Record Depth

[ShoalDiverSA]

Dave Shaw undertook a dive today to recover the body of Deon Dreyer, the diver he came across on his record dive. During the recovery, his deep support diver, Don Shirley, saw the light from Shaw's dive light disappear. According to reports on this evening's news, Shirley was at 220m and Shaw disappeared descending past 270m. Shirley attempted to descend to Shaw, and made it to 250m. He sent a dive slate to the surface indicating what had happened. As of 7:30pm (CAT), Shaw had not returned to the surface yet and Shirley was still on deco stops. There was mention on the news that Shirley was suffering from DCS in the water.

Here are links to the story:
iafrica.com
news24.com

My condolences to Shaw's wife and children. It is truly tragic that he was lost undertaking such a noble and selfless mission for the Dreyer family. My prayers are with Don Shirley, a truly great South African technical diver (he was also deep support for Verna van Schaik's record dive). I look forward to reporting his full recovery!

Andrew

 

[BigJetDriver]

Dave Shaw has not returned, and has been declared dead.

See: http://www.news24.com/News24/South_Africa/News/0,,2-7-1442_1644655,00.html

Condolences to family and friends.

 

[caveseeker7]

Condolences to family and friends.

It's tragic giving your live in a recovery attempt.
Preparations and planned schedule for the recovery are on
Dave's website
My condolences to his family and friends.
Stefan

 

[teksimple]

Crap. This really hits home. I just bought a Mark 15.5 and last received an e-mail from Dave on Dec 12th. We had discussed depth limits of the gauges he was using (VR-3's) as well as modifications I wanted to do to my own Mark 15.5.

Many condolences to his family.

This is the first death I know of on the Mark 15.5, though at these depths it would be ridiculous to link anything directly to equipment, not to mention there were only 10 or so original Mark 15.5's made. Still, I am curious as to what may have happened. How might they recover the bodies, now? An ROV?

Sad, sad, sad....

 

[caveseeker7]

Crap. This really hits home.

Shook me up quite a bit, too.

This is the first death I know of on the Mark 15.5, though at these depths it would be ridiculous to link anything directly to equipment ...

Even if it was equipment failure (or muliple failures), one can hardly fault the equipment. 270m is way past any design envelope I'm aware of for either the 15.5 or VR3 (or any rebreather and computer I can think of for that matter).

Aside from failure due to damage caused by the depth, diving at 28 bar is pretty uncharted territory. Trace amounts of CO2 that aren't a problem at 50 m or 150 m could be a serious problem at 270 m ... who knows?
(Seriously, does anybody?)

Sad, sad, sad....

Very much so.

 

[ShoalDiverSA]

...
How might they recover the bodies, now? An ROV?
...

According to the news report and yesterday's paper, there will be no futher attempts at recovering the bodies. Though I am sure that if some kind soul donated an ROV for the purpose, it may be considered.

For interest's sake, Don Shirley (deep support) was diving the Buddy Inspiration.

This just in: iafrica.com

Andrew

 

[caveseeker7]

The entangled bodies of Dave Shaw and Leon Dreyer have been recovered by police divers after floating towards the surface. The article can be found here .

Dave Shaw helped retrieve the body after all.

 

[ShoalDiverSA]

More information about the recovery at news24.com

Andrew

 

[DrMike]

With the video camera footage they have off Daves helmet it sounds like a case of too much work at depth plus the entanglement leading to a CO2 hit.

RIP Dave.

I will certainly be paying closer attention to how hard I breath the unit from now on.