Wookey Hole team after the 1982 push |
UKDIVING |
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The more robust and portable aqualung equipment also lent itself to longer underground carries to sumps that were previously untouchable . In 1963 a British team made an assault on the terminal sump of the Gouffre Berger in France , at the time the world ’ s deepest known cave at 1,122m depth . Here , Ken Pearce used a pair of sidemounted cylinders to pass the 61m long terminal sump .
There were further advances at Wookey Hole , with the discovery of chamber 20 and 22 by John Parker in 1970 . This was followed by work carried out by several divers ; Geoff Yeadon and Oliver Statham discovered Chamber 24 in 1976 . This enabled Martyn Farr to make a series of dives at the end of the cave in 76 and 77 , culminating in a British Cave Diving depth record at a depth of 45m beyond Chamber 25 , with the first planned decompression dive in a British cave and also the first use of mixed open circuit gas ( nitrox ).
The mid-1970s also saw the introduction of the constant volume drysuit to British cave diving . Using this equipment at Keld Head in the Yorkshire Dales , after years of dedication and hard work , Geoff Yeadon and Oliver
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Statham became world record holders when they completed the 1,829-metre through dive in 1979 . The event was filmed for the TV documentary ‘ The Underground Eiger ’.
Brit cavers go global
British diving techniques were exported to the Bahamas in the 80s , where Martyn Farr , Rob Parker and Rob Palmer achieved world record penetrations into submarine cave complexes on several expeditions . Then in
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1985 Rob Parker took up the technical challenge of diving at Wookey Hole , using Trimix to explore to a depth of 68m and establishing the potential for the use of the gas in deep cave dives .
Further advances were made at Keld Head and in 1991 , Geoff Yeadon and Geoff Crossley set a world record completing a 3km , five-hour dive from the downstream sump in King Pot to the rising at Keld Head .
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PHOTO : FARR COLLECTION |
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