Sheck Exley is widely regarded as one of the pioneers of cave diving, and he wrote two major books on the subject: Basic Cave Diving: A Blueprint for Survival and Caverns Measureless to Man.
15 Facts About Sheck Exley
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On February 6,1974, Exley became the first chairman of the Cave Diving Section of the American National Speleological Society.
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For purposes of rescue during cave diving, Sheck Exley helped standardize the usage of the "octopus", a redundant second stage diving regulator that can be used as a backup in the event the diver's primary second stage fails, or alternatively, to allow the diver and their buddy to have simultaneous access to the diver's gas if the buddy has an out-of-gas emergency.
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Sheck Exley died at age 45 while trying to set a depth record by diving the world's deepest sinkhole, Mexico's 1,080-foot deep, Zacaton, a fresh water cenote.
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In spring 1973, Sheck Exley served as an aquanaut during an eight-day mission aboard the Hydrolab underwater habitat in the Bahamas.
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Sheck Exley was the first in the world to log over 1,000 cave dives ; in 29 years of cave diving, he made over 4000 dives.
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Sheck Exley had an unusual resistance to nitrogen narcosis, and was one of the few divers to survive a 400-foot open-water dive on simple compressed air.
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Sheck Exley was the first person in the history of technical SCUBA diving to dive below 800 feet, a feat only 20 people have performed as of 2021.
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Sheck Exley's carefully planned multistage decompressions from these dives, in open water, sometimes required times of as much as 13.5 hours.
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Sheck Exley died, aged 45, on April 6,1994, while attempting to descend to a depth of over 1,000 feet in a freshwater cenote, or sinkhole, called Zacaton in the state of Tamaulipas, Mexico.
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Sheck Exley made the dive as part of a dual dive with Jim Bowden, but Bowden aborted his descent early when his gas supply ran low.
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Sheck Exley's body was recovered when his support crew hauled up his unused decompression tanks.
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Sheck Exley's wrist-mounted dive computer read a maximum depth of 906 feet.
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Bowden and other experts have theorized that Sheck Exley might have done this in anticipation of his own death to prevent any dangerous body recovery operations.
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The Sheck Exley Award is given by the National Speleological Society - Cave Diving Section for 1000 safe cave dives post full cave training.