Underwater Cave Diving: Choosing Passion Over Risk | Nat Geo Live

Kenny: I think there's been a big trend in expeditions that are geared towards science that's also geared towards conservation. I can rationalize, you know, why I take risks for scientific reasons, for conservation reasons. But, I would be lying to you. It's just amazing to get into these places. (audience applause) I regularly get asked for some of these trips "Why do you keep going on these sorts of expeditions? Why do you keep going on them?" And it's cliché, but this is why we go on them. We go to these amazing places from an aesthetic and cultural standpoint. And I got to go all around the world. I used to work as-- in commercial diving. So I was sent to remote areas, which is sort of my specialty. It's just, you realize that we're living in a different kind of world and you're just drawn into them. And then... all of a sudden, you're jerked out of that world and you end up, you know, like this. (audience laughter) And the irony of this particular accident which is, I had been diving all day in one of the deepest known caves in the world. Six hundred and sixty-three feet deep, and we were doing... what objectively, is pretty risky diving. And after three days of working in this hole in the Bahamas, I climbed up on the roof of a three-story building to take a picture of a rare tree that was blooming and I fell off the roof. (audience laughter) So, you know, our objective versus subjective risk assessment is not, you know, not so great.

In the beginning, I was motivated by adventure. I wasn't motivated by these more rational excuses, and I was never kind of analytically motivated as a child. You can see, I think that's my high school report card. Yeah, so my analytical skills were, you know somewhat under-developed, to put it nicely. -(audience laughter) -(Kenny laughs) Alright. There's some kids in the audience... Hey, come talk to me after. But, I was motivated by other things. (audience laughter) Actually, that's... the real cover from the 2015 issue that I just found out before the show that was one of the top selling off the shelf covers. My only explanation is that I think the stoners must have kept buying it over and over. (audience laughter) They didn't remember that they bought it. But, anyway. But, I was very much motivated by the ocean and surfing and... I actually tried to get into the Navy and the Coast Guard. And I kept doing the psychological test and it said "Unfit for vertical chain of command." (audience laughter) It's like, kinda stuck in my head. But, I did end up going to school in California on and off at UC Santa Barbara, mostly motivated by the surfing. But, I was really into the ocean and anything to do with adventure. I ended up getting jobs in the film industry doing stunts and coordinating stunts and... And that, you know, I found out, oh wow! You can make a living off of adventure. But it was, once I started getting into the diving that's what opened up really, the world of science to me. You go into this insignificant, tiny little muddy hole and you realize, beneath my feet is this whole other world that's unexplored.

And my realization of this and the increase in some of my diving skills coincided with me meeting Wes Skiles. And he really guided me, as a mentor as a friend, when I was 19 years old into what the world of professional diving was like. And he was the photographer on our expedition to The Blue Holes of the Bahamas. That was a cover story in August of 2010. And that's a shot, you can see there's four divers in that picture, actually. And Wes, in this tragic irony, he died just a few days before the magazine with his cover shot came out. And... it was devastating to all of us, but it's-- To me, being up here is very much also telling my friend's stories. And it's not just Wes, who've passed away in expedition related activities. It hits close to home as well. This was from one of my... I have a little boy, his name's Lincoln and this was in kindergarten. That is not his handwriting. It's like a free association, I guess. So, when he came up with sad, it kind of rubs your nose in it. You know, it hits home and... It's this battle in my own brain of what's worth it and what's not. And every once in a while it just gets too much and at some point, 20 years ago, I went back to school because I felt like, okay I need something a more substantial career. I'm very interested in the science this mix of ecology along with, with human behavior. And that's how I ended up in Environmental Anthropology.

And I was only in school for less that two semesters when I get this letter in the mail from some of you may know Doctor Bill Stone, he's an explorer and an innovator inviting me to join the United States deep caving team. And this is where we went. So, it was in Southern Mexico, in Oaxaca in what's called the Huautla plateau. And we all drove there independently and we were set to meet at a certain date; it was pre-GPS. So, actually, that's the map that we were given saying where to go. (laughing) You know, "Don't be late!" (audience laughter) "Bring your money." But, you know, we're driving through the lowland jungle and you come around the corner and this is what you see. This massively uplifted limestone plateau and the cave entrance we were gonna work on was at the top of this plateau. And that's the view from the cave entrance. And the mouth of the cave is quite small but it creates a giant micro-climate because of different temperatures and pressures. This is the entrance, so you drop down... I think, you can see the person. And so here's the cave system. So, you have the jungle drop I just mentioned.

You start doing day trips where you're dropping all the equipment. You're dragging everything by rope, it's a very vertical cave. And when you have enough equipment at the depot, you stop making day trips and you start living underground. So, Camp Three was our main base camp. Camp Five was where we would start the diving. But, you can send only two people at a time to Camp Five because the area was really small and you're hanging over the water. So, most of the activity was at Camp Three. And you're going down and down and... Some of these drops are a few hundred meters. Really, you're confined to the dark and you're stuck with people, some of whom, you really love and some of whom... well, you know. And then, from there you really keep going down and keep going down and you go through these canyons that are just amazing with crystal clear water. You get to roaring waterfalls and you can't even hear yourself think.

And in fact, Camp Five was at one of these roaring waterfalls. And so, we used to wear balaclavas and earplugs. And I ended up down at Camp Five with my very good friend, Ian Rolland. And he... he and I were kind of the team pranksters. So, Ian and I really teamed up. We were the two youngest and we really got along very well. So, when we were down there, it was our turn we were lower on the totem pole to get a chance to dive and the other team... the other team members hadn't had luck at cracking the sump, cracking this underwater passageway full of some tight restrictions and you can't see more than about... really about what's in front of your hand. And so, I got to dive first and I went on. This is... this gives you a good sense of the machine. It's two redundant rebreathers that you're wearing on your back. There's about ten valves that you're constantly changing. There's two computers that you're constantly monitoring and changing. So, it's a-- it was a complex very experimental system at the time. And then, you're also doing all the cave diving which is running a constant guideline tons of other caving related equipment.

So, Ian and I were down there and it was really... probably, that time was the most fun I'd ever had in my life. Everything was going like clockwork, we'd been working together for two or three months, we traded jokes, we didn't even have to finish each other's sentences. I mean, we were quite close. And I made it pretty far on the first dive I got through what had, apparently been stopping people. And... made it far, came back excited. We fixed up the rebreather because we were sharing one rebreather and then Ian took off. And... he made it a little bit further and he said "I think it might be sloping up." And then came back and then I went and I actually made it all the way through the sump and came up into a big air bell with a big giant sandbar. And I... literally, felt like I was on another planet. It had this otherworldly feeling, this otherworldly silence. And I was so excited and Ian was a better dry caver than me. So, I wanted to get back, it was little less than half a mile swim back. So, I made it back to Camp Five and... "This is it. We did it."

And Ian took off on the next dive and... he took off, I remember he had his helmet and he had his kid's teddy bear... taped onto his helmet or tie wrapped onto his helmet. And, you know, we had it said, if he's not back in six hours... literally, the words were "call the cavalry". And two hours go by, I was expecting him at about three or four hours. Five hours, six hours and... no Ian. So I... I left the hot pot of tea, a light, a pulley system so you could get yourself out of the water and I headed back a few hours up to Camp Three. I got there at about one in the morning and woke everyone up and said, "We have to go on a rescue." Ian was probably the... one of the most experienced with this machine and... But, he also was a diabetic. So, there was a question in my mind was he having some kind of diabetic incident. And... I got into quite a fight with the team.

But, to make a very, very long horrific story short, I ended up going back down, making the dive and found Ian on the other side of the sandbar back in the water where he had started diving again with a cave diving reel with a line in his hand. And I found him at the bottom with just the reel right out of his hand, very peacefully. So, it was... you know, all of a sudden to go from the highest high to the lowest low you can imagine... in about the lowest point you can ever imagine literally, was devastating. You have to block that out of your mind and I made my way back to Camp Five where Bill was waiting for me. And... it took six days to get Ian back out to the surface. And it ended up, I was, ended up being underground for 21 days. And that's what it looks like, after 21 days underground.

But, when we came out and we came out with Ian's body the Mazatec village... and I'll never forget this and I'm still forever grateful. They had carved out steps in the cornfields and the whole village came in and accompanied us out. And we went right into the local, small cathedral. Where we-- it was really a combination of an indigenous religion along with Catholicism. And had an extremely moving ceremony, right there. And... it was... I don't have to tell you how it was. You get the idea. But, for me I was, I don't even know I hadn't slept for days and days and ended up the National Geographic film team with my friend Wes, had just gotten down there a couple days before and somehow, we decided to go back into the cave for a few days and just kind of try to get a grip on things.

We got caught in a flash flood and ended up getting trapped for four days. It ripped all of our rigging out. We ended up having to ration food and lighting stuff. By the way, if you ever are short on things and have to ration, don't tell anyone you're rationing. They just... it creates instant hoarders. (audience laughter) But, we got out of there and at the end of that I was really... I was done and I left the expedition. And Bill was very gracious in that. In fact, most of the expedition was gone. But, Bill and Barbara am Ende who was one of the leaders on the expedition. She and Bill decided to go on and they did what was in my opinion one of the most audacious exploration feats. So, Ian and I had stopped at that deepest point.

They went by themselves, all the way to that furthest point which at the time, was the deepest point known. And there was no chance of anyone ever rescuing them. That's them at the deepest point, right there. And this was in the 1995 issue of National Geographic. And here's a picture of my friend, Ian. And... you know, I kept in touch with his family over the years. And his wife remarried someone from the same mountain rescue team. But, this is his two-year-old, Connor, now. Who's become a British caver, a very well-known British caver. And we hadn't met for... he's now 24 years old and he came to Florida, two weeks ago. So, we spent ten days together traveling around Florida, diving together. So, I mean, as hard as it is for me to tell this story, it's... kind of in a strange way it's come full circle. And it was-- we had a really great, great time together.