BOVISAND UP FOR GRABS - from DIVER Magazine

DATELINE: 2nd April 2001

TECHNICAL DIVING DEATHS
The technical diving community in southern Africa was rocked by the deaths of two of its number in separate incidents in the space of a week. Dennis Harding died on a coelacanth-filming expedition, Bradley Craven while cave exploring.
One of South Africa's most experienced technical divers, Dennis Harding was part of a team of four that captured rare film footage of three coelacanths at Sodwana Bay, writes Amanda Vermeulen. He was using a new Halcyon rebreather.
Harding appeared to have over-exerted himself in trying to keep up with the other divers, who at one stage were at least 35m away. One of them, Christo Serfontein, ran out of air and, in line with a pre-dive briefing, turned to Harding for assistance.
Harding was coherent on surfacing, but apparently refused to go back down to do his deco stops. He lost consciousness after being lifted into the boat, and died soon afterwards.
Serfontein agreed to re-enter the water to do his stops and later spent two days in a chamber.
An inquest into the death of Dennis Harding concluded that the probable cause was severe decompression illness, and that he was likely to have ascended to the surface rapidly without doing the normal decompression stops.
Bradley Craven, an IANTD Trimix diver with three years' experience, died during a solo exploration of Chinhoyi Cave, north of the Zimbabwean capital, Harare. He had been attempting a 150m dive to map the cave, and to be the first diver to reach the bottom.
The recovery team, Mike Fowler and Don Shirley of IANTD South Africa, were called in when he failed to return. The two men, who run a dive centre 200 miles from Johannesburg, had just returned from Harding's funeral when the call came in.
Fowler and Shirley found Craven's body pinned to the sloping roof of the cave at 61m. His twin 12 litre cylinders were empty, though his deep travel trimix gas was still functional, with 150 bar remaining. His dive computer read 127m, but his dive-timer read 165m.
An investigation is underway.