Record-setting US cave diver dies during underwater excursion
Brett Hemphill dived more than 40 stories deep in Texas’s Phantom Springs underwater cave system in 2013 to set a national record, breaking a mark he had set just five years earlier.
Last weekend, his diving colleagues pulled his body out of that same treacherous labyrinth, days after the 56year-old had gone missing during an expedition.
Hemphill’s fate has prompted an outpouring of tributes from the tightknit international diving community who knew him to adhere to the highest standards of safety. The Karst Underwater Research (KUR) group, which he led, has said efforts to find and recover Hemphill have given way to an investigation into his deadly mishap – but answers would take time.
“When we have got all the information and analyzed it, we will issue a statement about the incident that will answer everyone’s questions,” read a statement from Andy Pitkin, Hemphill’s KUR colleague. “[U]ntil then, please allow us some time to come to terms with his loss.”
The circumstances of Hemphill’s death have drawn worldwide attention to the Phantom Springs caves in west Texas. The record-setter spent the vast majority of his life cave-diving there and other places before unexpectedly leaving behind his wife, children and other close relatives.
Hemphill became fascinated with caves when he was 14. He participated in a dry excursion – exploring a cave on foot rather than diving – and found a previously undiscovered section of the site, as DiveMagazine.com told it.
“I always loved exploring,” including around the house, Hemphill said on Divesoft TV in 2021. “I was never a kid that was content to watch TV. If I was riding a bike, I was jumping the creek … You know – anything.”
He later moved from Indiana to Florida and earned his scuba-diving certification because he figured it would fully unlock the field of cave exploration to him.
“Scuba diving was definitely a tool for me,” Hemphill said.
Beginning in the 1990s, Hemphill helped explore and survey some of the
US’s deepest cave systems, which few people ever encounter. Hemphill’s work inspired people to demand the protection and preservation of the caves he mapped and documented.
He and his team at KUR, a nearly 30-year-old organization, broke the US deep underwater cave record by reaching a depth of 407ft (124 meters) in Florida’s Weeki Wachee Springs in 2008.
The 2008 expedition established Weeki Wachee Springs as the deepestknown naturally formed spring in the country, according to his biography at the website for KUR, which is based in Dade City, Florida.
Five years later, Hemphill and KUR shattered their previous record by diving to 465ft (142m) at Phantom Springs. Hemphill’s crew went nearly 1.5 miles (2.4km) further into what is reputed to be one of the deepest, most elaborate underwater caves in the US.
Those excursions highlighted a career that also saw Hemphill explore caves worldwide, including in the Bahamas and on Mexico’s Yucatán peninsula.
Hemphill pursued his profession despite the toll it takes on participants both physically and mentally.
“I say this to people … I don’t think about my kids and my wife when I’m 20,000ft … back” in a cave, Hemphill said in 2021. “Those are not the things you want to think about.”
Instead, he suggested he focused exclusively on the task at hand, taking comfort from knowing that he had the adequate skills and equipment to keep himself safe in environments that many liken to outer space.
Hemphill’s last dive began at about 10.45am on 4 October alongside Pitkin. The pair had gone back to Phantom Springs, and this time Hemphill reached a staggering depth of 570ft (174 meters).
KUR said video showed Hemphill tying a guide rope to a rock at that juncture, and that the team became separated.
“I started out slowly expecting that he would catch me up at some points – or hoping to catch me up at some point,” Pitkin, who is from the UK, told the Florida news station WTVT. “But he never did.”
As word spread that Hemphill was missing in Phantom Springs, several expert divers traveled there and joined efforts to search for him. Crews retrieved his body from a depth of more than 450ft (137 meters) on Sunday, KUR said.
The medical examiner’s office in Lubbock, Texas, planned to conduct an autopsy of Hemphill to determine precisely how he died. His family has launched a GoFundMe campaign meant to help cover funeral expenses.
Meanwhile, if diving officials confirm that Hemphill was last seen at 570ft, he will have set one final US underwater diving record by more than 100ft.
“He was a true explorer and pioneer,” said the Emmy-winning, underwater film-maker Becky Kagan Schott of Hemphill, speaking to the Tampa Bay Times.
Schott, who made several documentaries with Hemphill, added: “The dive community has lost a great individual today.”