Nuno Gomes (diver)

Nuno Gomes (born 1951) is a South African SCUBA diver (of Portuguese descent) who holds the official current (2009) world record deep dive (independently verified and approved by Guinness World Records) using self contained breathing apparatus (SCUBA), having dived to a depth of 1,044 feet (318.25 m) excluding the rope stretch, in the Red Sea (Dahab) off the coast of Egypt, in 2005. The total dive time was 12 hours and 20 minutes, while the descent took 14 minutes. He is one of only two men verified to have dived on SCUBA equipment below 1,000 feet (the other diver being the late John Bennett), though Pascal Bernabé claims to have dived to 1,083 feet (330 m) in July, 2005.

Gomes is also a renowned cave diver and holds the official current (2009) Guinness World Record for the deepest cave dive, done in Bushmansgat cave (South Africa), to a depth of 927 feet (282.6 m), in 1996. The cave is located at an altitude of 5000 feet (1550 m) above sea level, which resulted in Nuno having to decompress for an equivalent sea level dive of 1112 feet (339 m) to prevent decompression sickness ("the bends"). The total dive time was 12 hours and 15 minutes, while the descent took 15 minutes.

See also

• World's deepest SCUBA dives

Sources

• Nuno Gomes - official site
• South African Nuno Gomes now world's deepest scuba diver