Nuno Gomes Unveiling the Depths; Extraordinary Guinness Book of World Record Dives - Part 1

All right, good morning. Benjamin Hadfield, teach me to dive. Take me with a dive instructor in Idaho and Florida teaching the masses how to dive. We've got a special guest this morning. I put on my white shirt for him and everything to make sure we were giving him the due courtesy that he certainly deserves. Today, Nuno Gomez is one of four men who've dived with scuba using trimix below 300 meters or past a thousand feet. It's huge. There are only three other people. Now, first, Nuno held the world record for the deepest cave dive done in Bozeman Gat, South Africa, to a depth of 927 feet. But wait, that was in 1996. And this cave is located at an altitude of 5,000 feet. So this gives us a correlation depth or sled of 1,112 feet. The dive time was 12 hours. We're definitely going to talk about that. If that's not enough, Nuno continued on and he went to set the open water depth record of 1,044 feet in 2005 in the Red Sea. Nuno, thank you for coming in today. It's a pleasure. Excellent. Well, Nuno, how did you get started in diving? Well, basically. I read Cousteau like many other people, and I thought this is a good a good thing, you know. And basically, I started with spearfishing when I was like a kid. And then when I went to university, I joined the club and started diving. And it went from there on, you know. Some of the first times that I did were like salvage dives. In fact, I started doing some salvage even before I have completed my pool training. And, you know, it was fun and I enjoyed it. And I've been diving ever since. Wow. Now, you got into cave diving quite a while ago. And in cave diving, when you started, it was really kind of in its infancy. Can you tell us about your journey into the world of cave diving? Well, I was living in Johannesburg, South Africa. And it's quite far from the sea, about what, 600 kilometers, about close to 400 miles. So the nearest places to dive were caves. So then it was that, you know, if I wanted to dive, I had to go dive in caves and sinkholes and the like. And so that's what I did. And, you know, I enjoyed it and I carried on from there onwards. And well, I mean, now that I'm living in New York, it's it's hard to do cave diving every year. So if I want to do any cave diving, the nearest place is Florida. But also Florida is probably one of the better places in the US to dive because you can do sea diving, cave diving, the water's nice, it's clear, both in the caves and in the seas. It's probably the better place to dive in the US. I would say so whenever I go down to Florida, I go, I do some diving, wherever. So the one thing about the US, it's difficult to do the ultra deep diving in the US. You know, well, you can dive fairly deep, but not ultra deep. You know, the deepest dives were done by Brett Hemphill. I think he got close to about close to 570 feet. And unfortunately, he passed away recently from a cave diving accident, but. It's I mean, I think he did the deepest dive in the US. And it's 570 feet, which is deep, but it's not ultra deep. So it's hard to find some way to do the ultra deep dives in the US, even if you go in Florida, you have to go very, very far off offshore to find some way where it's ultra deep. So, so I would say if somebody wants to do the ultra deep dives, one would probably have to go to Mexico. There are quite a few spots there where one can dive quite deep. You know, like the lake actually dived in Zacaton in Mexico. That was really deep. Sure. And also in the sea. Some blue holes have been found off. The coast of Mexico that are really deep in excess of 300 meters. So so that's a possibility for someone wanting to do that kind of deep diving. Absolutely. So, Nuno, what certifications do you have? Tell me about that. OK, so I'm I my qualifications are sea mass. So I'm a instructor, trainer, try mix, advanced, try mix, cave, wreck, gas blending. Oh, I can instruct in any of those fields. OK, so everything. Wow, that's awesome. So how did you decide to go set a world record in being the deepest open water diver in 2005? How did that come about? Well. So when I did my cave record. Look, I was going progressively deeper and deeper every time. But as I went deeper, somebody else went deeper. And I kept on going deeper. And but somebody else kept on going a little bit deeper. Eventually, I was asked to try and recover the body of a diver that was by the police. And I told the I told this friend of mine, he's not a friend of mine. Look, if you have this, I'd have to do a world record dive to be able to try and recover the body of of this diver. And I said, I told him, I'll think about it. And after a couple of months, I thought, OK, I'm going to give it a shot. So I'm going to go to the deepest point because the ROV had been in that cave looking for the body and hadn't found it. But the ROV hadn't got as deep as it was possible to go. So, OK, I'm going to stick to the deeper part. We did a lot of surveying of the cave until I found the deepest point. Of course, the Boosmans hut varies in depth depending to the water table level. So the water table goes up and down. So sometimes it's a little bit deeper, sometimes a little bit shallower. But so I I did a lot of measurements with a sonar and I arrived at the maximum depth of two hundred and ninety meters. So I decided, OK, that's the spot where I'm going to go. Because you can you can swim along the roof of the cave. And you can point the sonar down and find the spot. So I marked the spot on the roof of the cave where the deepest point was. So the idea was to go with a reel inside the cave on the roof and drop the line down to the deepest spot. That's what we did. So after I did the dive. It wasn't. I got a depth that was less than two ninety. But I don't know how accurate my depth was, but I always claimed less. Then what I thought it was. Some people always claim the maximum. I tend to claim somewhere between the minimum and the average. OK, well, if if I claim a depth, I definitely went deeper. But but I don't like to claim the maximum. The most I'll claim is what I think is the average depth. So. And so then then I did the dive. I didn't find the body. Eventually, the body was found and it was shallower than what I had done for somewhere between the shallow spot of the bottom and the maximum part of the bottom. So, you know, so that's how it happened. Then that record remained the record for the deepest dive and the deepest cave dive for a long, long time. And then John Bennett came along. And the the sea record, which was around three hundred and eight meters. So that became the Guinness record. OK, it was in the sea. So the Guinness World World Record don't distinguish between sea dives and cave dives. They just say ultimate depth is what counts. OK. So John Bennett then had the record. And then I started. In the meantime, I got involved in diving and filming silicates off the coast of South Africa. And these silicates were at the depth of about 400 feet, 120 meters. So we were doing like 15 minute bottom time on open circuit with scuba in the sea. And there was a strong current there, like about four knots. Oh, wow. So you have to do like a hot drop. And then swim down quickly to the continental shelf to the drop off. And then search in the caves. Next, you know, on the drop off of the continental shelf until. Until we found the silicates and filmed them. We were doing this for the BBC and we managed to do it. We managed to get good footage. So after that, I thought, wow, sea diving, this is good. Maybe I must also try and do a world record in the sea. So I started looking, where am I going to do this? It's going to be really difficult off the coast of South Africa. I have dived all along the coast of South Africa. I mean, I did my like commercial training in Simon's Town in the Cape. And I knew and I had dived in Namibia, all over Mozambique, all these places, and I thought I knew I had to go real far. To find a deep spot. So I started searching and eventually I thought, oh, the Red Sea is the place. Because it drops straight down. I mean, not far from the shore. I mean, two years ago, I was in the in the Red Sea off the coast of Dahab. You can drop to 700, 800 feet. From doing a shore dive. Next, I mean, 300 feet from the from the from the side of the coast, you can get 800 feet, 900 feet. Wow. How's the current? There's no current. Oh, even better. And the water is clear and warm. So obviously, if the wind starts blowing, you do get some current. Because, you know, the wind causes the current, but it's mostly surface. Once you go deep, there's nothing. Or very little. I mean, so I thought this is the place. I'm going to do it in the Red Sea. So I set it all up. It took a while to organize. And the first time it didn't work out, I got down to 271 meters and my regulator stopped working. So I went through a whole process of trying to survive. And I managed. And and then we thought, OK, let's come back the following year and do it again. So we came back the following year and we did it and it worked. And how do you put something like this together? The expense on doing a deep dive like this has got to be immense. Yeah, there's a lot of expense, that's for sure. I mean, you spoke to Karen Fenton over and you can see how expensive it is. And that's doing it locally, it's expensive. If you have to travel and fly somewhere with all the equipment, it becomes even more expensive. Sure. And it's difficult to get sponsorship. So you can get some sponsorship, but you still have to spend quite a bit of your own money. And you have to have team members that are prepared to kind of. Help you pro bono. You know, if they are prepared to help you and join in on the adventure, then it's useful. But if you have to final, you know. Finalize everything at your own cost, it's it's really expensive. Look, diving manufacturers will say, OK, here's a couple of regulators, DVs. You can have that. Some firms, you know, be about buoyancy, compensate. So they will give you some stuff. But. In the end, it's it. You know, you have to self-sponsor yourself. And of course, any little bit of help is welcome. But it does get expensive. I bet. It's not like a money making venture whatsoever. You mean there's not money in diving? Wait, stop. Yeah. Well, look, I know very few people that that have made money out of diving. But look, it's possible to make some money, but I don't think you're going to be rich. No, no, that is for sure. That is for sure. So you get to the expense of this. So, I mean, let's talk about the logistics for a moment. For example, in the pictures, we've all seen the picture. You've got four huge tanks set together in manifolds on your back by itself. I mean, how do you did you set that up there? Did you bring those? I had to fly there. OK. And that in itself is a problem. Because look, they have to the tanks have to be empty without valves. Sure. And in Egypt, they're always looking for terrorists and whatever. So at the customs, they take a light and look inside the tank and shake it around one by one. Oh, my goodness. How many tanks did you fly over? I only flew those four. OK. The rest, the planet divers supplied. So they the planet divers themselves were sponsors in that they said, OK, some of the people can can stay for free. The gas you have to buy, you know, things like that. Sure. So they assisted in support. They have an endless amount of banks. So the stages you just have to make sure that you've got all the fittings for the stages, because on that dive, I used like 30 tanks. Wow. And here's the here's the thing. Open circuit. Versus rebreathers. OK, I think this is always the issue. Using a rebreather does make it simpler. And we could say easier. But of course, it's up from my point of view, I think it's a lot riskier. Because a lot of things can go wrong with the rebreather. And even the cleverest of divers. Make mistakes with rebreathers and they ultimately die. So it's been quite, quite bad with the rebreathers. I mean. There have been quite a lot of fatalities, but. Divers are prepared to balance the situation and decide, OK. I'm prepared to take the additional risk and use a rebreather because, OK, I don't use so much helium. This and that. And it's lighter. So but OK, that's up to them to decide. And of course, you use a lot less helium. So you're going to it's going to be cheaper. But of course, the rebreather is far more expensive as well. And the maintenance is is quite high. And you need to to make sure everything is working. And when something goes wrong and you might not even notice that something went wrong. And of course, then it's bad news. But anyway, the dives were all done on open circuit. It's simple. If you can breathe, it's working. As long as you can. Fair enough. So once you decided to put all this together, tell me about the planning portion of getting everything to the Red Sea, building up the timetables, everything like that. How did that what did that look like? Well, typically, it will take about a year to put it together because you have to to first. Get all the people that are going to be involved to the location where you're going to do the dive. Then you all of them have to have accommodation. And they must be prepared to to. To write off like at least two weeks. So that's why lately you can see a lot of divers are diving with a very, very small team. Because it's it's difficult to get all the people to commit. To be at a certain location for. For that period of time. But anyway, you have to make a list of all the equipment that that you need. You need to test all that equipment as best as you can. Sure. And you have to make sure when you arrive at the location. That everything is still working. So you have to do a lot of test dives building up to. Typically, typically, you're going to do at least. Five to 10 dives before you do the actual dive. Sure. I always do. I always do that anyway. Because, you know, if you haven't died for a week. You need to acclimatize. So as you acclimatize, you're testing the equipment progressively. Eventually, you're going to end up doing a dive. Maybe to about. At least 400 feet. As like a test dive, maybe a little bit deeper, maybe 500 feet. And then you're going to stop diving for about. Two, three days, and then you're going to do the actual record. So all the time you you're working your way deeper and deeper, but all the time you are using the final configuration, equipment configuration that you'll use in the record. So you're not going to have anything different. It's going to be the same all the time. Of course, of course. So let's talk. I want to talk a little bit about that acclimatization that you talked about earlier. So are you saying you're becoming more acclimatized to things like narcissus and the weight of the gas? Well, look, I think you'll be. Yeah. OK. Yeah. Well, you know, that's a debatable thing about nitrogen. You can be acclimatized to it or not. I think there's definitely a certain degree of acclimatization as far as nitrogen is concerned. But the the other thing is. Your body, you know, you're in gassing and out gassing, so you as you are gassing, you kind of. Cleaning, cleaning your system from like micro bubbles and stuff like that. And you're getting used to decompressing for longer and longer. And if you have any problems, you'll pick them up. So if you get a small bend from one of the old updates, then that's basically the end of the story. So so then you need to start again from scratch, maybe a few months later, the next year. But I think the most important thing in the acclimatization. Is being used to to your equipment configuration. Even more. OK. So, for instance, when when I was at 271 meters and my main regulator stopped working. I switched over to the bailout tank with which had another different regulator. And fortunately, it worked. So, I mean, for most people, switching regulators at that kind of depth is something that you wouldn't think of doing. But you need to practice that procedure. At deeper depths, you know. You know that, for instance, if you take like Dave Shaw. He was at the bottom of Guzman's hut, also at around 270 meters. And he was on his rebreather and he had bailout tanks. And he never switched from the rebreather to the bailout tanks. And he was having a problem breathing. You could see that his CO2 was building up and up. He didn't do it. Why didn't he do it? Probably because he hadn't practiced that kind of thing at that extreme depth. So you need to. I mean, when I was diving for the silicates at like 400 feet. It was changing regulators at that kind of depth was like. The thing that we did all the time because we used two independent back cylinders. And you have to switch from one to the other to to keep the same pressure on both cylinders as much as you can. So that kind of thing should all be second nature to you. So and also the team, the team needs to. Practice reaching you as support divers on time, and that in the first dive that I did practice record dive didn't go well. Some of the divers arrived like half an hour late. So you meet the surface marshal must know exactly when these things happen. Also, you know. And when you're doing these very deep dives. The possibility of isobaric counter diffusion or decompression of the middle ear. Decompression sickness of the middle ear is a very distinct possibility. No matter how careful you are in choosing the gases and the switches and whatever, it can happen if you get that. And you are deep. Your chances of dying, if you don't have a support that are right next to you, are very, very good. Because you lose all sense of direction or up and down. And, you know, you start, you know, you have the feeling that you are spinning out of control. And a number of divers have died because of that. So if you if your support divers don't know what to do or what's going on. And then not to help you. Then, well, that's the end of the story. So a lot of stuff to do. That is that brings up a good point of making sure to practice in position as well, not just acclimatizing to the feeling of the breathing, but acclimatizing to the pressure and accomplishing things, switching regulators, isolating. That's such a great point. And there's another thing, for instance, as you go deeper and deeper, you get high pressure nervous syndrome. So that makes it even more difficult to accomplish simple procedures because your hands are shaking and and the whole body eventually will be shaking. So it's difficult, very difficult. There are all kinds of things that can happen to you. And hopefully the support divers can help you. But ultimately, you yourself must be prepared. For those eventualities and what you'll do in that, if it happens. Absolutely. So on this dive in the Red Sea, I would imagine you had to have felt some at least some degree of HPNS. How did that feel? I definitely felt it, and that's what stopped me from going deeper because the rope that I had was three hundred and forty one meters long. And my final actual depth was like three hundred and twenty one. Somewhere between three hundred and twenty one and three hundred and twenty three, even though I claimed three hundred and eighteen point five. As usual, I always claimed the least. Sure. But that's what stopped me from going deeper. I was I was just shaking out of control. And it was really difficult. And yeah, that brings me to another issue. The issue of gas narcosis. That that plays a major role. You know, a lot of divers think that nitrogen is the only narcotic gas. That is to to to my way of thinking, that's not true at all. All gases are narcotic, the most narcotic being carbon dioxide. And this is the problem. As you go deeper and deeper, as you know, the gas becomes denser. In your lungs, that what that means is that you are not able to vent your lungs very well. So if you're not able to vent your lungs very well, the carbon dioxide is building up. A lot of carbon dioxide is about 13 times. More narcotic than nitrogen. And if you take helium. It's about a quarter as narcotic. As nitrogen. So it's also narcotic. So, yes, oxygen is also narcotic. Sure. A little a little bit more narcotic than nitrogen. I've done a study and the density of the gas. Correlates very well. With the solubility. Of the gas and solubility of the gas correlates very well with narcosis. That is relative narcotic potency. In fact, I've written a paper about it, it's in academia. But the bottom line is. That by the time you get to that kind of depth. Even if you have very little nitrogen in the in the blend. There's going to be quite a bit of narcosis. You can see, for instance, when Anna Scala, we went, this is going back quite a bit. What when Anna Scala did the 300 meter dive, where they came out of a bell. There was no nitrogen. In the mix, in the blend, it was just oxygen. I think 8% it was, which is crazy for that kind of depth. Yes. And the rest was helium, 92% helium. When those the two divers came out of the bell, which makes the dive a whole lot easier. They couldn't, they had, they struggled with just putting up the flag, the American flag at the bottom of the sea. It's a simple task. Sure. And there was no. No nitrogen, there should have been zero narcosis. Theoretically. But they weren't able to do that simple task. And eventually they got into trouble and one of the divers eventually went on to die. But, you know, you can you can talk to other divers that have been deep. And they've had very little nitrogen in the in the in the blend. And there's been narcosis. And I, for myself, that I've done quite a few deep dives, know for a fact. That as you go past 240 meters. No matter what blend you have, you suddenly feel there's narcosis coming up. I mean, I know narcosis very well because I've done like a lot of 100 meter dives on air. So I know exactly what it feels like in the chamber. I don't know how many dives to 200 meters on air, a lot. And you get seriously narcosis. I've done it in the water as well. And somehow you get slightly less narcosis in the water than in the chamber. For some reason. But I know that exactly how narcosis I'm feeling. And so one needs to consider. And in my paper, you can calculate exactly the narcosis level. Of course, it varies from diver to diver, so it's not it's not accurate by any means. But it gives you some indication of what you can expect. So, yeah, narcosis is always a problem when you dive in groups. Wow. If you would, we'll make sure to put that link to your paper in the notes of this interview as well. I think that'd be wonderful. Well, Nuno, I'd like to break this into two parts. And so we have there's a lot to digest in what we've just gone through. So we're going to give people a little bit of time to digest the amazingness of Nuno Gomez and this. So, again, Benjamin Hatfield, Teach Me to Dive. If you like this kind of content, make sure to subscribe to our channel. Hit the notification button because we've got a part two coming up of Nuno. Nuno, thank you so much for being a part of this. OK, perfect.