Bushman's Hole or Boesmansgat: Dive sites explained
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Some dive sites are famous because of their abundant wildlife or their. This is not the case for Bushman's Hole; this dive site is (in)famous because it is one of the most challenging in the world and consequently, has some records and incidents attached to its name. But before talking about its history, let's talk about the dive site itself.
Location
Bushman's Hole is found in South Africa, in the Northern Cape province. It is surrounded by a Nama-Karoo, an environment, strongly resembling a grassy savanna. The location of Bushman's Hole as a diving spot makes it tricky because it is quite remote, and diving there requires transporting a large quantity of scuba equipment.
It is in the Kalahari Desert, which covers more than 900,000 square kilometers (or around 350,000 square miles).
Bushman's Hole is also called Boesmansgat, which literally translates to "Bushman's hole" in South African, and is a reference to the indigenous hunter-gatherer Bushmen, also known as San people found throughout South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Angola, and Zimbabwe.
Characteristics
The outer appearance of Boesmansgat is inconspicuous: In a mostly barren landscape, you will see an area dense in trees. Approaching that area, you'll notice a large sinkhole, requiring a small climb of a few dozen meters to reach what seems like a small pool. However, this innocent body of water hides what is believed to be the sixth deepest flooded freshwater sinkhole in the world, reaching a maximum depth of 283 meters (or ~928 feet).
Bushman's Hole is a flooded sinkhole reaching a maximum depth of 283 meters. If you were to descend, you would first encounter a kind of bottleneck, making you think that the sinkhole is shallower than it is. But at a depth of around 60 meters (~200 feet), the sinkhole opens up, and keeps going, until the maximum depth of 283 meters. Something you would notice when you enter the water is that although from the surface, it might look brackish, once inside, the water becomes crystal clear and the visibility significantly improves. The bottom of Boesmansgat is a kind of muddy/silty mix.
Another particularity of Bushman's hole is that it is situated on a plateau at an altitude of 1500 meters (~4900 feet). This makes it an altitude dive, where the reduced ambient pressure on the surface creates a greater nitrogen gradient between the diver's tissue/blood and the surface environment, especially in deeper dives. This means that divers have to off-gas for a longer period of time compared to dives done at sea level.
The combination of all these factors, -Cave, deep, altitude- makes this a challenging dive site that is only reserved for the most experienced divers, as it is important to understand exactly what is affected by each component.
Records
- Nuno Gomes, in 1996, set the then-world record for depth at a depth of 282.6 meters (around 927 feet). Although the current world record is deeper (332.35 as of 2024), because Boesmansgat is at an altitude of 1500 meters, the decompression schedule Gomes had to follow had an equivalent depth of 339 meters (or 1112 feet).
- Dave Shaw, on October 28th, 2004, broke multiple records at Bushman's Hole, namely: Depth on a rebreather, depth in a cave on a rebreather, depth at altitude on a rebreather, and depth running a line. It is during this dive that Dave spotted Deon's Dreyer body and made him want to go back to retrieve it.
- Verna van Schaik, on November 24th, 2004, established the women's depth world record at a depth of 221 meters (or 725 feet)
- Karen van den Oever, in October 2022, completed an 8-hour and 11-minute dive in the Hole to beat her own previous depth record, to reach a depth of 246.6 meters (or 809 feet), establishing a new depth world record for women.
Incidents
Due to its very technical nature, Boesmansgat has seen its fair share of diving incidents. In fact, at a depth of 283 meters, even a small problem can cascade into more serious issues that can become deadly; and at shallower depths, the diver must make sure to maintain correct buoyancy as a loss of buoyancy will lead to sinking to the depths of the hole, without anything to hold them up.
This far, there are 3 deaths recorded in Bushman's Hole, they are:
- Eben Leyden, in 1993, lost consciousness while attempting a diving descent alongside dive buddy Boetie Sheun at a depth of 60 meters (or 197 feet). Although he was brought back up to the surface and resuscitation attempts were made, he still passed away.
- Deon Dreyer, was assisting a deep-diving group to set up for a technical dive. On one of the training dives, he passed out at a depth of 50 meters (or 164 feet) and sunk to his death at the bottom of the sinkhole. Although his father hired a mining company to look for his body, they would have to wait 10 years for Dave Shaw to find it again.
- Dave Shaw, is now probably one of the most famous cases of diving incidents in the world. While trying to recover Deon Dreyer's body on January 8th, 2005, Dave's torch got tangled with a body bag he brought with him, and Dave drowned at a depth of 270 meters while trying to free himself. This story is quite extensive and well-documented, if you are interested in reading more, you can read Dave Shaw's story here.
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