest mountain on Earth, etc. If i ever die in a dangerous location, especially an awesome location, plz tell everyone to just chill, im good, & if its a headstone you're after, something to talk to, just put up a picture of me on the wall, or just speak, if im out there somewhere (i think i will be), ill be listening. It's not like a tombstone is an extra-dimensional walkie-talkie...
Agreed with your points. If I died I wouldn’t mind where I was as long as my family and friends are safe, however I think for the families, it’s more of a “closure”. Like how victim’s families beg to know where the body is buried from the murderer etc. even though it’s 100% sure they’re gone and technically they are indeed buried. Even if it’s just for the “feelings”. They don’t want to leave them “abandoned” in a place they didn’t mean to be when they died, or a place where they suffered, and want to bring them home. Of course, I don’t agree putting anybody else in danger for that purpose. Living people always come first. However, I don’t know how much suffering the families actually experience to make them not consider that fact. At least that’s how I feel.
Couldn't agree more, I don't want a marked grave, I want to be buried where I'll decompose rapidly and naturally. The land is for the living, I don't want my corpse taking up space the living can use.
Thank you for explaining this tragedy in a way a layman can understand. What dedication these guys have and such heroes at the same time. Rest peacefully Dave and Deon - I wish you were still here to do what you loved most. Such a sad sad loss for everyone.
Very well done video, thank you! I too wondered why Dave Shaw wouldn't have immediately aborted the mission, so to speak, as soon as it stopped going to plan. But then I find the idea of diving in caves utterly terrifying!
Probably because David got down there, and lost the perspective of not having to do something vs. having to do something. It happens in heavy industry as well and some of the worst accidents and closest calls that could have killed multiple people were because someone in management or making decisions decided that we had to do _____ right now, instead of at a later time when we had proper equipment / conditions. David knew all the logistics it took to get him down there the first time, so I think he got the "I'll try this" mindset stuck in his head and he didn't realize how much trouble he was in until it was too late for him.
Watching this on New Years Day so glad I found this as I’ve watched many of videos on this but still couldn’t grasp in my head how it happened and have been obsessed with it ever since but finally through this I understand..Thankyou, Well explained, an outstanding piece 👍
Have to say your videos are excellent production and straight to the facts, your much better than many horror and tragedy type channels.. This does the sad story justice and delivers an excellent cadence of facts.. It seems too professional!
I’m an ex diving instructor and sailor. I really enjoy learning about the stories and sharing them. I started with a channel about how to scuba dive so it’s not my first rodeo.
You referred to Everest, and in the last few years, they had very warm weather and low levels of snow. They cleared up a lot of discarded equipment by climbers, and they took the opportunity to remove many of the bodies that they could recover under the super clear conditions.
@@stevencoardvenice many people died way below the death zone. at least 3 people died (including one famous body and 2 people that tried to bring that body down) near base camp.
@@stevencoardveniceThey did recover a few. But there are still a lot of corpses that are impossible to remove. I'm guessing they recovered ones that were at a lower elevation.
@@stevencoardvenice Often they just push clearly visible bodies over the edge or into crevasses, so they're not in the middle of the trail anymore, where they are a spectacle for the thousands of tourists, sorry, "Everest climbers" who climb Everest over the years.
12:00 Over exertion also almost killed the first gemini astronaut that did a space walk. Turned out the suits were not build to handle humidity from sweating, the helmet fogged up and he was totally blind. Also the russian kosmonaut whose suit inflated so much he didn't fit back thru the airlock. In the end they still managed to somehow scrape by. Shows that space is much more forgiving that the sea 😧
Last I checked, touching water doesnt cause my body to instantly implode, but okay, general YT commenter logic. Look at me! Look at me! I have a half cocked theory I literally just thought of! Let me blurt it out before my mind can think about it more! **vigorously types**
I've heard Shaw's story many times before and I often wondered if he didn't cut the line on purpose. The only reason they were able to recover both bodies was because they were still entangled. Dave knew he wasn't gonna make it and he didn't want anyone else to risk their lives like he had to bring back both bodies.
I find even the thought of diving INTENSELY anxiety-inducing. It never ceases tl amaze me that people do it professionally, let alone recreationally; braver men than I. Thanks for the top-notch content.
Ive been thinking of that too. Theres lots of dangerous activities like that that are addicting. Including skydiving, rock climbing, driving too fast. I think when people do this the danger forces the mind to be clear and focused... Muting all other problems and things to think about. In a situation supposedly very stressful... The opposite actually happens.. i think the mind finds peace. At least thats how i analyzed why i myself got addicted to a sjmilar activity
@@shogrran Driving fast is not scary like diving IMO, i mean you are only scared when something goes wrong in the first scenario, but diving? even if no accident happened i nervous thinking about spendeing 10 hours deep down on the dark alone this is crazy
@@Deb.-.I dove near where I live in the Seattle area for the first time recently, we had essentially zero visibility for parts of the scuba certification we were doing. It was just a brown silty murk. It was stressful at first but I calmed down pretty quickly I found. Made the underwater navigation skill a pain, I can only imagine the added stress if you're in a cave with zero visibility and you can't just surface wherever you want.
@@shogrranyou describe it perfectly , I’m a naturally anxious person and always thinking of 10 different things , I have done bungee jumping, sky diving and scuba diving , I found myself to be able to stay in the present moment and not think of other things .
There was nothing "Humble" about this "Mission" Hubris may have killed Dave. No doubt his fame would have spread throughout the Divers World had he accomplished the monumental task. Never the less, Rest in Peace Dave.
I was looking for exactly that comment but you said it 100 times better than I could have. Absolutely my thinking, ego-driven behavior leading to fatality, luckily Don didn't die to his best friends obsession about a 20 year decomposing corpse....
That's also what I thought. They were saving a decomposed body that has been in the same place for a very long time. Not a life or death situation, and the corpse wasn't likely to disappear. Instead of risking lives they could've at least waited until the technology would allow safer/easier diving.
I love this channel. Can’t wait for more content. I hate this case, it’s such a tough one. Although admirable it also seems a bit crazy to risk a living person’s life for a body recovery. There’s too many variables at that depth let alone the physical exertion required when recovering a body. It’s a miracle Don survived, if he had tried to help Dave he might be dead himself.
In every area of tech diving, certain divers are known for their retrieval skills. Handling a DB at depth is incredibly difficult. I’ve seen it done, but I do not have the skills to try it.
I read the book about this incident a few years ago. I seem to remember that when Don was desending to try and help Dave, his rebreather computer imploded from the pressure, which left him having to manually control the O2 in his loop. All while bent, with vertigo, spinning on the downline and throwing up in his mouth piece. It would be an absolutely hellish nightmare. The fact he survived is a miracle.
I feel like the divers involved were excited to do this as a personal achievement first and a service to the dead second. A sad story, but they knew the risks.
I almost drowned as a kid and super claustrophobic but I love watching/listening to anything on the ocean from ship wrecks to diving holes. I live vicariously through others and I respect those that lost their lives. I’ve had to pause a few videos when my ptsd gets too bad but it forces me to deal with something I rarely ever talk about so I guess it’s a form of therapy I agree with. Your channel is incredible and all I’ve listened to for 3 days since finding it
@@jeroenstrompf5064 Sadly the family of Deon put quite a bit of pressure on Dave to retrieve the body, and I'm sure that pressure from Deon's family compounded the already existing pressure of the dive itself, which might have contributed to Dave's death.
The phrase "buried at sea" is a euphamism for "it's too expensive to recover the body and the wildlife and elements have deteriorated the body past the point of recognition.
Very well spoken and a nice mix of real footage and you using body language to help describe the story. I appreciate that you read it yourself instead of using a robo-voice. They're getting good but I much prefer people telling a good old fashioned yarn
I once got in an argument with some hippy in the youtube comments section of a mount Everest tragedy video. They were going on and on about how messed up it was that nobody would go recover these bodys or go up to the top and clean up all the trash, or do this or do that. This story is EXACTLY why we leave those people on top of Everest. They choose to go up there knowing the risks, knowing if they died up their they would be staying up there. To take one body off of everest would take 5 people, 5 more lives at risk plus all they trash they bring with them (calories are important, trash weighs to much to bring back with you) Just let them rest in peace where they lay instead of needlessly adding to the body count.
True. It is not possible to recover the bodies from the death zone. They knew what they were getting into. The mountain is their grave. Regarding the trash though, it is a huge problem for the local population. The trash poisons their water supply. At this point, people should be forced to attend 5 cleanup climbs for every attempt to climb Mt Everest. That would help with overtourism and with the trash problem.
@@annalang5687 I would say tourist climbs should stop. The issue with cleanup is that just bringing your own trash back would result in most people who currently climb being unable to do so. While I don't think thats a bad thing. It sets the tone that just bringing your own trash back is a specialty ability that few posses. Now add bringing not just your own trash back, but that of others. How much could the top 10% of climbers bring back with them? I don't know, you'd have to ask someone more knowledgeable than me. What I do know, is that with the amount of trash up there, it would take decades of nothing but cleanup climbs to actually clean up the mountain. In that time you are putting every single one of that top 10% of climbers at significant risk of death just to bring their own trash plus that of one other person back. Keep in mind, it's not like there are just trash bags piled up like a landfill, the trash is spread out over the entire climb in individual pieces. You have to walk to each and every piece to put it in a bag, that can double the amount of supplies you need to carry just to bring back the waste from another person. If you lose one of your few 10% of climbers, not only do you lose someone who can clean, but you just left another person+ worth of trash on the mountain. It's sad, but the best solution to the trash problem on Mt. Everest is to just leave it all there and stop the tourism. However, that will also demolish Nepal's tourist industry and you will impact every single person living there by essentially cutting their primary means of income. Imagine banning tourism from Miami, imagine the devastation. It's not a simple problem unfortunately.
How about a tax on each Everest expedition. That would be paid for the mass / weight of trash deposited back at a base depot. (And then helicoptered out to a recycle/ landfill area.) With an amount specified for a body or a bottle deposited at the depot. I bet a lot of sherpas would take that up to get extra pay.
nice. less hype than the others and more fact. small correction..Don got bent due to isobaric counter diffusion, something we did not understand too well at the time but now do! He had a plan to 270m si did not get bent due to bad planning but rather the icd hit. Nice channel
South African here! Your pronunciation of "gat" is perfect! I'm not used to hearing people actually pronounce Afrikaans words properly. A berautiful video that clearly had a lot of effort put into it. A+++🥇
How the hell do you make tragic events so relaxing. Great stories though very sad, very eye opening and very interesting! Thank you for the content and saftey awareness.
I really can’t understand the “15 minutes of diving and then 10 hours of waiting” pattern of diving, and people still thinking it’s worth it. I guess the fact not many others would want to do that so its a bit of a frontier might be a motivator. But what do people do for those 10 hours of decompression (and thats only after 15 minutes)? I guess it could be very meditative, or a mental challenge that divers enjoy overcoming… but that is a long time to be floating in a dark cave without much to do besides think. Can any divers with experiences of long decompression ascents tell me what they do during that time? How they deal with it? Do they like it?
It's a good reason to HAVE DIVE BUDDIES... Top ways to pass time is "chat"... It's only a bit dubious, but ventriloquists have practiced for AGES to be able to talk without moving their lips or jaws, so you're doing about that same thing only with a mouthpiece in the way... It takes a little getting used to, adjustments to vocabulary, but you get there... AND you talk about the dive, concerns... whatever... It IS largely meditative... AND it can help to think of mental exercises to pass the time... Coming up alone, because a dive buddy's lost, though... That's probably on the list of the top 5 WORST feelings in the world. You only leave them behind because you HAVE to... or you'd only make two bodies to recover. I can't think of any way to feel smaller, more pathetic, or more alone than sitting through deco' stop after deco' stop, alone... in the dark... with nothing but the guilt of leaving your buddy... and your own inner demons to keep you company... It's the self control and precision as much as anything that draws people to it. There IS the frontier and exploration aspect, too, of course... BUT diving is a very Zen exercise. The fact is that a HUGE lot of people even enjoy cave diving regularly without issue. The stories coming out, especially the horror stories, are actually more of a result of the shear numbers of people attracted to the sport... AND not for nothing, but this particular story is as much about two separate guys PUSHING THE LIMITS past the cutting edge of tech' to make records... One was after "deepest dive" and the other was after "deepest body recovery"... Chasing clout is a good way to lose perspective, and losing perspective when you're diving is a good way to die. ;o)
In diving there is a simple word to spell but very hard to say. Its NO. You might want to go deeper or recover the body but at what cost.. I nearly died diving the Salam express..only 30 meter.. I learned to say no.. ..have I missed some great dives..yes.. But I've done thousands and lived..
Its a good point. When I was a young instructor some 25 years ago I was diving an inland lake in South Africa. The team were an ex navy diver, the owner of the land who knew and dived the cave system in the lake often and a group of other industry experts. The guys decided to dive the 46 meter deep cave and I said no. Obviously nothing happened but I remember feeling left out. But to this day, I dont regret saying no. When I learned to dive, my instructor said frequently that you get old divers and you get bold divers but not old, bold divers. I hadnt dived to 46 meters and I hadnt dived a cave before. I just didnt feel comfortable. Now Im 43 and have about 2000 dives and I am starting to feel ready for doing some more challenging dives. But I want the training and team to do it with.
@@waterlinestories I've only done one cave dive..its was with a group of commercial diver on a bit of a bus mans holiday. For me and my buddy to do a 30 meter deep 180 meter penatration dive took 3 dive planners..4 rescue divers ..1 hyperbaric chamber.. 3 rescue boats..4 trucks ( 3 compressors 1 on 2 spare) and a gas Bank with 72 hours of breathing gas. ) If the dive manager said stop stop stop...we stop and it home time. I got about 40 meter in and got stop stop stop. On the surface it was found that there was an issue with one of the 3 gas mix monitors. When the the dive supervisor ( god ) say no.. we stop. Yes we could of continued..we could of made it back. That night we had a few beers and a bbq. There was a spare seat and place at the table..whos that for.. Thats for Jerome.. he died because no one said no May all you dive be good ..the water clear.. and the storys after be good.
I never met Dave or Don Shirley, the diver who nearly lost his life retrieving Dave’s body. However, both dived for my agency, and we have plenty of people in common. Serious respect for Dave and Don in the tech community. As a tech cave/wreck/expedition diver, I can definitely say that your life is on the line every time him hit the water.
@@waterlinestories get to instructor level with a rec agency. Then branch out to tech. Training is a constant, highly rigorous task, the dives range from difficult to almost impossible to you bought it. The sport came close to killing me twice. I didn’t give it up until I was over 60.
I taught rec for ten years. I loved it. Never got into the technical side. I just never felt the need. But now while I research these stories I've developed a lot of respect the the technicalities and become more intrigued. Thanks for sharing your experience
Why was Dion working as a support diver with only 200 dives under his belt? I’m a newly trained diver, who’s logged 20 dives in my first month after doing OW. Thats 1/10th of Dion’s. This seems like a very low amount to be doing a more complex dive like this, isn’t it?
It depends on the type of experience you have, but in general a starting support diver doesn't need that much experience. In fact it might be better to have little experience and the project builds the diver up the way they want them to be. That is how the GUE came about, to support the WKPP by establishing first a test, and eventually the full training structure to build up support and expedition divers.
Yep - I’m an AOW certified and have over 100dives, many in U.K. cold water, I agree 200dives is not much of a record, there’s only so much you can learn from each dive and only so much experience you can acquire during those trips. The type of technical dive in a cave with no floor would be a ‘buddy on watch per person’ and even then it seems incredibly difficult work environment. Obviously very dangerous coz people died, which is a total tragedy.
I've never heard about Don in this story. Everyone leaves his serious problems on the way up out of it. And they shouldn't. This feels like it was perilously close to costing another life.
Small suggestion for your videos, include some sort of written caption on the photos that you show while narrating. Some of them are obviously stock photos (nothing wrong with that obviously), but others are obviously out of place from the current story. Example, you are talking about the 1994 dive session around 4:48 in this video and show a photo of a dive suit with umbilical cable. Is that a photo from that dive session? Or just a random deep water photo from that time period?
Thank you. I just watched another vid on this that was more confusing than anything. You cleared up a lot including why a 20 min dive takes 12 hours - I didn't know they had stops for so long to decompress. They should have consulted a medical examiner on what condition the body would be in. I think Deon's parents should have told him not to do it. They probably weren't sufficiently informed of the risks.
If he was digging in sediment then his vis would have gone to zero. I wonder if his rehearsals factored this in with a blanked out face mask ? Or if it was planed in as an abort trigger. All of the planning and briefing documentation they would have drawn up would make an interesting read - has it ever been revealed ? There would most certainly have been documentation of this type.
Before watching this I saw the helmet video from Dave of the rescue and it was very harrowing. The part in the video where Deon's head detaches and briefly peers with mask attached, at the Dave and camera, while floating about was almost a foreboding of Dave's fate. At the point I imagine the panic, narcosis and Co2 poisoning was setting in to the point he must've known his own death was imminent. Horrible way to go! That said this was a really good insight to the case with a good presenting style as opposed to the AI voice overs or some OTT American ones, keep it up!
Fun fact. Dave succeeded. Deon was in fact returned to his family, as was Dave. Bananas he was even able to get him in the bag under all that pressure!!!
I don't get the elaborate idea of putting Deons body in a body bag? Why not just hook him up to a line and then pull him up to the surface? I get giving the body dignity and all that but it just seemed to make this particular recovery unnecessarily complicated.
Omg, imagine Dave seeing Deons face / skull through his Deons goggles. What freaks me out is seeing how old Deons tank and hold old it was compared to Dave's is freaky also. R.I.P Deon & Dave
Jeez I never knew the logistics of setting stage cylinders and just how many there would need to be. So complex and so many things to go wrong for such a simple thing: swimming down.
You've got a big fact wrong, it wasn't nitrogen that killed him it was co2. He was exhaling so much of it that his rebreather could not keep up with it and he eventually blacked out.
The feeling of anxiety and claustrophobia i feel when watching these cave diving tragedies is unlike any other feeling i've ever had when watching any media.
I learned about this from one of the best longform feature articles I've ever read, Raising the Dead in Outside magazine. It has stayed with me since I read it around 2009
There's a song I first heard when I was around 16 or 17, it was called 'The Last Dive of David Shaw' by 'We Lost the Sea.' Its a very profound track, and it's what started my interest in diving all-together. Incredible song. Some of the audio used in the intro for the 16 minute track are from the actual Shaw dive.
Yes! When I first heard the track, I had no idea what it was about. After researching it, I found I couldn't listen to the track anymore, knowing what I was hearing. The music was so good that it really did recreate the sensation of a man drowning in the dark, and it haunted me.
Bravo!!!! Well done!!! You did an outstanding job of telling this extremely complicated story!! When I first saw this video, I thought "can't wait for this guy to make a mess of Dave Shaw's dive story which ended in his death at Bushman's Hole"....but I was wrong. You got it all right.
Great video. This one had the background sound a bit too loud and interfered with what you were saying. Perhaps turn down the background sound a bit please?
I’m pretty sure that if the original dead diver was asked if he would want his body recovered if he died in the cave, he would have said no, and to just leave him at at the bottom and not to risk any other lives in any recovery effort.
Wouldn’t have been simpler, if possible to clip a line to the diver’s body, go back up and have the body pulled to shallower water from the surface? Putting a body in a body bag by yourself seems complicated even when not diving.
@@waterlinestories I thought about that possibility. But wouldn’t the dry or wetsuit kept all the body parts contained? The risk and the challenge of putting a body in a body bag at that depth, stirring sediment, using too much effort seems something not worth the risk. Once interred or cremated, a body falls apart anyway. Positive identification could have been done via dna testing. That is my main issue with this. Clipping a couple of carabiners to the bcd would have been simpler. The risk to recover a body shouldn’t be lower than the risk to rescue a living perso? Anyway, great videos, great delivery and information. I watch them all in a few days. Would love a series on the NORD STREAM 2 sabotage. Speculations, hypothesis, if a country like Ukraine could have pulled it off, if the US navy divers used saturation diving, or rebreathers, how long it might have taken, how it could be repaired and cleaned inside. Etc. it could be multiple episodes.. You could contact reporter Seymour Hersh, who broke the story, and interview him. He is talking on several TH-cam and media channels in the USA and Europe.
Yes I see your point on retrieving the body. For me I would never just left him there. I wouldn't have been so deep anyway. If I recall, when his body came up in the body bag, his head had severed from his body. He was in a wetsuit. I'm just writing a script for Nord stream based on Seymour Hersch's article. I had not thought to contact him but I might do that. It's a few weeks out though. I've got a number of videos in production ahead of that one but I am looking forward to releasing it. Thanks for watching.
@@waterlinestories it would probably good for Hersh to get corroboration from a diving professional like yourself. Also discussing the technical aspects of it. Another interesting point about the nord stream 2 sabotage is the environmental impact. The Biden administration is pushing green energy, and then they cause a major spill? It seems the typical hypocrisy. There are so many fascinating elements in the nord stream 2. The topic is very politicized in the US. So an analysis from a different point of view would be interesting. A Norwegian channel posted a video of their underwater drone showing the damage.
@@waterlinestories so news in recently puts russia sabotaging nordstream to pressure germany into dropping support for ukraine might want to make a redaction or update vid on that US sabotage dive you theorised XD
I saw the Dave Shaw dive on 11/12/24 for the first time and I thought it just happened in the last year or so,so I kept seeing everybody reacting to it on TH-cam Tube come to realize this happened in 2005 which is so surprising to me but I felt so heart broken when he didn’t come back to surface I cried for Dave (the show I watched was Dave Not Coming Back)I felt for his family the other divers it was the saddest story I ever watched,trying to bring home a 20 yr.old who was under water for 10 yrs back to his parents who he promised I’ll bring your son up and he did with his life and rope,!RIP Dave & Deon
Is there a particular diving bell that's considered to be the best or quite favored amongst saturation divers? Maybe another way of putting that question would be... if I were a saturation diver, does there exist a well known and high quality diving bell such that upon learning that I would be using it for my next job, it would put my mind at ease (at least in that one aspect)?
I'd have thought that planning for contingencies would be an obvious inclusion to the dive plan for doing a body recovery. Especially knowing just how dangerous those depths are at the best of times, and that Deon's death was likely from the mere effort of transporting bottles. It seems to me that if they had planned the dive even a little more thoughly, Dave could have come out alive.
One diver doing a recovery of that nature ?? That would have required min 2 and maybe 3 on the task. One diver would have reached a decision point of stay/go and in this case , he stayed.
I taught my brother to dive years ago. He said upfront he doesn't want to see sharks or he's out. In the end we didn't see sharks and her was disappointed. I'm sure you'd love it
One part that is missing is Dan's equipment failure. It's surprising, after watching this video and "Dave not coming back" I still don't fully understand what happened
His equipment didn't fail. He suffered the same death as Deon; CO2 poisoning caused by over exeterion from his panic and extreme narcosis. To my understanding rebreathers need steady, calm breathing to work properly.
Thanks for watching.
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Pinning & Liking your own lame advert for patreon comment??? shameful + greedy = unsubbed
Hey man great videos! Subscribed! Just wanted to let you know about an error I found At 14:00 you say but deon is not prepared for depth
When it should be don
@vilintjay thanks. Must have slipped on the tongue
@@waterlinestories no worries bro it happens, keep up the great work I throughly enjoy every vid you make!
😊
Don is a superhero for keeping himself alive under that situation, then on top of that dealing with your best friend dying. Compartmentalize like a professional athlete
Yes we could all do with that mindset from time to time, hopefully not in such extreme circumstances.
there is a really good documentary about - "Dave not coming back"
Yea its insane that Don even survived through all of that
Only one error here, I think. Don did not turn around because the necessity of sticking to the plan prevailed; he retreated because his dive computer cracked and broke as he attempted to descend to Dave's level. He knew he would be doomed if he didn't start heading back up. Dave had been explicit that you should take care of yourself first, even if it meant leaving him behind, and that's what Don had to do.
The plaque reads at 5:55, "In loving memory of our son who brought nothing but sunshine and laughter into our lives. You have only been lent to us for a short time and the time for our joy."
You mean bent not lent?
Thank you. I was wondering.
@@SynkyLent is rike being borrowed. He wan borrowed from someone greater. Bent wouldn't make any sense.
I just watched the documentary "Dave Not Coming Back" and know very little about deep diving so I was confused but your video helped so much. After watching the documentary your video showed on the right hand side and I clicked it. Very clear and easy to understand even for us non divers. Thank you and RIP Dave Shaw and Deon Dryer.
Thanks for sharing. I'm glad it was helpful
Yes, this video really helped me understand as well. I was really confused by some aspects and this explains it very well.
I almost died at 10yrs old by a riptide in boca grande, my sister who was 18 swam outta the current then came back for me sealing her fate too. Some how a lil old boat with two old salts were going by at a distance and seen our flailing and screaming for help. Old boys snatched us out of the water just before certain death. Knowing your going to die then being saved is an unfathomable string of emotions.
Glad you made it.
Hahahahahaha yeah right
@@beenhog6922 What’s funny? Oh yeah right I forgot, you stare and laugh at a blank wall. I remember u.
@@beenhog6922Are mentally handicapped or 12 or both?
Sheesh- I might be done with the ocean after an experience like that
*Two huge lapses of judgement.* 1) Deviating from the set-up he was familiar with and restricting the use of both hands in order to wear a helmet cam. 2) over-committing to the dive, so that even after things started to go very wrong he refused to abort. A literal sunk cost fallacy.
Well said!
So easy to make a judgement like this afterwards. Sure you have to learn from past accidents, but these guys were all pros and this just shows the nature of these pursuits.
@@frikkied2638 Restricting your freedom of movement just looks like a bad move on the face of it, and what does 'being a pro' even mean if that experience doesn't benefit your decision making?
A lot of the time I see that after a certain point additional experience actually begins to actively hurt a diver's capacity for good decision making, because they begin to forget that the sea is something that they absolutely SHOULD be afraid of.
Not necessarily a sunk cost fallacy. He may have thought that he was still alright under those conditions. The probable nitrogen narcosis wouldn't have helped much on that front. As you said, his experience might have worked against him there.
I thought the real error was failing to consider the possibility of a buoyant body. That was never out of the question, yet it seemed not to have been a consideration. This massively compounded the problem you raised in your first point, as it turned what would have been a relatively straightforward procedure into a chaotic operation. A chaotic operation with an unfamiliar and messy setup is a recipe for disaster. Poor bloke.
There was no reason to go back down for the body to begin with, other than getting the footage and chasing the glory. Without the camera on him it was a mute point, he had already broken the record.
He was there to break depth records to begin with.
I have seen David's story told multiple times over YT, but yours went more in depth and showed some never before seen (to me). Thank you ❣️ I am a new fan of your channel ❣️
Thanks for saying so. Welcome aboard
Perhaps and hopefully search "Dave is not coming back ". .....
Fun fact about cave diving: you don't actually have to do it. Ever. 😃😃😃
Right lol
This is the only thing about diving that makes sense. You don't have to do it. 🙂
"face your fears" 🤓
See also the conga line of bodies going up Mt.Everest
@@avgeek-and-fashion Commercial diving has a purpose. Do you like energy or that thing called the internet?
Talking of ‘death spiral’ I think Dave didn’t try to abort mission at the first time things started getting out of plan because he knew it would take huge amount of time, money and efforts of so many people to go dive again some other day. So he got fixated to do it on that attempt itself.
Also the corpse could float away and if they were to return, they may not be able to find it the next time.
He was probably also really narc’d.
He was narced by 3 min at the bottom. Deadman by 5 min at depth.@@collinjamesguitar
Just like summit fever
This channel has excellent writing. The storyteller is mesmerizing, and the video editing is superb.
Thanks I appreciate that👍🏻
I have seen a video a few years ago by two well known experts on deep sea diving and they watched Dave Shaw camera footage of his dive to do the body recovery at Boesmansgat Cave. They did comment that they could see how he checked his dive watch when he reached the bottom, and they was very alarmed that he only had 5 minutes left before had to go back. It was very sad to see that how his hands has stopped moving while the minutes ticked by. It was on the local news when it happened. Greetings from South Africa
I don’t think the full video showing his demise has ever actually been released, just snippets and cuts of it for Tv stations and interviews etc.
The guy who has the footage, his friend, said it is like a snuff film because it shows his death
Wow. You covered this incident extremely well, great work. RIP Dave and Deon
whats really brutal about this incident is that the very item that inadvertently caused him to get tangled up was the thing recording his death in real time. If he wasn't wearing a camera and helmet, he would not have gotten tangled up with the body because he would have been able to wrap the cord of his flashlight around the back of his neck.
when they went down to remove all the staged gear from the cave, one diver was pulling on the main drop line, and noticed it went from tension to it floating up in the water column. daves body was buoyant, and his dive light/torch was entangled with deons body, they both floated to the ceiling of the cave. amazing they didnt have to leave them down there.
Your story telling of these factual events , although sad , reminds me of how precious life is and puts my silly little life issues into perspective, thank you 😊
Thanks, I really appreciate that
Your life is normal. The people that do this type of reckless nonsense deserve their fate... Keep doing the best you can. Make the those in your world smile. That's much more important than removing the soulless goo corpse of a random idiot.
It's fine, i ain't mad about it, im just curious, why are people so OBSESSED with burying dead bodies in the dirt? Some do cremation, vast majority want buried. But what's the difference? I think it'd be pretty cool to have a unique "resting" place, like 900ft deep in a cave, tallest mountain on Earth, etc. If i ever die in a dangerous location, especially an awesome location, plz tell everyone to just chill, im good, & if its a headstone you're after, something to talk to, just put up a picture of me on the wall, or just speak, if im out there somewhere (i think i will be), ill be listening. It's not like a tombstone is an extra-dimensional walkie-talkie...
Ghosts...duh
Agreed with your points. If I died I wouldn’t mind where I was as long as my family and friends are safe, however I think for the families, it’s more of a “closure”. Like how victim’s families beg to know where the body is buried from the murderer etc. even though it’s 100% sure they’re gone and technically they are indeed buried.
Even if it’s just for the “feelings”. They don’t want to leave them “abandoned” in a place they didn’t mean to be when they died, or a place where they suffered, and want to bring them home. Of course, I don’t agree putting anybody else in danger for that purpose. Living people always come first. However, I don’t know how much suffering the families actually experience to make them not consider that fact.
At least that’s how I feel.
Couldn't agree more, I don't want a marked grave, I want to be buried where I'll decompose rapidly and naturally. The land is for the living, I don't want my corpse taking up space the living can use.
Thank you for explaining this tragedy in a way a layman can understand. What dedication these guys have and such heroes at the same time. Rest peacefully Dave and Deon - I wish you were still here to do what you loved most. Such a sad sad loss for everyone.
👌🏻
Very well done video, thank you! I too wondered why Dave Shaw wouldn't have immediately aborted the mission, so to speak, as soon as it stopped going to plan. But then I find the idea of diving in caves utterly terrifying!
Probably because David got down there, and lost the perspective of not having to do something vs. having to do something. It happens in heavy industry as well and some of the worst accidents and closest calls that could have killed multiple people were because someone in management or making decisions decided that we had to do _____ right now, instead of at a later time when we had proper equipment / conditions.
David knew all the logistics it took to get him down there the first time, so I think he got the "I'll try this" mindset stuck in his head and he didn't realize how much trouble he was in until it was too late for him.
Watching this on New Years Day so glad I found this as I’ve watched many of videos on this but still couldn’t grasp in my head how it happened and have been obsessed with it ever since but finally through this I understand..Thankyou, Well explained, an outstanding piece 👍
Ah good stuff. Thanks for saying so
Wow ! This really deciphers the other documentary Dave Not Coming back. Thanks for this
Have to say your videos are excellent production and straight to the facts, your much better than many horror and tragedy type channels.. This does the sad story justice and delivers an excellent cadence of facts.. It seems too professional!
I’m an ex diving instructor and sailor. I really enjoy learning about the stories and sharing them. I started with a channel about how to scuba dive so it’s not my first rodeo.
You referred to Everest, and in the last few years, they had very warm weather and low levels of snow. They cleared up a lot of discarded equipment by climbers, and they took the opportunity to remove many of the bodies that they could recover under the super clear conditions.
Interesting, I didn’t know that, thanks for sharing
They took bodies all the way from the death zone back to base camp?? I find that hard to believe
@@stevencoardvenice many people died way below the death zone. at least 3 people died (including one famous body and 2 people that tried to bring that body down) near base camp.
@@stevencoardveniceThey did recover a few. But there are still a lot of corpses that are impossible to remove. I'm guessing they recovered ones that were at a lower elevation.
@@stevencoardvenice Often they just push clearly visible bodies over the edge or into crevasses, so they're not in the middle of the trail anymore, where they are a spectacle for the thousands of tourists, sorry, "Everest climbers" who climb Everest over the years.
I remember in highschool I found the helmet footage from Dave's camera on LiveLeak and watched. Eerie and disturbing stuff. RIP.
12:00 Over exertion also almost killed the first gemini astronaut that did a space walk. Turned out the suits were not build to handle humidity from sweating, the helmet fogged up and he was totally blind. Also the russian kosmonaut whose suit inflated so much he didn't fit back thru the airlock. In the end they still managed to somehow scrape by. Shows that space is much more forgiving that the sea 😧
Last I checked, touching water doesnt cause my body to instantly implode, but okay, general YT commenter logic. Look at me! Look at me! I have a half cocked theory I literally just thought of! Let me blurt it out before my mind can think about it more! **vigorously types**
confidence: that odd feeling you get just before you fully understand the situation.
*false confidence
I've heard Shaw's story many times before and I often wondered if he didn't cut the line on purpose.
The only reason they were able to recover both bodies was because they were still entangled.
Dave knew he wasn't gonna make it and he didn't want anyone else to risk their lives like he had to bring back both bodies.
I find even the thought of diving INTENSELY anxiety-inducing. It never ceases tl amaze me that people do it professionally, let alone recreationally; braver men than I. Thanks for the top-notch content.
Ive been thinking of that too. Theres lots of dangerous activities like that that are addicting. Including skydiving, rock climbing, driving too fast. I think when people do this the danger forces the mind to be clear and focused... Muting all other problems and things to think about. In a situation supposedly very stressful... The opposite actually happens.. i think the mind finds peace. At least thats how i analyzed why i myself got addicted to a sjmilar activity
@@shogrran Driving fast is not scary like diving IMO, i mean you are only scared when something goes wrong in the first scenario, but diving? even if no accident happened i nervous thinking about spendeing 10 hours deep down on the dark alone this is crazy
Diving where there's no quick way back up, anyway.
@@Deb.-.I dove near where I live in the Seattle area for the first time recently, we had essentially zero visibility for parts of the scuba certification we were doing. It was just a brown silty murk. It was stressful at first but I calmed down pretty quickly I found. Made the underwater navigation skill a pain, I can only imagine the added stress if you're in a cave with zero visibility and you can't just surface wherever you want.
@@shogrranyou describe it perfectly , I’m a naturally anxious person and always thinking of 10 different things , I have done bungee jumping, sky diving and scuba diving , I found myself to be able to stay in the present moment and not think of other things .
There was nothing "Humble" about this "Mission"
Hubris may have killed Dave.
No doubt his fame would have spread throughout the Divers World had he accomplished the monumental task.
Never the less, Rest in Peace Dave.
True
As an airline captain he should have been a systems guy not a lone soldier. Interesting angle.
I was looking for exactly that comment but you said it 100 times better than I could have. Absolutely my thinking, ego-driven behavior leading to fatality, luckily Don didn't die to his best friends obsession about a 20 year decomposing corpse....
That's also what I thought. They were saving a decomposed body that has been in the same place for a very long time. Not a life or death situation, and the corpse wasn't likely to disappear. Instead of risking lives they could've at least waited until the technology would allow safer/easier diving.
Agree. This was a dumb idea through and through.
I love this channel. Can’t wait for more content. I hate this case, it’s such a tough one. Although admirable it also seems a bit crazy to risk a living person’s life for a body recovery. There’s too many variables at that depth let alone the physical exertion required when recovering a body. It’s a miracle Don survived, if he had tried to help Dave he might be dead himself.
Yep, its like threading a needle and if you get it wrong just once, its all over.
More is on the way.
@@waterlinestories that is an excellent analogy
In every area of tech diving, certain divers are known for their retrieval skills. Handling a DB at depth is incredibly difficult. I’ve seen it done, but I do not have the skills to try it.
I read the book about this incident a few years ago. I seem to remember that when Don was desending to try and help Dave, his rebreather computer imploded from the pressure, which left him having to manually control the O2 in his loop. All while bent, with vertigo, spinning on the downline and throwing up in his mouth piece. It would be an absolutely hellish nightmare. The fact he survived is a miracle.
I feel like the divers involved were excited to do this as a personal achievement first and a service to the dead second. A sad story, but they knew the risks.
I almost drowned as a kid and super claustrophobic but I love watching/listening to anything on the ocean from ship wrecks to diving holes. I live vicariously through others and I respect those that lost their lives. I’ve had to pause a few videos when my ptsd gets too bad but it forces me to deal with something I rarely ever talk about so I guess it’s a form of therapy I agree with. Your channel is incredible and all I’ve listened to for 3 days since finding it
Dead sailors get buried at sea, maybe a flooded cave is an appropriate grave for a cave diver already?
Indeed. If I was family of Dion, I don't think I would care to have his body recovered: this is actually a much more special grave
@@jeroenstrompf5064 Sadly the family of Deon put quite a bit of pressure on Dave to retrieve the body, and I'm sure that pressure from Deon's family compounded the already existing pressure of the dive itself, which might have contributed to Dave's death.
The phrase "buried at sea" is a euphamism for "it's too expensive to recover the body and the wildlife and elements have deteriorated the body past the point of recognition.
Very well spoken and a nice mix of real footage and you using body language to help describe the story. I appreciate that you read it yourself instead of using a robo-voice. They're getting good but I much prefer people telling a good old fashioned yarn
Thanks. I turn off videos with those AI readers. There's something a bit off about them.
@@waterlinestories I do too! Just read it, even if you don't like your own voice 👍
Your entire channel is increible, and you are an amazing story teller!
Thanks, I really appreciate that 👍🏻
I once got in an argument with some hippy in the youtube comments section of a mount Everest tragedy video. They were going on and on about how messed up it was that nobody would go recover these bodys or go up to the top and clean up all the trash, or do this or do that. This story is EXACTLY why we leave those people on top of Everest. They choose to go up there knowing the risks, knowing if they died up their they would be staying up there. To take one body off of everest would take 5 people, 5 more lives at risk plus all they trash they bring with them (calories are important, trash weighs to much to bring back with you) Just let them rest in peace where they lay instead of needlessly adding to the body count.
True. It is not possible to recover the bodies from the death zone. They knew what they were getting into. The mountain is their grave.
Regarding the trash though, it is a huge problem for the local population. The trash poisons their water supply.
At this point, people should be forced to attend 5 cleanup climbs for every attempt to climb Mt Everest. That would help with overtourism and with the trash problem.
@@annalang5687 I would say tourist climbs should stop. The issue with cleanup is that just bringing your own trash back would result in most people who currently climb being unable to do so. While I don't think thats a bad thing. It sets the tone that just bringing your own trash back is a specialty ability that few posses. Now add bringing not just your own trash back, but that of others. How much could the top 10% of climbers bring back with them? I don't know, you'd have to ask someone more knowledgeable than me. What I do know, is that with the amount of trash up there, it would take decades of nothing but cleanup climbs to actually clean up the mountain. In that time you are putting every single one of that top 10% of climbers at significant risk of death just to bring their own trash plus that of one other person back. Keep in mind, it's not like there are just trash bags piled up like a landfill, the trash is spread out over the entire climb in individual pieces. You have to walk to each and every piece to put it in a bag, that can double the amount of supplies you need to carry just to bring back the waste from another person.
If you lose one of your few 10% of climbers, not only do you lose someone who can clean, but you just left another person+ worth of trash on the mountain. It's sad, but the best solution to the trash problem on Mt. Everest is to just leave it all there and stop the tourism. However, that will also demolish Nepal's tourist industry and you will impact every single person living there by essentially cutting their primary means of income. Imagine banning tourism from Miami, imagine the devastation.
It's not a simple problem unfortunately.
How about a tax on each Everest expedition. That would be paid for the mass / weight of trash deposited back at a base depot. (And then helicoptered out to a recycle/ landfill area.)
With an amount specified for a body or a bottle deposited at the depot. I bet a lot of sherpas would take that up to get extra pay.
nice. less hype than the others and more fact. small correction..Don got bent due to isobaric counter diffusion, something we did not understand too well at the time but now do! He had a plan to 270m si did not get bent due to bad planning but rather the icd hit. Nice channel
Thanks Peter. I did my best to research as much as possible and to be as respectful as I could.
Yeah you're right B. (If you'll excuse the familiarity) I eventually worked it out too. Different gases really messing up the divers decompression.
South African here! Your pronunciation of "gat" is perfect! I'm not used to hearing people actually pronounce Afrikaans words properly. A berautiful video that clearly had a lot of effort put into it. A+++🥇
I’m glad I did. I just about failed Afrikaans in school. 🤣 I am South African
@waterlinestories Nice! And don't worry - despite growing up with a mom from Welkom, I also only barely passed 😅
@rachelmoore3418 🫣😀🇿🇦
How the hell do you make tragic events so relaxing. Great stories though very sad, very eye opening and very interesting! Thank you for the content and saftey awareness.
🤣
I really can’t understand the “15 minutes of diving and then 10 hours of waiting” pattern of diving, and people still thinking it’s worth it. I guess the fact not many others would want to do that so its a bit of a frontier might be a motivator. But what do people do for those 10 hours of decompression (and thats only after 15 minutes)? I guess it could be very meditative, or a mental challenge that divers enjoy overcoming… but that is a long time to be floating in a dark cave without much to do besides think. Can any divers with experiences of long decompression ascents tell me what they do during that time? How they deal with it? Do they like it?
It's a good reason to HAVE DIVE BUDDIES... Top ways to pass time is "chat"... It's only a bit dubious, but ventriloquists have practiced for AGES to be able to talk without moving their lips or jaws, so you're doing about that same thing only with a mouthpiece in the way... It takes a little getting used to, adjustments to vocabulary, but you get there... AND you talk about the dive, concerns... whatever...
It IS largely meditative... AND it can help to think of mental exercises to pass the time...
Coming up alone, because a dive buddy's lost, though... That's probably on the list of the top 5 WORST feelings in the world. You only leave them behind because you HAVE to... or you'd only make two bodies to recover. I can't think of any way to feel smaller, more pathetic, or more alone than sitting through deco' stop after deco' stop, alone... in the dark... with nothing but the guilt of leaving your buddy... and your own inner demons to keep you company...
It's the self control and precision as much as anything that draws people to it. There IS the frontier and exploration aspect, too, of course... BUT diving is a very Zen exercise. The fact is that a HUGE lot of people even enjoy cave diving regularly without issue. The stories coming out, especially the horror stories, are actually more of a result of the shear numbers of people attracted to the sport...
AND not for nothing, but this particular story is as much about two separate guys PUSHING THE LIMITS past the cutting edge of tech' to make records... One was after "deepest dive" and the other was after "deepest body recovery"... Chasing clout is a good way to lose perspective, and losing perspective when you're diving is a good way to die. ;o)
It's the depth the adds to your decompression time.
Thanks for your videos man. You've inspired me to get open water scuba certified
I don't even want to WALK into a cave, and these guys DIVE in them???
A clearing of info too this tragedy... tnx. And...Great channel.
Thanks for watching
In diving there is a simple word to spell but very hard to say.
Its NO.
You might want to go deeper or recover the body but at what cost..
I nearly died diving the Salam express..only 30 meter..
I learned to say no.. ..have I missed some great dives..yes..
But I've done thousands and lived..
Its a good point. When I was a young instructor some 25 years ago I was diving an inland lake in South Africa. The team were an ex navy diver, the owner of the land who knew and dived the cave system in the lake often and a group of other industry experts. The guys decided to dive the 46 meter deep cave and I said no. Obviously nothing happened but I remember feeling left out. But to this day, I dont regret saying no. When I learned to dive, my instructor said frequently that you get old divers and you get bold divers but not old, bold divers. I hadnt dived to 46 meters and I hadnt dived a cave before. I just didnt feel comfortable.
Now Im 43 and have about 2000 dives and I am starting to feel ready for doing some more challenging dives. But I want the training and team to do it with.
@@waterlinestories I've only done one cave dive..its was with a group of commercial diver on a bit of a bus mans holiday. For me and my buddy to do a 30 meter deep 180 meter penatration dive took 3 dive planners..4 rescue divers ..1 hyperbaric chamber.. 3 rescue boats..4 trucks ( 3 compressors 1 on 2 spare) and a gas Bank with 72 hours of breathing gas. )
If the dive manager said stop stop stop...we stop and it home time.
I got about 40 meter in and got stop stop stop. On the surface it was found that there was an issue with one of the 3 gas mix monitors.
When the the dive supervisor ( god ) say no.. we stop.
Yes we could of continued..we could of made it back.
That night we had a few beers and a bbq. There was a spare seat and place at the table..whos that for..
Thats for Jerome.. he died because no one said no
May all you dive be good ..the water clear.. and the storys after be good.
Yeah that's the right kind of planning. Sometimes it takes a closer to home Jerome to make it sink in.
Thanks for sharing
So glad I found your channel, so very informative..
Thanks. Welcome aboard
Great video and storytelling.
Technical diving is at the same time fascinating and horrifying to me.
Also very well-made videos, thank you! :)
Thanks. I feel the same way. Id like to do some technical diving but at the same time I have a deep respect for the position people put themselves.
I never met Dave or Don Shirley, the diver who nearly lost his life retrieving Dave’s body. However, both dived for my agency, and we have plenty of people in common. Serious respect for Dave and Don in the tech community.
As a tech cave/wreck/expedition diver, I can definitely say that your life is on the line every time him hit the water.
@@waterlinestories get to instructor level with a rec agency. Then branch out to tech. Training is a constant, highly rigorous task, the dives range from difficult to almost impossible to you bought it. The sport came close to killing me twice. I didn’t give it up until I was over 60.
I taught rec for ten years. I loved it. Never got into the technical side. I just never felt the need. But now while I research these stories I've developed a lot of respect the the technicalities and become more intrigued.
Thanks for sharing your experience
Go 50ft underwater open water diving and lose all air and BCD deflation. Your dead.
I’m sold. This sounds like an amazing hobby. Where do I sign up for my Death Spiral?
On the dotted line………………….. That’ll be $250 000 please. 😂
Why was Dion working as a support diver with only 200 dives under his belt? I’m a newly trained diver, who’s logged 20 dives in my first month after doing OW. Thats 1/10th of Dion’s. This seems like a very low amount to be doing a more complex dive like this, isn’t it?
Dave himself only had 333 dives. Their hubris lead this mission and its results.
It depends on the type of experience you have, but in general a starting support diver doesn't need that much experience. In fact it might be better to have little experience and the project builds the diver up the way they want them to be. That is how the GUE came about, to support the WKPP by establishing first a test, and eventually the full training structure to build up support and expedition divers.
Yep - I’m an AOW certified and have over 100dives, many in U.K. cold water, I agree 200dives is not much of a record, there’s only so much you can learn from each dive and only so much experience you can acquire during those trips. The type of technical dive in a cave with no floor would be a ‘buddy on watch per person’ and even then it seems incredibly difficult work environment. Obviously very dangerous coz people died, which is a total tragedy.
I've never heard about Don in this story. Everyone leaves his serious problems on the way up out of it. And they shouldn't. This feels like it was perilously close to costing another life.
It's very eerie that the thing that played a huge part in shaws death is also the way that every got to witness it. Through his camera.
Small suggestion for your videos, include some sort of written caption on the photos that you show while narrating. Some of them are obviously stock photos (nothing wrong with that obviously), but others are obviously out of place from the current story. Example, you are talking about the 1994 dive session around 4:48 in this video and show a photo of a dive suit with umbilical cable. Is that a photo from that dive session? Or just a random deep water photo from that time period?
Thank you. I just watched another vid on this that was more confusing than anything. You cleared up a lot including why a 20 min dive takes 12 hours - I didn't know they had stops for so long to decompress.
They should have consulted a medical examiner on what condition the body would be in. I think Deon's parents should have told him not to do it. They probably weren't sufficiently informed of the risks.
This is so terrifying to me.
Yeah. Not sure I would cope
Imagine how he must've felt being slayed by the very thing designed to guide you back to safety. Terrible ironic fate
Yep.
If he was digging in sediment then his vis would have gone to zero. I wonder if his rehearsals factored this in with a blanked out face mask ? Or if it was planed in as an abort trigger. All of the planning and briefing documentation they would have drawn up would make an interesting read - has it ever been revealed ? There would most certainly have been documentation of this type.
Before watching this I saw the helmet video from Dave of the rescue and it was very harrowing. The part in the video where Deon's head detaches and briefly peers with mask attached, at the Dave and camera, while floating about was almost a foreboding of Dave's fate. At the point I imagine the panic, narcosis and Co2 poisoning was setting in to the point he must've known his own death was imminent. Horrible way to go! That said this was a really good insight to the case with a good presenting style as opposed to the AI voice overs or some OTT American ones, keep it up!
Best breakdown I’ve seen of this tragedy.
Fun fact. Dave succeeded. Deon was in fact returned to his family, as was Dave. Bananas he was even able to get him in the bag under all that pressure!!!
Yes I suppose that’s true
Not really ,deons body was recovered but not his head that fell off
Very well done but the added underwater sounds make it difficult to decipher everything said
I don't get the elaborate idea of putting Deons body in a body bag? Why not just hook him up to a line and then pull him up to the surface? I get giving the body dignity and all that but it just seemed to make this particular recovery unnecessarily complicated.
They may have been worried about it coming apart on the ascent?
@cerebralm it was in a dive suit so that wouldn't have happened.
His head came off in the body bag.
They didn’t want it to fall to pieces.
@waterlinestories he never got in the bodybag lol
Omg, imagine Dave seeing Deons face / skull through his Deons goggles.
What freaks me out is seeing how old Deons tank and hold old it was compared to Dave's is freaky also.
R.I.P Deon & Dave
Omg you made it even scarrier
Jeez I never knew the logistics of setting stage cylinders and just how many there would need to be. So complex and so many things to go wrong for such a simple thing: swimming down.
Yes it’s a complex task
Outstanding. Thank you!
Thanks for saying so.
You've got a big fact wrong, it wasn't nitrogen that killed him it was co2. He was exhaling so much of it that his rebreather could not keep up with it and he eventually blacked out.
The feeling of anxiety and claustrophobia i feel when watching these cave diving tragedies is unlike any other feeling i've ever had when watching any media.
the audio balancing in the video is very bad at times, like at 4minutes the breathing in the background and the plane at 0:35
Yeah. Early videos, not great
Going in a cave is bad enough. I can’t imagine how terrifying cave diving would feel
Another example of why it is foolish to try to recover a body from extreme depths - the risk to others lives is not worth it.
It's amazing how stress free my life is because I've never done this nor will I ever 😂😂😅😅
Don had an inner ear bend, which caused his incident. Glad he made it
OK, I hadnt seen that in any reports. Thanks for sharing
@@waterlinestories check out the book “diving into darkness”
Thanks I'll check it out
Thank you for this documentary as heartbreaking as it was to watch. 😢❤❤❤❤❤❤ love to you courageous people 🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺
I learned about this from one of the best longform feature articles I've ever read, Raising the Dead in Outside magazine. It has stayed with me since I read it around 2009
Still don't know why he went alone, that was the work of two people in case he became entangled and panicked as it happened.
True
Damn if u go that far down, u gotta stay in the water for 10 hours smh 🤦 that's a lot of work for just a 15-20 min dive for a record 🙏
There's a song I first heard when I was around 16 or 17, it was called 'The Last Dive of David Shaw' by 'We Lost the Sea.' Its a very profound track, and it's what started my interest in diving all-together. Incredible song. Some of the audio used in the intro for the 16 minute track are from the actual Shaw dive.
Yes! When I first heard the track, I had no idea what it was about. After researching it, I found I couldn't listen to the track anymore, knowing what I was hearing. The music was so good that it really did recreate the sensation of a man drowning in the dark, and it haunted me.
Commenter says: fact of cave diving is that you don't have to do it! Same holds true to mountain climbing. It's the thrill because " it's there".😉
I highly suggest watching the documentary "Dave Not Coming Back".
Assistir primeiro o seu vídeo esclarece algumas lacunas do documentário "Dave Not Coming Back". Thanks!
15:00 thank you for the story, RIP D&D 😢😢
Bravo!!!! Well done!!! You did an outstanding job of telling this extremely complicated story!! When I first saw this video, I thought "can't wait for this guy to make a mess of Dave Shaw's dive story which ended in his death at Bushman's Hole"....but I was wrong. You got it all right.
Thanks. I think I’ll take that as the highest compliment
Great video. This one had the background sound a bit too loud and interfered with what you were saying. Perhaps turn down the background sound a bit please?
I’m pretty sure that if the original dead diver was asked if he would want his body recovered if he died in the cave, he would have said no, and to just leave him at at the bottom and not to risk any other lives in any recovery effort.
Great video. Maybe you should mention the the actual documentary ''Dave Not Coming Back''
Great vid love your channel
Thanks, I really appreciate that
Wouldn’t have been simpler, if possible to clip a line to the diver’s body, go back up and have the body pulled to shallower water from the surface? Putting a body in a body bag by yourself seems complicated even when not diving.
In that state the body would possibly have pulled apart. So you would end up with body parts floating about. Best to keep it all intact
@@waterlinestories I thought about that possibility. But wouldn’t the dry or wetsuit kept all the body parts contained? The risk and the challenge of putting a body in a body bag at that depth, stirring sediment, using too much effort seems something not worth the risk.
Once interred or cremated, a body falls apart anyway. Positive identification could have been done via dna testing.
That is my main issue with this. Clipping a couple of carabiners to the bcd would have been simpler.
The risk to recover a body shouldn’t be lower than the risk to rescue a living perso?
Anyway, great videos, great delivery and information. I watch them all in a few days.
Would love a series on the NORD STREAM 2 sabotage. Speculations, hypothesis, if a country like Ukraine could have pulled it off, if the US navy divers used saturation diving, or rebreathers, how long it might have taken, how it could be repaired and cleaned inside. Etc. it could be multiple episodes..
You could contact reporter Seymour Hersh, who broke the story, and interview him. He is talking on several TH-cam and media channels in the USA and Europe.
Yes I see your point on retrieving the body.
For me I would never just left him there. I wouldn't have been so deep anyway.
If I recall, when his body came up in the body bag, his head had severed from his body. He was in a wetsuit.
I'm just writing a script for Nord stream based on Seymour Hersch's article. I had not thought to contact him but I might do that. It's a few weeks out though. I've got a number of videos in production ahead of that one but I am looking forward to releasing it.
Thanks for watching.
@@waterlinestories it would probably good for Hersh to get corroboration from a diving professional like yourself.
Also discussing the technical aspects of it.
Another interesting point about the nord stream 2 sabotage is the environmental impact. The Biden administration is pushing green energy, and then they cause a major spill? It seems the typical hypocrisy. There are so many fascinating elements in the nord stream 2. The topic is very politicized in the US. So an analysis from a different point of view would be interesting.
A Norwegian channel posted a video of their underwater drone showing the damage.
@@waterlinestories so news in recently puts russia sabotaging nordstream to pressure germany into dropping support for ukraine
might want to make a redaction or update vid on that US sabotage dive you theorised XD
Dave Shaw was the goat of deep dive rescue, RIP Dave & Dion.
Respect
RIP Dave & Dion
Clearly you have not heard of Ed Sorenson
@@presidentslaughter4685
Yeah. That guy's alive
Dave Shaw was good but I wouldn’t say he was even in the top 10
It takes a special breed of person to hear "cave diving in the asbestos mine" and think to themselves "FUN!"
I saw the Dave Shaw dive on 11/12/24 for the first time and I thought it just happened in the last year or so,so I kept seeing everybody reacting to it on TH-cam Tube come to realize this happened in 2005 which is so surprising to me but I felt so heart broken when he didn’t come back to surface I cried for Dave (the show I watched was Dave Not Coming Back)I felt for his family the other divers it was the saddest story I ever watched,trying to bring home a 20 yr.old who was under water for 10 yrs back to his parents who he promised I’ll bring your son up and he did with his life and rope,!RIP Dave & Deon
Why did he need to put the body in a body bag at that depth? Could he have just attached the body to a line and bring it up that way?
Is there a particular diving bell that's considered to be the best or quite favored amongst saturation divers? Maybe another way of putting that question would be... if I were a saturation diver, does there exist a well known and high quality diving bell such that upon learning that I would be using it for my next job, it would put my mind at ease (at least in that one aspect)?
Possibly. There are some big marine engineering companies that make this kind of kit. One that I know is JFD Global.
It's so nice that you're not using an AI voice! Thank you 🎉
🤣 thanks. Yes it can be off putting to hear AI voices
Great content. Subscribed. 👍
Excellent. Thanks for watching
New sub loving your channel ♥️♥️♥️
Tentacles of the deep pulling you in. Mwahaha...
I'd have thought that planning for contingencies would be an obvious inclusion to the dive plan for doing a body recovery. Especially knowing just how dangerous those depths are at the best of times, and that Deon's death was likely from the mere effort of transporting bottles.
It seems to me that if they had planned the dive even a little more thoughly, Dave could have come out alive.
Its likely that before your own death, you will also think of all kind of things you could've done to postpone it
If you watch the other documentary they actually did plan it . A hell of a lot of planning !
The more I watch this channel, the more determined I become to keep my fat arse on dry land.
One diver doing a recovery of that nature ?? That would have required min 2 and maybe 3 on the task. One diver would have reached a decision point of stay/go and in this case , he stayed.
Yep but few people would venture so deep let alone attempt a recovery at that depth
@@waterlinestories Yes, he may have asked others to be in it but they declined ? That alone would have been enough of a red flag.
It would also compound the complexity of the whole operation, like having multiple times the amount of bottles
@@jeroenstrompf5064 Yeas you can go high speed but the direction may be continually downwards.
Very well told.
Sad. Avoidable.
Damn.
Never had anxiety but these cave diving vids give me major panic attack vibes fuck cave diving wouldnt do it period
I taught my brother to dive years ago. He said upfront he doesn't want to see sharks or he's out. In the end we didn't see sharks and her was disappointed.
I'm sure you'd love it
The sea life im fine with the confined spaces is what gets me and then intentionally going down there fuck that
Why didn't they just pull them out when Dave went beyond the time expected?
One part that is missing is Dan's equipment failure. It's surprising, after watching this video and "Dave not coming back" I still don't fully understand what happened
His equipment didn't fail. He suffered the same death as Deon; CO2 poisoning caused by over exeterion from his panic and extreme narcosis. To my understanding rebreathers need steady, calm breathing to work properly.
Dave broke the first rule of diving - always have a buddy.