Fatal Depths

**MrBallen** (0:00)
Today's podcast will feature three stories about underwater divers who underestimated what was waiting for them beneath the surface. The audio from all three of these stories has been pulled from our main YouTube channel and has been remastered for today's episode. The links to the original YouTube videos are in the description. The first story you'll hear is called The French Pass, and it's about a small stretch of water in New Zealand that kills. The second story you'll hear is called The Fourth Chamber, and it's about two cave divers who explore a deep underwater chamber. The third and final story you'll hear is called Don't Let Go, and it's about the number one rule in cave diving, never let go of the dive line. But before we get into today's stories, if you're a fan of the Strange, Dark and Mysterious, Deliberate in Story format, then you've come to the right podcast because that's all we do, and we upload four times a week, Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. So if that's of interest to you, please sneak in to the FollowButtons house and replace all of their family photos of pictures of you wearing their clothes in the same poses. Okay, let's get into our first story called The French Pass.
The Northern End of New Zealand's South Island is a chaos of bays and sounds, and within this intricate coastline lies a narrow stretch of water called the French Pass, and it has a deadly secret. In 1827, French Admiral Jules Deauville was mapping the coastline of South Island when he instructed his navigator to enter the pass. As Deauville's crew was entering the narrowest section of the pass, they lost control of their ship and they began spinning. They eventually hit some rocks which cracked their hull, but luckily they came to rest on a nearby reef which prevented them from sinking.
After the incident, Deauville went back to France and in his report, he said no one should enter the French pass unless in an emergency situation, because as Deauville and his crew learned firsthand, the French pass is home to some of the world's most deadly whirlpools, which are exactly like the swirling tubes of water going down your drain after a bath, but these are just much larger and will kill you. Now, these French pass whirlpools are only really dangerous when the tides are actively changing, because during that time a current rips through the waterway that increases the speed and violence of the whirlpool. Once the transition is complete and it becomes fully high tide or fully low tide, or even during slack tide, the current slows down so dramatically that the whirlpools more or less vanish. So today, mariners do go through the French pass, but they'll only go through during high, low, or slack tide. If they miscalculate the tides and get caught in a whirlpool, they could be dragged over the rocks just like Admiral Deauville and his crew.
Now, while sailing through the pass is certainly hazardous, it's nothing compared to the risks of scuba diving through the pass. If a scuba diver mistimes the tides and gets sucked into a whirlpool, they won't get dragged over the rocks. They'll get pulled straight down to the bottom, where they'll be funneled into these ultra deep holes that line the seafloor. The deepest of these holes is called Jacob's Hole and it goes down over 100 meters.
On March 10th, 2000, seven experienced divers headed out to the French Pass to begin their fifth week of instruction in their dive master course. With a dive master certification, they would become professional divers. This day, as part of their curriculum, they needed to complete what's called a drift dive, where instead of trying to fight the current, you simply go with it. These seven divers, which were six students and one instructor, would all be tethered to the same 30 meter long line that had handholds evenly spaced throughout it. On one end of this line was attached a buoy, and then connected to the buoy was an inflatable raft. This allowed surface observers in the boat to track the progress of the dive. The plan was to boat out to the middle of the pass during high tide, jump in the water, and then ride the slow current out of the pass again, avoiding all the whirlpools.
So at high tide, a boat took the seven divers out to the middle of the pass. They all sat on the edge of the boat with their fins hanging off towards the side of the water. They clipped into that line, made sure their gear was good to go. They looked at each other, gave the OK symbol. They jumped into the water. As soon as they hit the water, they removed all the air from their compensators and their life jackets. And then when they were ready, they looked at each other, gave the thumbs down, and they went subsurface.