Nuno Gomes dived to a depth of 283m the deepest ever without a diving bell, reports Bronwen Jones
SOUTH AFRICA won gold at the Olympics and the Paralympics, but there is no medal for our latest title, nor a podium for the proud winner: Nuno Gomes, Deepest Diver in the World.
Just back from the dolomite crags of Bushmansgat near the Botswana border, he dived to 283,3m.
While computerised depth monitors lose accuracy the deeper one goes, the lead-weighted line is a failsafe record. And if anyone walking past Johannesburg’s Linksfield Park wondered what two men were doing with a very, very long piece of blue and white ski rope stretched across the field and back last Sunday, it was Nuno Gomes and son Nuno, measuring the record again.
Gomes said: “We couldn’t lay the rope out flat at Bushmansgat. In Johannesburg we laid it out straight and used a steel surveyor’s tape. The figure was 283,3m.”
The previous world record holder, American Jim Bowden, aged 55, plumbed a depth of 281,9m in Mexico’s Zacaton cave, so a small difference is vital.
Gomes, a civil engineer with the Department of Transport, says that if one really wants to compare like with like, the Bushmansgat dive is far more difficult than the two alternative sites: Vacluse in France or the Mexican cave, because they are both close to sea level. But for him the real achievement is being the first to reach the bottom of Bushmansgat … and survive.
He says: “No one can ever beat that. It’s like being the first man to climb Everest. Who ever remembers the second person to get there?”
While the record is solo, the dive was a team event. Gomes has visited the black cavern regularly since 1988, but this latest trip involved seven vital support divers: Craig Newham, 31, computer scientist; Liz Gomes, 42, town planner; Theo van Eerden, 43, police diver; Lionel Brink, 30, computer scientist; Joseph Emmanuel, 29, computer scientist; Craig Kahn, 32, patent lawyer, and Shaun French, 26, a former navy diver and now a paramedic with Medical Rescue International.
Gomes himself is 44. He is ecstatic at his success but says: “I will never go again.”
The physical and psychological stress are simply too much. But probably more important than that is the cost: sponsorship just for gas, valves and batteries on this latest trip was valued at more than R20 000.
The loan of other essential equipment including two compressors and a medical rescue organisation seconding a fully qualified paramedic who was expert at dealing with decompression sickness, Gomes said was “beyond value”.
It took a week to set up the dive, getting acclimatised to the water and to the inevitable nitrogen narcosis (over-inhalation of nitrogen). Gomes and his teammates dived to 60m, placing cables and cylinders in position. Trailer-loads of equipment had to be sorted, gases mixed and cylinders filled.
On a previous attempt at the record, Gomes had to stop because he would not have had enough gas for the return to the surface. This time nothing was left to chance.
He had swapped his training location from the murky shallow waters of Johannesburg’s Emmarentia Dam for the deeper Bass Lake at Henley-on-Klip. “I practised for hour upon hour, swimming with the huge set of cylinders.” At Bushmansgat, Gomes entered the water wearing seven cylinders that weighed more than he did; two of 18 litres, two of 14 litres, two of 10 litres and one of 4 litres. Attached to these were R10 000 worth of “demand valves”, each taped so that nothing like algae would get into them. Gomes sank swiftly through the sink hole at the bottom of the un-named lake at Bushmansgat into the top of the cavern 51,8m below the surface. From there he plummeted feet first for 15 minutes from the time he left the surface, then turned into a landing position head first and he found himself almost face down in silt.
Gomes said: “All our earlier measurements had led me to expect the cave to be deeper than it was. But suddenly the floor of the cave was looming towards me.”
Despite a cluster of torches under water, it is difficult to see far in the darkness. Gomes managed to avoid landing on a ledge in the cavern, “but I approached the silt like a sky diver”! The silt is as fine as talcum powder and of uncertain depth and divers try to avoid it. But Gomes hit the silt earlier than he had expected and got stuck in the grey powder which remains suspended in the water for hours.
He couldn’t see and he was shivering from the effects of the gases, particularly helium and nitrogen. “I was trying to balance myself on my feet, but I was under quite a lot of nitrogen narcosis and had helium tremors.”
There was little time to think. His lungs were full of carbon dioxide and it was vital to get off the bottom with the minimum of exertion. “It took a long time to inflate my buoyancy compensators because the gas was dense and could not flow easily.”
As Gomes scanned the cave floor, there was no sign of cylinders dropped by earlier divers. Nor could he see any trace of Dion Dreyer, the 21-year-old diver who died in the cave a year ago.
Two minutes later he was on the return route.
“Two people have died at Bushmansgat. They recovered one body in 1993 but Dreyer’s has never been found. All that was found by a remotely operated submersible that was used to search the cavern floor were blind catfish.”
Gomes took more than 12 hours to return to surface. He started decompressing at 160m in a careful computer-calculated decompression schedule. From 80m upwards he had shrimps and then frogs for company.
He reached the surface at night, with no ill effects other than a puffed up face where his skin had been in contact with the water.
As he rested, he knew he was lucky. Most other divers have died or been partially paralysed in the quest for the deepest depth.
Gomes has achieved the deepest dive in sea, cave or lake without the use of a diving bell. He said: “I didn’t want to sit down at 60 and look back at life, thinking that I could have and should have done this dive. For me it was reaching a point where nobody has ever been before.”
He will continue to play underwater hockey and to head the Transvaal Spearfishing Team. And he will back at work at the Department of Transport. But what goal will he set himself next?
“I think I’ll look for a nice shipwreck in the records, somewhere off the Mozambique coast.”
He may find his gold medal yet.