Leading cave-diver Brett Hemphill is believed to have died far inside Phantom Springs, the USA’s deepest natural caves and the site of a record-breaking dive he had carried out 10 years ago.
Hemphill is understood to have entered the Texas cave on 4 October and was estimated by his team to have reached as deep as 174m, some 30m beyond the current US cave-depth record.
Jeff Davis County Sheriff’s Office took a call in the early hours of 6 October to report that Hemphill was still more than 3km inside the cave and about 145m deep, and a rescue team entered in a bid to reach him.
Known as a challenging dive, Phantom Springs' ownership was transferred to the ranch above it by the US government two years ago, and Hemphill had only recently secured permission to revisit the system.
It features multiple flooded passages and sometimes strong currents, and although the sheriff’s office said it was treating Hemphill as a “missing person”, it told press that it was more likely to be a recovery than a rescue mission, and could take several days.
US cave records
Based in Dade City, Florida, Hemphill was president of Karst Underwater Research (KUR), an organisation dedicated to protecting karst aquifers and their topography.
He developed the Armadillo side-mount harness and a number of rebreather configurations, and had gained a reputation for his successes in exploring, mapping and documenting deep underwater cave systems in Florida, Texas and Missouri, as well as overseas in the Bahamas, Dominican Republic and Mexico.
In 2008 his KUR team broke the US underwater cave depth record at Florida’s Weeki Wachee Springs, and five years later reset that record at Phantom Springs with a 140m descent and 2.5km penetration. In 2014 the dive-team also made the deepest connection between two US underwater caves, Weeki Wachee and Twin Dees, at 2,290m in and 91m deep.
“Today the dive community has lost yet another great cave-explorer and friend,” wrote underwater film-maker Becky Kagan Schott. “You were a true explorer and a true friend. I lose a lot of friends in this sport and it never gets easier. Your death will not be taken lightly. You will always be with me in some way.
“Knowing you for 23 years, hearing your stories of exploration or of your family will always bring a smile to my face.”
Brothers-in-law die on shore-dive
Also in the USA, two dive-buddies in their 70s who died while shore-diving off a beach in Rockport, Massachusetts on 4 October have been identified as brothers-in-law.
The experienced wreck-divers are understood to have been testing new or existing equipment intended for use on an upcoming overseas dive-trip.
Alan De Oliveira Leao, 75, from Pepperell, and Richard Brady, 78, from Hampton in New Hampshire, had gone diving at Front Beach that morning, according to Essex County District Attorney’s Office, which is investigating the fatalities with Rockport Police and the US Coast Guard. The shore-site was one often used for training dives.
Rockport Police were alerted at around 11am and arrived to find that Leao had been washed ashore and was being given emergency medical aid by beach-goers and paramedics. He was declared dead after being taken to a nearby hospital, while a search was launched for his dive-buddy.
Brady's body was found on the seabed following sonar scanning from the Coast Guard vessel Ocean Reporter, and recovered that evening at around 7pm.
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