The Story of Bushman's Hole (Patreon)
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One of the most interesting sources I used for this story was the website DeepCave.com – a site that, in large part, was created and maintained by David Shaw himself. It chronicles some of his diving adventures, including detailed dive reports… and there’s also a page dedicated to the preparation for the dive to retrieve Deon’s body.
The dive reports are particularly interesting. The site features one in which he details a dive where several things went wrong – including a near-fatal mishap with some of his equipment:
"I took an involuntary part “breath” and swallowed some water. I quite calmly then decided I was about to drown and seemed to cope with that thought without panic. That water ingestion I think did give me incentive for another minute of no air time though! Anyway…I eventually found the regulator, took some calming breaths of glorious 35% gas, sorted out the tangle and went back on the loop in semiclosed mode again. Talk about a near-death experience!"
It’s incredible to see how complex diving is, and how much can go wrong. But equally incredible is just how calmly he’s able to handle and report incidents like this!