On January 8, 2005, Dave Shaw dove 800 feet into South Africa's Bushman’s Hole to recover the body of Deon Dreyer, but sadly lost his own life in the process.
Dave Not Coming Back/Gravitas DocumentariesAustralian diver Dave Shaw set a record for diving at Bushman’s Hole — and came across the body of Deon Dreyer.
On October 28, 2004, Dave Shaw attempted a record-breaking dive in Bushman’s Hole, a formidable underwater cave in South Africa.
Shaw wasn’t the first person to reach the bottom of Bushman’s Hole, also known as Boesmansgat. South African diver Nuno Gomes had set a world record for reaching the bottom back in 1996, but Gomes had simply touched the bottom, turned around, and returned to the surface. Shaw planned to explore the cave’s depths.
But at the bottom of the cave, he found something unexpected: the body of 20-year-old Deon Dreyer, a diver who had gone missing a decade earlier. The discovery prompted Shaw to plan another trip — this time to retrieve Dreyer’s body.
Sadly, David Shaw’s retrieval mission would end in tragedy.
Who Was Dave Shaw?
Dave Shaw had always loved adventure. He’d grown up in Katanning, in Western Australia, and started working as a crop duster in 1973, when he was 18 years old. That same year, he met a Melbourne woman named Ann Broughton and took her up in his airplane as a first date. They married less than two years later and soon welcomed a son, Steven, and a daughter, Lisa.
Ann ShawAnn and Dave Shaw on their honeymoon.
Dave Shaw eventually graduated from crop dusters to commercial planes. His family relocated several times — from Papua New Guinea to Tanzania and New South Wales — before ultimately settling in Hong Kong after Shaw started working for Cathay Pacific in 1989. The job was exactly what he’d always wanted, and it allowed him to travel the world, a perk which became especially useful in 1999.
As Outside reported in 2005, it was that year that Dave Shaw went on his first ever dive in the Philippines, with his then-17-year-old son Steven. After this first dive, Shaw became borderline obsessed with taking on even more extreme dives.
And in the fall of 2002, this fascination led him to Don Shirley, an Englishman living in South Africa who had a similar passion for diving.
Dave Shaw And Don Shirley’s Friendship
Dave Not Coming Back/Gravitas DocumentariesDon Shirley, a fellow diver who became good friends with Dave Shaw.
After 22 years as an electronics specialist in the British Army, Don Shirley had retired and settled down in South Africa. There, he and a partner set up the South African franchise of the International Association of Nitrox and Technical Divers (IANTD) and started instructing divers at a spot Shirley called Komati Springs, a flooded asbestos mine near Johannesburg.
Then, one day in 2002, Shirley was approached by a bearded Australian man. The man introduced himself by saying: “Hi, I’m Dave Shaw. Do you mind if I go dive your hole?”
Shirley showed Shaw Komati Springs and found himself impressed with Shaw’s diving. Shaw, likewise, seemed to enjoy diving at the spot and flew out regularly. Shirley accompanied him often as well, and after diving together for hundreds of hours over the course of roughly two years, they had formed a close friendship. Then in June 2004, Shirley introduced Shaw to Bushman’s Hole.
Dave Not Coming Back/Gravitas DocumentariesBushman’s Hole seen from above.
Bushman’s Hole, also known as Boesmansgat, is one of the deepest freshwater caves in the world, and plunges down to a depth of around 928 feet. It is located on Mount Carmel Farm near Daniëlskuil in South Africa’s Northern Cape province, and sits at an altitude of 4,921 feet above sea level — a geographical feature that presents divers with a few unique challenges.
Needless to say, Shaw was fascinated. But as he prepared for the dive, the spectre of tragedy hung over him. A decade earlier, a young diver named Deon Dreyer had disappeared while diving in Bushman’s Hole.
The Disappearance Of Deon Dreyer
Like Shaw and Shirley, Deon Dreyer was a passionate diver. A young South African raised in Vereeniging, he had logged roughly 200 dives by the time he was just 20 years old.
In December 1994, Dreyer joined a team led by Nuno Gomes — the diver who later set the record for reaching the bottom of Bushman’s Hole — to dive in Boesmansgat. The team was preparing for a deep technical dive, and Dreyer was along to assist with the setup. On December 17, however, tragedy struck during a practice dive.
While Dreyer was ascending, he became separated from his group approximately 160 feet from the surface. It’s unknown how, or what exactly happened, but some have theorized that he lost consciousness due to oxygen toxicity or possibly hypercapnia. In either case, he didn’t resurface — and died as a result.
Find a GraveDeon Dreyer, the diver died at Bushman’s Hole in 1994.
There were initial attempts to recover his body. His father, Theo Dreyer, enlisted the help of De Beers mining company, which deployed a remotely operated submersible to search for the body. The submersible did find Dreyer’s dive helmet, but no other signs of Deon Dreyer.
In the end, Dreyer’s parents accepted that their son would likely never be pulled from his watery grave. A commemorative plaque was installed near the entrance to the cave to honor Dreyer’s memory, but during the decade that followed there was little hope of recovering their son’s body.
“He had the most majestic grave in the country,” Theo Dreyer later said. “And I said, ‘Well, this will be his final resting place.'”
That changed when Dave Shaw completed his own record-setting dive.
The Discovery Of Deon Dreyer’s Body
In October 2004, Shaw and Shirley visited Bushman’s Hole to set their own record. Shaw, not satisfied to simply reach the bottom as Gomes had done eight years prior, bottomed out Bushman’s Hole at a depth that no rebreather had ever been, and then decided to have a look around.
It was then that Shaw came across Deon Dreyer’s body.
“When I saw him, I swam to him. He was lying on his back with his dive equipment on. He was in a wetsuit and he still had his fins and mask on. His face was bone. His arms were floating. My first thought was to try to bring him up. I knelt next to him but he was stuck in the silt. I started to puff and pant, which is not a good thing at that depth. I tied my reel to him, and the important thing is that Deon was no longer lost,” Shaw said, according to reporting from The Guardian in 2005.
Dave Not Coming Back/Gravitas DocumentariesDave Shaw with the body bag meant to return Deon Dreyer’s body to the surface.
By the time Shaw resurfaced, he was determined to get Dreyer’s body out of Bushman’s Hole. He contacted Dreyer’s parents and told them that he would. And after he returned to his Hong Kong apartment in November 2004, Shaw was in near-constant email communication with Shirley to plan for what he called “The Big Dive.”
“Dave felt very connected with Deon,” Shirley said. “He had found him, so it was like a personal thing that he should bring him back.”
Shaw planned the recovery mission for January 2005, consulting with Shirley, the Dreyers, and other experts to conduct the dive as safely as possible. Despite their extensive preparations, however, Dave Shaw would not survive the mission.
Dave Shaw’s Death In The Depths Of Bushman’s Hole
Dave Not Coming Back/Gravitas DocumentariesThe full dive team preparing to retrieve Deon Dreyer’s body.
The day of The Big Dive came on Jan. 8, 2005, when Shaw descended into Bushman’s Hole with specialized equipment including a rebreather and a helmet-mounted camera. He was confident in their preparations.
“I’ll see you in 20 minutes,” he told Shirley as he dropped down into the water. Eleven minutes later, he hit the bottom of the cave and started making his way to Dreyer’s body. As he approached, he pulled out a specially made body bag and started trying to get Dreyer inside.
Dave Not Coming Back/Gravitas DocumentariesDave Shaw moments before diving into Bushman’s Hole.
However, unforeseen complications quickly arose: the body’s buoyancy had changed over the years due to decomposition and made it more, not less, buoyant. This, combined with the entanglement of lines and equipment, trapped Shaw and made it more difficult for him to move. The extra physical exertion at such an extreme depth also likely caused a buildup of carbon dioxide that caused Shaw to fall unconscious.
When Shirley dove down 500 feet to meet Shaw at an agreed-upon rendezvous point, he saw Shaw’s light shining some 400 feet beneath him. Shaw had been submerged for more than 20 minutes, and should have been on his way back up. But Shirley couldn’t see any movement or bubbles that should have been coming from the rebreather.
He knew something had gone terribly wrong.
Though Shirley tried to dive deeper to see if he could help Shaw, he was stymied by an equipment malfunction. He knew that if he — or anyone else — went down to get Shaw, they would meet the same fate as him.
It had only been a half hour since Dave Shaw first went down, but now Shirley was also about 800 feet down — the deepest he’d ever gone. If he ascended too quickly, it could cause serious damage. He needed to decompress first. It took 10 hours before he could get back up near the surface.
Dave Not Coming Back/Gravitas DocumentariesDon Shirley just after being pulled out of the water.
Shirley didn’t make it out unscathed either. His left leg started hurting, a sign that worse symptoms could be on their way, and he had to be carried out of the cave. After more than 12 hours in the water, he was left with permanent injuries affecting his balance.
Dave Shaw, meanwhile, lost his life trying to recover Deon Dreyer’s body.
In the days following, most of the dive team, and Dreyer’s parents, left. A few stayed behind to clean up equipment, during which they observed Dave Shaw and Deon Dreyer’s bodies at about 60 feet down. The bodies had seemingly begun to float up, so support diver Peter Herbst got to work to recovered Dreyer’s body, then went back in for Shaw’s.
Shaw’s body was in terrible condition, due to rigor mortis and the sudden change in pressure. Still, no one thinks that Shaw’s dive was reckless. It was admirable, what he was trying to do — and in the end he did manage to get Dreyer’s body out, even if he didn’t make it out alive.
“Dave died exploring and trying to achieve something he wanted to do,” Shirley said. “That to me is better than dying in a car crash.”
After reading about the tragic death of Dave Shaw, discover the story of “Green Boots” Tsewang Paljor, the most famous dead body on Mount Everest. Then, read the harrowing story of Dave Kunst, the first man to walk around the world.
