Doctor essential

BRISBANE: An Australian doctor with 30 years of cavediving experience is critical to a rescue mission to save a young Thai soccer team from their cave prison.

Adelaide anaesthetist and underwater cave explorer Richard ‘‘Harry’’ Harris risked his life on Saturday to dive the chamber where the boys were trapped.

Dr Harris, who has 30 years of diving experience, is well known in the cave diving community, including as the leader of recordbreaking missions to explore a dangerous underwater cave system on New Zealand’s South Island.

In 2011 and 2012, he led a team of Australian divers to record depths of 194 and 221 metres in what’s believed to be one of the world’s deepest cold water caves, searching for the source of the Pearse River. — AAP