[ALLSTILLWELL]

David Shaw died on 8 January 2005 while seeking to recover the body of Deon Dreyer, a South African diver who had himself died 10 years previously, and whose body Shaw had discovered at a depth of 270 metres (890 ft) of fresh water in Bushman's Hole, South Africa in October 2004.

Shaw recorded his dive with an underwater camera and this recording relayed valuable information that allowed researchers to determine that he suffered from an effort-independent expiratory flow which resulted in an inability to match ventilation to the demands of physical work at that great depth.[5][6] Shaw ran into difficulties when he cut loose Dreyer's harness and the body unexpectedly began to float (Shaw had been advised by various experts that the body would remain negatively buoyant because the visible parts were reduced to the skeleton - however, within his wetsuit, Dreyer's corpse had turned into a soap-like substance called adipocere, which floats). Shaw had been working with both hands, and so had been resting his can light on the cave floor. The powerful underwater lights that cave divers use are connected by wires to heavy battery canisters, normally worn on the cave diver's waist, or sometimes attached to their tanks. Normally he would have wrapped the wire behind his neck, but was unable to do so. The lines from the body bag appear to have become entangled with the light head, and the physical effort of trying to free himself led to his death. The next day, both of the bodies floated up to near the surface as the dive team was retrieving their equipment.

The dive on which David Shaw died was the 333rd of his career. At the time of his world record setting dive, he had been diving for just over 5 years. Info was copied from wikipedia.

[zeb247]

Yeah I remember seeing this some time ago on another site. Youtube I think. Gets tangled. terrible way to go.

[Necrosis]

I hate diving, so unnatural place for a human beign.
Also worth checking out are the estonian diving tapes where the divers go to the freshly sunk M/S Estonia. They are on youtube so no-one dies.

[velvitt]

My biggest fear is death by drowning... Horrible way to go.

[crazycatlady]

Seen this before, but it never fails to creep me out.

[felixhelix420]

He should've taken swimming lessons in Mexico. Those guys get over here (U.S.) pretty easily.

[souris]

I'd rather hear him die than be told about it by the bearded geek in the glasses

[ALLSTILLWELL]

The "bearded geek" was his best buddy and he was also diving that day at 790 feet and that was part of some news show I'm sorry i couldn't find the one with out the narration

[JEW]

That's terrible.

[gimlet]

A man of several firsts, including death from towing a bouyant adipocere body.

Doesn't appear there was much room for error / delay at that depth.

I wouldn't want to spend the last minute of my life handling a submerged 10 year old corpse.