Karen van den Oever Sets New Women's Cave Diving Record ¦ Full Interview PART 1 .

Well, good morning, Benjamin Hadfield. Teach me to dive. I'm a technical instructor in Idaho, and we have the extreme honor of talking with Karen Vanderoor over who holds the women's record for the deepest O.C. Dive in the world to eight hundred and five feet. She did it at Bushman Gap Cave in South Africa, and she did it at altitude as well. So there's a lot of technicality to this. That's really extremely interesting. Karen is extremely well accomplished and amazing diver and has a lot to share with us. Karen, thank you for coming in today. Thank you. And thank you for asking me to join your show. Absolutely. Well, let's just jump into the middle of this. How did you get started in diving? So it was, I guess, a bit of an accident. My parents bought me a diving course as a birthday gift for my 19th birthday, and it really started from there. I really enjoyed it and I took to it. So while we were on holiday, I went on and did my advanced course. And then when I went back to university, we had an underwater club at the University, and I joined the underwater club. And that's really where my journey started, you know, starting to do course after course, getting involved with the club, getting involved with the training that was happening, going on all the trips. So it just kind of escalated from there. That's amazing. Now, what university? Wits University, the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. OK, there you go. Amazing. So there's amazing diving around Johannesburg as well, isn't there? Well, close to Joburg, there's some training venues, maybe not the greatest diving, but serve the purposes for training. They're not too far away. I mean, if you drive sort of three to four hours out of Joburg, we have some nice cave venues that we can go down. OK, well, tell us about your journey exploring cave diving, because that's just amazing to us. Yeah, so I started again, cave diving was not really for me. I almost got coerced to doing a cave course because being at a university club, they ran courses, you know, if there was enough interest, a course would be run. So they needed another person for the cave course to be run. So I got coerced into into doing a cave course and didn't really take to it when I when I started cave diving. It was a little bit scary. I think, you know, diving in an overhead environment, you can't see anything, you can get lost. It just didn't really appeal to me. It was only much later in my diving career where I had a buddy that had come back from from traveling overseas, and he really needed a cave diving buddy that we really started diving in the caves together. He was very patient with me and slowly, slowly sort of got more confidence of cave diving. Right on. Now, what certifications do you currently have? Oh, there's a long list, I guess, from obviously all the open water, advanced, all of those sort of the specialties, advanced nitrox and then through to the technical qualifications, advanced trimix, technical cave. I'm also an instructor, a cave instructor and a trimix instructor. So I've lost count of all the courses that I've done over the years. That is easy to do, that's for sure. We do it for the education, not for the certifications anyway, right? Yeah, absolutely. Well, that's fantastic. Now, so now you're definitely I like to say mermaid and definitely a very or unicorn in the industry. That's what I call my wife, at least. She's a mermaid unicorn as a tech diver woman, as a woman in the industry. What unique challenges have you faced and how did you overcome those? Yeah, I mean, I think technically, I mean, diving in general, I think is is pretty multigender. There's there's men and women, you know, recreationally that that are diving. I don't think it's it's particularly gender specific. I think as you move into the realm of tech diving, it's a little bit more male dominated. I don't know why that is. Maybe women are less risk or more risk averse than men. I think they they take risks, think about risks more carefully than than men do. So maybe that's why there's sort of more men technical diving than there are women. And so the challenges that drum have in that sort of technical realm have have been a little bit more, I guess, just in terms of small things like equipment, you know, finding the right size equipment. It's all made with men in mind, you know, so finding something that fits can be challenging. And then obviously doing dives like this, people look at you and think you're crazy. You know, when I started on this journey, you know, people thought, that's insane. Why would you do something like that? But I think if if a guy had turned around and said, oh, I'm going to go do 250 meter dive, people would have been like, OK, cool. You know, so so I think the the outlook on on women and technical diving is a little bit different, but I think it's changing. I mean, there's a lot of amazing women that are technical divers now. And I think it's growing. I think the technical diving sport is growing amongst women as well. That's amazing. So at your level, you've become a mentor to younger divers and to other women and guys. There's a lot of people look up to you. So what's been the most rewarding experience you've had mentoring these younger divers up to where you're at? So I think I mean, I enjoy training and and I enjoy, obviously, the deep stuff. And I think for me, taking people to do well, obviously doing an advanced trimix course and eventually taking someone to do their first hundred meter dive is is incredibly rewarding. I know the way it felt for me seeing triple digits on your dive computer the first time was like mind blowing. And just to see the reactions of other people, I it's amazing, you know. And also, you know, the hard work that people put in to get to that point, you know, to reach a depth like that is also incredible. So I really enjoy sharing my knowledge and what I've learned along my journey with other people so that they can also achieve whatever goals that they have to achieve. What's been your biggest success story to date? I don't know about success stories. I don't know in training or just with mentoring a diver or younger divers. Oh, I don't know. The we do feel I do a fair amount of training. So I think I don't know if there's one that stands out. I think I don't know. Maybe the most recent course that I run is I had I had someone on course again at one time, but she was actually also part of my dive team, but shallow support for for most part of the of the the dives. And one of her goals was obviously to do a hundred meter dive. So we really spend quite a lot of time probably over a course of 18 months, you know, working through skills, getting skills where they need to be, getting knowledge where it needs to be to eventually go in and do that dive. And I think that is that was a great great accomplishment and also very rewarding. That's amazing. Absolutely. So how about what do you advice you have for somebody that wants to move into advanced trimix and technical primax? Yeah, I mean, if that's a goal that you want to do, then absolutely you must go for it. But keep in mind the risks involved in doing in doing deep dives. You know, don't rush the journey. Take your time to get there. Build up the experience you need so that when you do get there, you know, you're good and ready, ready to be there. But absolutely, if that's what you want to do, then you should go for it. Right on. So diving at altitude certainly has a little more challenge than diving at sea level. Can you share some of the differences between diving at altitude and sea level? So the main difference is obviously the decompression profile. Your decompression profile is just much longer because of altitude. So we do a lot of diving at altitude. So we I guess it almost becomes normal to do dives at that altitude. But yeah, the only sort of thing I can see is the much longer decompression profile as compared to to diving at sea level. Gotcha. So diving out today can create these additional challenges. What additional challenges or planning did you have to create for an 805 foot dive? Sorry, we're in here in the States. We use all Imperial versus your your metric. Yeah. So as I said, I don't know if there's anything specific addition. I mean, anything particularly different that would go into planning a dive like this, whether it was at altitude or at at sea level. Obviously, you do need to take into account maybe the longer time that you're going to spend in the water as compared to if you were doing the dive at sea level, because your decompression would be shorter. And then I guess you need to look at if there is an emergency and you need to evacuate someone, you know, where are you evacuating them to? Is your your nearest hospital or your your nearest recompression chamber at a lower altitude? Because obviously that's going to have an impact if you are going from a higher altitude and then suddenly taking someone to a much lower altitude. And in fact, that's a challenge we have with some of our dive sites. So the sort of nearest recompression chambers or bigger hospitals that would be able to treat diving emergencies are located in. So I had that I had that the wrong way around. Are located in Johannesburg. So if we diving sort of at the coast and now you have to transport someone to a recompression chamber, that becomes a challenge because obviously you are increasing in altitude. Gotcha. Now, Bushman Gap Cave in South Africa has some rather noted deaths, unfortunately, over the years. We had Leiden, Dion Dreyer and most notably Dave Shaw with his movie, Dave Not Coming Home. Now, what what made you decide to choose that one for your deep record? Well, it's the only one in South Africa that's deep enough to do that. Initially, I had plans on actually doing the depth record in the ocean. I as I said, I wasn't that comfortable diving in caves. And I thought, you know, it would be better to do it in the ocean. But our conditions along our coastline are not conducive to to doing dives like that. You know, we have strong currents. We have big swells. We did a couple of of deep dives in build up to this sort of 140 meter dives along our coastline. And just during the deco, we would drift kilometers and kilometers and kilometers because of the currents. So we realized having to spend sort of eight hours bobbing up and down in those kind of currents was really not not going to work. So either I would have to do it somewhere outside South Africa, which obviously adds to the logistics and of course, the cost of doing dives like these, or I would have to do it in a cave. And then, of course, Bushman's Gap is the only cave that's deep enough. OK, so it's got to be daunting as you get to those depths. What's going through your mind as you get to that point where you're like, this is where Dave Shaw was at. This is where Dion was at. What's going through your mind at that point? Yeah, so you don't really think about it, to be quite honest. I mean, sometimes it plays in your mind leading up to it. You know, the people have obviously lost their lives. And I'm also going to try and attempt to do a deep dive like this, you know. But during the dive, it's not something that crosses your mind. I'm so focused on the dive and the things that I need to do, especially on the descent. None of that crosses my mind. On the way up, maybe a little bit, you start thinking about it. But yeah, I try maybe not to keep it in my mind too much. I mean, those incidents happened. They were unfortunate. But I think there's a story behind why they happened, you know. And obviously, we can look into maybe learn from those, you know, and do things better to make sure that they don't happen again. That's amazing. So what is going through your mind as you're getting to that kind of depth? What are you focusing on? My gas. Do I have enough gas? Can I go deeper? Because it goes really quickly. I mean, I'm diving open circuit for those dives. I have twin 18s, but I can literally sub 200 meters. You can see the needle move on your gauge as you're breathing. It disappears very quickly. So I keep very, very close attention on my gas and making sure that I turn around at the right time, because obviously it also takes time to inflate your wings at that depth. So I've got to also plan. I'm going to be there for an extra 15, 20 seconds while I'm waiting for my wings to inflate. And then obviously get back to to a point where I have spare gas. Well, I have spare gas with me, but I also want to try and avoid having to task load myself at that depth. So I don't want to switch to a stage cylinder if I don't have to. So I have to try and plan that so that I don't have to do that. Anything below 200 meters, I would say I don't really want to complicate things. So, yeah, just focusing on equipment, focusing on do I have enough gas, also focusing on my breathing, you know, make sure I'm not exhaling hard, you know, so that I'm not getting any any carbon dioxide retention and to make sure my equipment's working. I had an incident in one of the lead up dives where a gauge on on one of my cylinders got stuck due to the depth. I didn't realize it until I'd breathed the cylinder empty that the gauge had actually got stuck. So just being aware of of those kind of things, you know, it's something I should have I should have picked up. 180 bar. We've gone all the way from 110 meters down to 200 meters, nearly all the way back, and I still have 180 bar. Something should have clicked a bit earlier to be like, it's not possible. We definitely we've had those experiences, and I think every one of us has done twin sets, has left the isolator on at least once and and had that issue as well. So that brings us some amazing pieces and things we don't think about. But it takes time for the inflator to move and you can actually watch your gauge descend. And as you go and as you're going through the gas, I mean, that's not something we think about it. And these open circuit dives like, you know, I dive, you know, 200 feet to 50, but nothing like that. So so that's that is absolutely amazing. So at that amazing depth, it would seem that you're going through this amazing amount of gas. A tank at last seems like six, seven minutes at that time. Now, for all of nine hours, you were down. How many tanks did you personally go through on this dive? So in total, I had 29 cylinders. Obviously, most of those early 80s, except for the two to an 18s that were that were on my back. I didn't use all of them. There was a lot of redundancy calculated into the gas that we had. But I personally had 29 cylinders available for my use on that. Wow. How many did you actually breathe through? How many were left at the end of the dive? I went through a lot of them. I can't say exactly, but there was probably I don't know, at least 20 to 22 cylinders I would have used. The rest of them would have been would have been spare gas. Wow. That is absolutely amazing. So you made the choice. Your bottom gas choice was 490, which is going to put the the actual weight of the gas around 7.45 grams per liter. What did that actually feel like with worker breathing at that depth? So I changed the previous dive I did to 236 meters. I had a much higher gas density. I think it was 8.6 grams per liter. And I actually got into trouble on that dive because of that. But I'd made the decision then that I didn't want HPNS. So I'm going with with, you know, a leaner mix of helium. But I got into a lot of trouble on that dive. So next dive, I decided, let me take the HPNS that's probably going to come, but let me make my gas density a little bit better. So it's pretty much as low as I could get it. I don't know if I'd been able to go much lower without. Yeah. You know, without maybe adding hydrogen, which I know is a new up and coming thing, but not quite there yet. So, yeah, you don't feel the work of breathing, to be quite honest, especially on open circuit. It's only if you need to exert yourself or you get into trouble that you're going to notice that the work of breathing is harder. So it's definitely a sneaky thing to have that carbon dioxide build up on you. Now, you mentioned you got into trouble. Tell me about that. Yeah. So I got tangled in line at 236 meters on the previous dive. So so my target on the first record attempt was 250 meters as well in in 2021. But I turned the dive at 236 meters. I got tangled in line, which was not something I'd planned for. I mean, we in this huge cave, I'm probably 60 meters from the bottom. There's 100 meters diameter on either side of me. I did not expect it to be line floating in the middle of that cave. But there was and it's attached to something at the bottom of the cave. So I got tangled in that. And the exertion of trying to get myself free from that line caused me to develop hypercapnia. And I really, really struggled to catch my breath. And I say there was one moment where I thought that that's where Dave Shaw came to mind, because I thought this is exactly the same thing that happened to Dave Shaw. And possibly I'm going to suffer the same fate because I wasn't quite sure that I was going to come out of that. But as I slowly managed to ascend, obviously breathing got a little bit easier. And eventually I managed to free myself from that line, which was lucky. And then and then continued with my ascent. But I think gas density also played a big part in that because my gas density was so high, the minute I needed to to exert myself, the hypercapnia came on. So I think if I'd had a better gas density profile on that gas, the outcome might have been a little bit different. Absolutely. So you're in emergency situation. Tell me about how you dealt with that and what what were the steps that you took personally? So I think your training kicks in because a lot of things just happened without me actually even thinking about it. You know, it just just kind of you just kind of do it. At first, I must say I was a little bit panicked, which obviously didn't help the situation. I knew I need to get shallower. I need to start ascending because obviously that's going to bring the gas density down and help with me being able to catch my breath. But obviously, the more I fought to try and ascend, the worse it got. And at some point, there was kind of a calmness that came over me and said, OK, well, you know, I knew that this could have been a possibility of this. And if that's what it is, it is, you know. And I I was very calm eventually. And that's when I think I kind of got my head back together and said, OK, hold on. Let's let's try and figure this out and kind of get out of this situation. But yeah, initially a little bit flustered. But I guess your training just kind of kicks in. You know, you know what you need to do and you just kind of do it without thinking. Wow, that's absolutely amazing. So if you're planning your gas weight, do you plan the narcotic depth based on altitude or did you plan it based on sea level? It was actually that's a good question. It was actually planned based on sea level, to be quite honest. But it was the the narcotic depth was quite low. So I think the altitude wouldn't have increased it significantly. The narcotic depth was around 40, 47 meters. So I think given add some altitude to that and you probably get between 50 and 60 meters. Gotcha. And while doing the side, you noted that you had HPNS through this process. At what depth did you begin to start noticing the shakes? So I only noticed it when I decided to turn at 246 meters. And the reason I noticed it was because I was you have to take a tag off the line to prove that I actually went to that depth and bring that tag back. And my hand was shaking so much. I struggled to to clip that tag off and then clip it back on. So it was just the start of HPNS. I think obviously, as I go, if I go deeper, it's going to get worse. But it was it was just the beginning. Gotcha. What did it actually feel like? I mean, we hear about HPNS and hand shaking. I mean, was it like shivers from being cold? Was it just shakes from help us understand what that actually looks like? Yeah. So as I said, I've just got the telltale signs of HPNS. So I haven't experienced sort of full blown severe HPNS. But yeah, it was just I was shivering a little bit. And I don't know if that was because of the cold or if it was HPNS. It could have been both because it is a little bit chilly down there, but likely was HPNS. And then just just the shakes, but nothing particularly noticeable. I think obviously, as I go deeper, it's going to get more and more severe and more and more noticeable. Gotcha. Now, you definitely brought something up. These aren't warm dives. How do you prepare for some of these long, deep, cold dives? Yeah, the water's not that cold. So it's about most of the dive. It's around 19 degrees. It's just as you start getting to the bottom, the temperature drops. I think the lowest temperature was 15 or 16. But as you get back to around 100 meters, the temperature starts increasing again. So it's not that cold. It's around 19 degrees, which is very manageable with the dry suits and good thermal insulation underneath. So I don't use heating pads or anything like that. There's no need for them for a dive of that length. I think if the dive was longer, maybe you would have to consider it, because obviously at the end portion of the dive, you do start to feel the cold a little bit. Gotcha. Well, yeah, after eight hours at 19 degrees, that definitely we all know that hypothermia is cumulative. So, wow, that's interesting. I would have thought for sure you'd have been in heated undergarment of some kind. No, no. Yeah, I didn't. I didn't need it. But I think, as I said, if I'm going to spend any longer in the water, I would probably look into that. Gotcha. So a dive like this is definitely not a solo venture. In making this dive, tell us about the team that supported you. Yes, I have really an amazing team of divers and people that support me on a dive like this. Our team is relatively large, but for good reason. If you look at Postman's Hut and the layout, getting someone out of the water in an emergency is going to be quite a task. So you need hands to be able to carry someone, someone out of the water. But, yeah, I have a great team that's been really supportive, you know, throughout this whole journey and very motivating. And I'd like to hope that all of them have gained something out of this journey, you know, whether it be getting their goals, going a little bit deeper, you know, doing something that they wanted to do. But a dive like this is not possible without a team like that. You know, they are integral part of part of doing a dive like that. You know, they make sure that I come back safely, that I have support divers in the water, checking on me, bringing me fluids. Obviously, got a surface team that's managing, helping the support divers get in the water to be where they need to be. Someone coordinating, you know, all of the divers. And then, of course, of course, emergency personnel. So doctors and chamber operators and people on standby in case we need them. That is amazing. So you had a chamber on site? A one man chamber, so a very small chamber that. I guess if there was something really, really, really serious would not have been suitable, because obviously you can only put one person in there, you wouldn't be able to get a doctor in there with somebody. But for sort of intermediate decompression issues, we could have treated the person on site. And then, of course, it's a one man chamber, so it's portable. We could put someone in that chamber and then start moving them towards the nearest medical facility. Is that something that comes with Bushman GAD that they just have there? Or is that something that you brought with you? No, it's something we brought with us. There is absolutely nothing at the site at Bushman's Ghat. It's not set up for diving. There is absolutely nothing there. No compresses, no nothing. It's just a hole in the ground. We've seen the pictures, and that's kind of what it looks like. But, you know, most of us have not been there. So how many members of your team are there? There is, if I remember correctly now, four, 15, 14 people. So you definitely had some of those are divers and support divers. How many of them were support divers actually in the water with you? Let me count. One, eight, nine, nine people. Nine divers in the water. So what were the supporting divers depth? Did somebody go pretty much all the way with you? Or was there a stopping point, like 150 meters? So I had my deepest support at 200 meters. He was on CCR, interestingly enough, but it did mean that he could stay there a little bit longer. So he followed me. Well, we went down together and then and then I sort of went a little bit ahead of him. And he came down and waited for me at 200 meters. And then the next support at 110 meters. And then two divers at 60 meters. Two divers at 30, two divers at 18. And then from 18 up, we had sort of anybody, any of the divers that were available, we had some fresh divers that could, you know, do those stints. But otherwise, anybody that that didn't have a huge deco profile, hadn't done a hectic dive, could come in and out in sort of half an hour increments just to check that I was OK. That's amazing. So this sort of dive is well outside the norm, and there are only a few divers in the world that could actually do something like this. What did you how did what did you physically use to plan the details of the dive like this exact example, like dive planning software, gas management software, gas weight and et cetera? So it's a bit of a mix of everything, to be quite honest. And it's been a bit of a process to to get this right. I think when I started, it was just obviously general dive planning software. But and then we'd meet as a team and everyone would give feedback onto the onto the dive plan. And people would say that what they like, what they don't like. And it kind of evolved from there. So I have my own, I think, for lack of a better word, spreadsheet where I've got a lot of calculations where I calculate gas density, you know, partial pressure, rule of fifths. And I look at all of those things when I select my gases and then put them into traditional dive software. But also we have a heat map that we use where we can look at the tissue tensions, you know, the loading and offloading of each of the gases at each of the gas switches and the tissues to make sure to have a look at what the risk is of potential decompression sickness at each of those points. And my deepest support diver, Peter, has actually developed his own decompression software because we were getting frustrated with some of the traditional software where there's a lot of parameters, you know, they don't really want you to change. We want to be able to play with everything and put all of the things we like in one place. So he's actually created his own dive software that does all of those things that we wanted it to do. Oh, wow. OK. So we just had to get off the get off the map and use what was because really, traditionally, I mean, like DECO Diver or any of the other dive softwares, there aren't really designed for what you're getting ready to do. I mean, subsurface really, it'll do it, but it doesn't really do it right. Correct. Yeah, but I mean, most of these are based on straight Bowman tables, which is what you're going to use anyway. You're going to use the Bowman algorithm to design a dive like that and just add in and add in some conservancy factors, which is essentially your gradient factors. So there's not much else that's out there to use. So you've got to base it on something. So I think most of these dive softwares do use Bowman in any case. So throughout this, I've got a few questions that some of my friends that are divers wanted to ask you. And so Jenna Turner, who's a fabulous diver in Mexico, she said, what would you tell yourself as a baby diver now that you have this experience? Yeah, maybe take baby steps. Maybe don't rush into things too quickly and also maybe to not be too goal focused. I think a lot of a lot of some of the, you know, the lead up dives have been so goal focused in achieving a target depth to get, you know, to where I wanted to be that that I forgot to look around. You know, I've been to you know, you're at 200 meters in a cave. How many times are you going to be there? Maybe to stop and take in the scenery and have a look around. And that's something that, again, my my deepest support, Peter always says to me is when we diving together and we do a lot of these build ups together, he always actually stop tells me stop. It's a stay for a few. Just look around, you know, because I'm always like, let's get. Yeah, we've got the depth. Let's go, you know, plan the next dive and off we go. And he's like, let's enjoy the journey a little bit. So I think to maybe slow down and look around and enjoy some of the places, you know, that you dive in, because I guess at those depths, you don't want to hang around too long, but at least take a step back and have a look around because you might not be going back to that depth or that place again. Absolutely. That is amazing advice. Look around. And I think that's great advice as well. I see a lot of divers that want to come into extended range because they want to get deeper. I want to I want to do a 200 foot dive with you, Benjamin. And I'm like, well, let's slow down. Let's let's start at 150 and see what's 150 feet and enjoy the time there. We'll get there. Absolutely. So I love that advice. Absolutely love it. So, Karen, what was the loudest doubt you heard in your head as you move forward with your plans and what you do to quiet it? By the way, that comes from our friend Christina Zanotto. Yeah, I mean, I think there was a lot of doubt leading up to this. And of course, a lot of the people that I spoke to about this created some of that, you know, when you tell people that I want to do this, a lot of people think, well, why do you think you can do this? Why do you think that you can go and break records and things? And then you start questioning yourself. Well, maybe I can't, you know, maybe maybe this is not meant for me. And then, of course, it got hard. You know, it trying to put the logistics together to do a dive like this. Sometimes things worked out. Sometimes things didn't. And there were times where I thought, OK, well, maybe this is not for me. Maybe I must just let this go. And I know a number of times my husband would say to me, but it's not meant to be easy. If it was easy, everybody else would be doing it. So it is hard. So you've got to, you know, toughen up and get through it. So, yeah, there's been big moments of doubt. And I think the biggest one came in when I'd set goals for myself in terms of depth to reach before we actually went and did the first 200 meter dive at Wisman's Ghat. And one of those goals was 150 meters in Kamati Springs. And that in itself is a very challenging dive to get to 150 meters there. You really have to want to get to 150 meters. It's a it's a bit of a maze of tunnels you have to swim through and then eventually get to 108 meters. And there's about a three to five minute swim at 108 meters before you get to the tunnel that then goes down right through to 100, I think goes down to 187 meters. But that tunnel at 140 meters becomes quite narrow. And so many times I got to the 140 meter mark and decided, oh, I can't. It's it really narrows and it played with my mind and called the dive turn around. And I was like, I can't even get to 150 meters. Yeah. How am I going to get to 250 meters in Wisman's Ghat? It's not going to happen. So, yeah, there were moments that I thought maybe this is not going to work. But I think eventually I got there. I told myself, this is it. You're going to do this. If you can't do this, it's not happening. And I managed to kind of get my head together and push myself to get to 150 meters. And in fact, on that dive, I reached, I think, 147 and was turning to come out and stop myself and said, no, I came here for 150 meters, kind of moved backwards three meters. I'm at 150, we can leave now. Right on, Karen. Thank you so much for coming on today. I bet I would like to break this into two parts and share this part two with that, if you wouldn't mind. Yep. Sure. Perfect. Guys, this is Karen Bandover. She is absolutely amazing. Did an 805 foot dive at an elevation of 5000 feet, which takes her to over 900 feet of theoretical depth. Did an open circuit with 22 actual used tanks. She's absolutely amazing. So, again, my name is Benjamin Hatfield, Teach Me To Dive. Make sure to subscribe to our channel and make sure to come back for part two of this interview. You won't want to miss a second of what Karen has to share of her amazing experience. Karen, thanks for coming on today. Thank you so much.