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Below is an exact reprint with permission about Sheck Exley from
Florida Scuba News:
D Area: Scuba Diving (FIDO)
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Msg#: 67 Date: 19 Jun 94
18:23:00
From: Steve Elliot Read: Yes
Replied: No
To: All
Mark:
Subj: Sheck Exley Part 1 of 3
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Several months ago we began discussing the reports of Sheck
Exley's death in this echo, and many questions and comments
have been raised by the readers over that time.
Sheck Exley was the world's best cave diver, a noted author,
something of a modern-day explorer, and an expert in the field of
technical diving. He will be missed by many people who had the
opportunity to dive with him, talk with him, or even to read his
books and articles.
The type of extreme technical diving that Sheck practiced
is certainly way beyond the boundaries that we were all taught
in our introductory dive classes. This type of diving requires
an incredible amount of sophisticated training, equipment, and
skill.
It is *NOT* my intention to promote this style of extreme
technical diving by presenting the following article to the
network, but rather to help all of us understand what an
extraordinary man Sheck really was, and to explain the
phenomenal amount of preparation that is involved with this
type of diving.
It is with the kind permission of Cathie Cush, Executive Editor
of Underwater USA newspaper, that I am able to reproduce the
following full-length feature article written by Joy Waldron.
The article is simply titled, "Death of a Cave Diver", and it
serves as Sheck's obituary.
OOo O Steve Elliot
O oO FidoNet Scuba Moderator
o [\] Diver Down BBS [\]
_____ o o Ft. Lauderdale, FL
(_/-\_).. 305/436-3937
===(O).
-!- GEcho 1.02+
Origin: [\] Diver Down BBS [\] Ft. Lauderdale, FL. (1:369/134)
SE> Several months ago we began discussing the reports of Sheck
SE> Exley's death in this echo, and many questions and comments
SE> have been raised by the readers over that time.
SE> Sheck Exley was the world's best cave diver, a noted author,
SE> something of a modern-day explorer, and an expert in the field of
SE> technical diving. He will be missed by many people who had the
SE> opportunity to dive with him, talk with him, or even to read his
SE> books and articles.
SE> The type of extreme technical diving that Sheck practiced
SE> is certainly way beyond the boundaries that we were all taught
SE> in our introductory dive classes. This type of diving requires
SE> an incredible amount of sophisticated training, equipment, and
SE> skill.
SE> It is *NOT* my intention to promote this style of extreme
SE> technical diving by presenting the following article to the
SE> network, but rather to help all of us understand what an
SE> extraordinary man Sheck really was, and to explain the
SE> phenomenal amount of preparation that is involved with this
SE> type of diving.
SE> It is with the kind permission of Cathie Cush, Executive Editor
SE> of Underwater USA newspaper, that I am able to reproduce the
SE> following full-length feature article written by Joy Waldron.
SE> The article is simply titled, "Death of a Cave Diver", and it
SE> serves as Sheck's obituary.
SE> ! Origin: [\] Diver Down BBS [\] Ft. Lauderdale, FL. (1:369/134)
SE> Sheck Exley had an appointment with death. It was a meeting that
SE> hovered in the back of his mind, crouched on his shoulder over 20
SE> years, followed him through miles of cave dives and thousands of hours
SE> of decompression. It was an appointment he knew might happen, a beast
SE> that often stalked him the night before a dive. He knew the risks
SE> better than anyone, having descended hundreds of times into caves,
SE> sinkholes, cenotes. And he had come close more than once. But cave
SE> diving was his life.
SE> On April 6, 1994, in a remote cave called Zacaton in Mexico, Exley
SE> kept his appointment with death. The end happened while he was doing
SE> what he loved best; diving deep in a cave. Although the exact cause
SE> may never be known, it seems clear that he died in the first few
SE> minutes of a dive as he dropped swiftly through the dark water.
SE> Zinging down beside his line at a rate of almost 100 feet a minute, he
SE> apparently suffered a catastrophic physical event and blacked out.
SE> Within minutes it was apparent to the watchers on the surface,
SE> including his wife that he wasn't coming back.
SE> He died attempting to beat his own record of 881 feet. Zacaton's
SE> bottom lay at 1,025.
SE> "We both wanted the bottom," said Jim Bowden, the Zacaton
SE> expedition leader and Exley's dive partner on the fatal dive. "This
SE> trip was solely for Sheck's and my effort to reach the bottom. We're
SE> cave explorers, and that's what we were doing. Zacaton is the deepest
SE> known water-filled pit in the world. Sheck knew it would easily break
SE> his former record."
SE> Bowden is head of an Austin-based diving team known as "Provecto de
SE> Buceo Espeleologico Mexico y America Central" -- Spanish for
SE> Cave-Diving Project of Mexico and Central America -- that has been
SE> exploring Mexican caves and pits for several years. Other members of
SE> the Zacaton expedition included Ann Kristovich, an oral surgeon who
SE> served as support diver and team doctor, and a record-setting cave
SE> diver. Exley's wife, Mary Ellen Eckhoff, was also a member of the
SE> expedition. Bowden survived the dive after reaching 925 feet,
SE> setting a new world record that day. His feat was overshadowed by
SE> Exley's death and his own brush with the bends, which caused him
SE> shoulder, arm and wrist pain. More than two decades of cave diving
SE> in most of the world's continents led Exley to Mexico and the deep
SE> caves. The 45-year-old math teacher from Live Oak, FL, had broken cave
SE> diving records in Florida, in places like Little Salt Springs, Hornsby,
SE> and Warm Mineral Springs, a research project where he logged more than
SE> 100 dives. Europe, Australia and Africa yielded cave-diving records to
SE> him. He met Jim Bowden in 1989, at a Mexican cave called Mante,
SE> where Exley set a new world record of 881 feet. Bowden, a scuba
SE> instructor at the University of Texas at Austin and cave explorer, was
SE> inspired by Exley's courage.
SE> "We met at Mante," Bowden recalled. "We were both pretty much
SE> loners and did our own thing, and we both grew up with our heroes as
SE> explorers. It's hard for men our age to make a friendship, especially
SE> in what we do. But Sheck and I had a common goal, and had a lot of fun
SE> together." It was at Mante that they heard about Zacaton, a deep pit
SE> that was part of the same world-class cave system, located on an
SE> isolated cattle ranch 60 miles north of Tampico, a city on the Gulf of
SE> Mexico. "Zacaton is so incredible. Sheck was enthralled with the
SE> whole web of cenotes and sinkholes here," Bowden said. "It's like the
SE> Cave God had said, 'I'm going to give him the cave system of the
SE> world.' I remember the day we were measuring the depth of Zacaton,
SE> dropping a line down from the surface. I wish somebody'd had a camera
SE> on him as he pulled the line and counted notches. As each notch came
SE> up the line, his smile got bigger. He really did love deep."
SE> At this time Exley and Bowden were No. 1 and 2 in the world for
SE> holding records in cave diving. Deep requires consummate
SE> self-discipline and great technical expertise.
SE> Exley, who was completing a doctorate in mathematics, had prepared
SE> his own decompression tables for the Zacaton dive.
SE> The two prepared for Zacaton by more deep diving. Bowden made a
SE> 504-foot dive, went back in September and dove to 740, and then 800+
SE> later on a measured line. Exley dived in Bushmansgat, South Africa,
SE> and equaled his record of 881 feet. But there he also suffered an
SE> attack of what diving physiologists call "high-pressure nervous
SE> syndrome," a potentially deadly event that starts with loss of
SE> peripheral vision and can lead to blackout, and apparently caused by
SE> breathing helium under pressure.
SE> "We corresponded at length about the hazards," Bowden said. "In a
SE> letter to me after my 744-foot dive he said, 'It's time for us to
SE> begin addressing our fears.' We had many considerations: losing
SE> consciousness, plus high pressure nervous syndrome."
SE> In early April 1994 they arrived in Mexico. At Zacaton they spent
SE> two days staging tanks, placing them on ledges for the long time up
SE> decompressing.
SE> "The cave is sheer walls, with an opening to the sky. There's a
SE> spring, a 650-foot cave dive, a wet cave traverse from one side to the
SE> other, where you surface and go over the other side. That was a time
SE> to collect our wits, slow down the heartbeat, let the gauges clear.
SE> The cave then ducks back slightly under a lip. At 230 you are under an
SE> overhang, then a vertical drop.
SE> "We were on parallel lines 30 feet apart, far enough so we wouldn't
SE> bother each other with our bubbles, but close enough to visit. I tend
SE> to OK the line, place it between my thumb and forefinger. Sheck is a
SE> master of delicate buoyancy control. I looked like a flounder around
SE> him. He stayed within eye's reach of line. Nothing about it that
SE> would cause you to die. We were confident.
SE> They dropped through the water like stones.
SE> "We made a rapid descent," Bowden said, "because we knew for every
SE> minute we stayed longer there'd be that terrible obligation of hours
SE> [of decompression]. I saw his light at about 850 feet somewhere below
SE> me. We both wanted the bottom and we both said that. But then I
SE> realized that there was some sort of glitch in my gas volumes. I felt
SE> like I might have problems. At 900 feet I started slowing. At 925
SE> feet that was good for today. I call it systems check. I've stayed
SE> alive by thinking if it's right to turn, it's right to turn. He'd
SE> said, if we just beat my record it's a good day. We both agreed."
SE> Bowden began the nine hours of decompression. "My first stop was
SE> at 480 -- a long one for five minutes. Then 430. After that every 10
SE> feet I stayed one minute. When I got to the ambient light I could see
SE> his staged bottles, packaged neat. When we leave them, they're like a
SE> dead octopus, so I knew he hadn't touched them. I had this sinking
SE> feeling in my stomach: he's the best in the world, he's that far behind
SE> me. It was tight, very tight. We only had a time frame of minutes.
SE> He'd elected a whole different schedule [of dive tables]. I had all
SE> the time in the world for reflection, for the sadness to brood over it.
SE> I didn't surface till after dark, and they'd already gone away."
SE> The next day Exley's body was recovered, wrapped in the line. "We
SE> figured it would never be recovered. I thought he'd go deeper. I'm
SE> the only guy that has ever dived anywhere close to Sheck's record, and
SE> at that depth there's no way to do a recovery. His max was 906
feet.
SE> He was not clipped to the line but wrapped in it. It was not the cause
SE> of death."
SE> The news soon was relayed throughout the diving community and the
SE> larger world beyond. Among the cave divers who'd explored dark waters
SE> with Exley, grief and disbelief blended with a long-held anxiety on
SE> the inevitability of cave divers' risk.
SE> Dan Lenihan, an old friend of Exley's and a fellow cave diving
SE> instructor, said, "There's a bell-shaped curve on fatalities on cave
SE> diving. At the first side of the curve you have a lot of deaths when
SE> amateurs go into a cave not knowing what they are doing. Then on the
SE> far side you have people like Sheck, expert cave divers who are
SE> pushing the limits. Everything he did was a carefully calculated
SE> risk." Lenihan, an underwater archaeologist who is chief of the
SE> National Park Service's Submerged Cultural Resources Unit, was stunned
SE> by the news of Exley's death. "We did a lot of diving together in the
SE> 70's. I was going to visit in June to do a dive. The biggest shock
SE> was that in the range of things I would've expected to happen to Sheck,
SE> this wouldn't have been it. He was on a mixed gas, and it sounds like
SE> it was a fairly straight ascent. I have a hard time seeing him succumb
SE> to a technical problem. I think it must have been physiological. This
SE> was a cutting edge dive, in the realm that some people aren't really
SE> sure of. My instincts suggest that whatever happened to him was
SE> something nontechnical, because his skill level was so high. He was
SE> the foremost cave diver in the world."
SE> Another cave diving friend, underwater archaeologist Larry Murphy,
SE> remembered Exley with admiration and grief. "He's been a friend for
SE> more than 20 years. We did some very deep dives together at Little
SE> Salt Springs and other places in Florida."
SE> Noting that Exley had written numerous articles and books on cave
SE> diving safety, Murphy added, "He was an internationally known cave
SE> explorer, diving in Australia, Africa, virtually every continent. He
SE> led many international expeditions. Accidents happen sometimes. But
SE> with Sheck, any expedition was a classic study in risk minimalization
SE> and organization sophistication. He was the best. There's a far gap
SE> between him and No. 2. Not only was he a marvelous cave diver, he was
SE> one of the truly genuine explorers I've ever known."
SE> Larry Murphy summed up what others said about Exley. "He was cut
SE> from the same cloth as the great explorers that we recognize, like
SE> Magellan and Columbus. He was willing to take carefully calculated
SE> risks, to push the edge of what's known, the envelope of human
SE> knowledge. He was one of the truly genuine explorers I've ever
SE> known." Many dive organizations don't encourage dives beyond 130
SE> feet, and some people wonder if Zacaton should continue. "The project
SE> IS going to go on," Bowden said firmly. "It would be the greatest
SE> insult to Sheck to stop. He would be displeased -- it's what he's
SE> devoted his whole life to. I am going to reach the bottom. I think it
SE> can be done. After the rainy season, next October."
SE> He thought of his own departure from Mexico in the days following
SE> Exley's death. "Sheck spoke rather good Spanish. The locals just
SE> love us. They grieved. The had Mass [the following] Sunday and said
SE> prayers for Sheck. They placed flowers on the cross right above the
SE> site where Sheck and I made our descent. I walked over there myself
SE> just before we left Mexico."
SE> He paused and reflected again on the initial measuring of Zacaton's
SE> great depth. "I wish somebody'd had a camera on him as he pulled up
SE> the line and counted notches at Zacaton. He really did love deep."
SE> Copyright 1994 Underwater USA
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