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South African claims scuba depth record
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Nuno Gomes, a 52-year-old South African, claims to have dived to 318m off the coast of Egypt, setting a new world depth record for open-circuit scuba.
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Gomes descended down a 330m weighted line, with depth tags to be retrieved and presented along with computer records. In the event, all the computers carried by Gomes malfunctioned. However, he retrieved the 315m tag and, after calculating line stretch, a depth of 318.25m was claimed.
The dive involved a 20-minute descent followed by some 12 hours of decompression.
Dangers faced by Gomes included nitrogen narcosis, oxygen toxicity, adverse effects of gas changes, HPNS (a nervous complaint connected with rapid, deep descents) and dehydration.
Gomes used a series of suspended stage cylinders, and was tended by nine support divers. He is reported not to have required recompression treatment after surfacing, but was put on oxygen as a precaution.
A civil engineer from Gauteng, Gomes made a record attempt last July but suffered technical problems at 271m. He was lucky to get back to the surface unharmed.
The experience followed another close call in 1996, when Gomes got stuck in the silt at the bottom of Boesmansgat Cave in South Africa's Northern Cape. The 282.6m dive was a world open-circuit scuba record at the time, and remains a world cave diving record.
In 2001 a Briton, the late John Bennett, exceeded the magical 1000ft (305m) barrier with a dive to 308m in the Philippines. In 2003 another Briton, Mark Ellyatt, dived to 313m off Thailand.
Related links
Mark Ellyatt record dive account
John Bennett, first scuba diver beyond 1000ft, dies during salvage dive
John Bennett reaches 1000ft
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