5 kilometers northwest of Dolly's Cay in The Bahamas
is a dark blue opening in the coral reef. This opening is called the Four Sharks Blue Hole,
and at the bottom of this blue hole is one of the largest underwater caverns
in the entire region. If you enter this cave and then head all the way
to the back, there is a narrow crack in the rock which leads to an almost inaccessible,
but massive chamber. In 1997, two men were exploring this at the time unexplored and uncharted section
when something went horrifyingly wrong. This is their story. [music] If you enjoy Scary Interesting, odds are that
you enjoy stories of humanity surviving, or sometimes not, in some of the most
difficult conditions on Earth. So today, I want to introduce you to one of these stories,
which is a horror fiction podcast and YouTube channel, set within the chilling polar night
of Svalbard called The White Vault. It's an audio story, similar to Scary Interesting,
but with a full voice cast where an international rescue and repair team
is sent to discover the source of a mysterious signal at a
remote arctic research station. On their mission, they become trapped when
the weather takes a turn for the worst, and they also make a number of shocking
discoveries lurking beneath the ice. What makes The White Vault particularly unsettling,
though, is that you feel like you're actually with the team as they march
through the sunless Arctic snowscape. The creators of the show also go through great pains to ensure the scientific, linguistic,
oral, and cultural accuracy. You can hear languages like Icelandic,
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The White Vault's main story recently concluded, so you can hear all of the collected records for free
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in October of 2023, and other seasons follow stories that would be
right at home here on Scary Interesting, like an archaeology team that survives
an avalanche in Patagonia, and spinoff series in the Antarctic, England,
Japan, and 18th century China. So, I'd highly recommend you check out
The White Vault wherever you listen to podcasts, or right here on YouTube, and subscribe now
to delve into the awaiting horrors. At around 8 o'clock on the evening of
August 17th, 1997, Rob Parker and Dan Mallone, also known as Duffer,
sat on the edge of a boat about three miles off the coast of Dolly's Cay
in The Bahamas. After a few adjustments, the two looked
at each other, nodded, and almost in unison, fell backward into the ocean. In a few moments, Rob and Duffer, along with two
support divers, would begin their descent into Four Sharks Blue Hole for another dive
among the thousands in their careers. Each of them was an expert, especially Rob.
At 35 years old in 1997, he was already revered as one of the
foremost divers in the world and the best diver by far in the UK. He had solidified this title after diving a record
206 feet (63 meters) in England's Wookey Hole, which stood as the deepest dive in the country's history for a full 20 years before it was finally bested. The dive they were about to begin was for pleasure, but it was business that brought them
to the Bahamas in the first place. They were part of a dive team being filmed by a
German TV documentary on blue holes, and Rob was a late addition after a spot unexpectedly
and tragically became available. Four months earlier, their close friend
and one of the biggest names in technical and cave diving at the time, Rob Palmer, died while diving
a blue hole in the Red Sea. While Palmer was attending a technical
diving conference in Egypt, him and several other conference attendees
planned to dive, which was supposed to be a relatively
straightforward underwater wall dive. Their plan was to descend along the wall
and check out marine life that had taken up residence on its rocks. When he entered the water, instead of swimming over
to the wall with the other divers, Palmer began sinking fast. Divers raced after him and chased him
all the way to 325 feet (99 meters) before they had to stop and return to the surface. They were already well beyond the capabilities
of their gear for such depths, and going any further would be certain death. Palmer was just falling way too fast to catch him,
and he was unfortunately never seen again as he fell so far that recovering his body
was impossible. To this day, no one knows how or why
he dropped so far so fast. The leading theory is that he suffered a heart attack
or experienced another medical problem when he entered the water that caused him
to pass out, and ultimately sunk to the bottom afterward. Shortly before his death, Palmer was one of several divers
in the middle of being filmed for that same German TV documentary
on blue holes. The decision was eventually made to press on
and complete the documentary if for nothing else than to honor Palmer's memory. And so Rob Parker was asked to step in,
and he accepted immediately. Rob and Duffer arrived in The Bahamas
two weeks earlier, and the film crew's aggressive schedule
had them diving every day. The dives were routine and unremarkable though, and Rob wasn't the type of person
to be happy with the ordinary. His life to this point was dedicated to pushing
his limits any chance he got, and too many straightforward dives
made Rob a little bit stir-crazy. As Rob's longtime partner, Duffer knew that
the only thing that would bring Rob back to baseline was to plan a dive more in line
with Rob's idea of fun. However, this would have to be a secret,
because their planned extracurricular dive into Four Sharks Blue Hole was a dangerous one,
even for divers of their caliber. And Rob knew that neither the film crew nor its
insurance company would be okay with this idea. But, as long as they were back before
the film crew shot up to collect more footage that night, no one
besides the dive team would ever know. And the reason that diving for sharks is dangerous,
is simply by virtue of it being a blue hole. For a more in-depth look at blue holes,
you may want to check out the Most Dangerous Dive Site on Earth video
from a couple months ago. But as a quick recap anyway, blue holes
are underwater sinkholes that began developing during the Ice Ages.
They're all over the world's oceans, but the waters around The Bahamas
are particularly saturated with them. Four Sharks was even discovered by Palmer,
which is why this location was chosen to film it. It's unknown how many blue holes there are in the world, and our understanding of them is constantly being rewritten. One thing we do know for sure though
is that they're deep. The deepest known blue hole in the world,
the Dragon Hole in the South China Sea, is 987 feet (301 meters) to the bottom, and it
was only discovered within the last 10 years. The second deepest, with a depth of 900 feet
(274.3 meters), was found off the coast of Mexico in April, just this year. And weirdly, if you were to ask a diver
with knowledge of blue holes what makes them so dangerous,
you're likely to get many different answers. And this is maybe because there's no one thing
that makes diving them so risky. For starters, obviously the first thing that we know
for certain about blue holes, is that they're deep. Any uncontrolled descent, like in the case of
Palmer's death, can quickly turn into an irreversible situation, as many blue holes
have bottoms well beyond depths where the pressure is too immense
for humans to survive in. Many blue holes are also self-contained vertical caves with a defined shaft from top to bottom,
causing poor water circulation. Others have offshoots or passages that connect
to other cave systems or the neighboring ocean. In those ones, changing tides can create
violent flows of water into or out of them. As a result, divers have to time their dives
with the slack tides to avoid this, which is why Rob and Duffer were beginning
their dive at 8 o'clock that night. At the same time, some members of the
diving committee find blue holes to be no more dangerous than any other type of diving. Instead of them being dangerous by their nature,
it's divers who dive beyond their limits who make them seem more dangerous than they are. In any case, the dives Rob had completed
since arriving in The Bahamas were some of the first blue holes he had
dived since the 1980s. When he found out that Four Sharks housed
the largest known cavern in The Bahamas and its back wall had a large crack no diver
had ever dared to pass through before, he just couldn't pass up the opportunity to be the first. His whole reputation was one of taking on what
others didn't have the guts to do. He was an outstanding self-taught rock and
mountain climber, and led expeditions to caves all over the world, that had never
been accessed before, let alone explored. The water just happened to be where
Rob was the most prolific. Even as a rookie, it didn't take long for other divers
to realize that they had a prodigy among them. Sheck Exley, who was regarded by the dive community as the man who essentially
wrote the book on cave diving, once said that if Rob had been born in cave-saturated
Florida instead of England, he would have quickly become the
world's preeminent underwater explorer. And in fact, even despite this, Rob was well
on his way to earning that title. There wasn't a challenge in the world that
was tough or exciting enough for Rob. Even in extreme environments, everything he did was so easy that
he had to come up with side quests. Anyone who spent time around him knew that
Rob didn't dream up anything without plans of coaxing some poor, unknowing soul
into competition with him. Then after that, it wouldn't take long
after accepting a challenge from Rob, to find out how foolish it was to engage
in a physical competition with him. During one expedition, he challenged fellow explorers to a push up competition in 104 degree temperatures. Every participant did hundreds of them,
but no one did more than Rob. The next day, his opponents felt nearly
crippled by the soreness, while Rob only seemed stronger. In another incident, in Wakulla Springs in Florida, he managed to goad others into a pull-up contest
on a diving tower. Only one person on the team could keep up
with Rob, and he even tied Rob's mark, but didn't leave enough strength to get back up
on the platform like Rob had, so he had no choice but to let go and fall 26 feet
to the water below. But, as serious as Rob was about his passions, he approached them with a lighthearted,
almost childlike excitement. In 1983, at 21 years old, Rob was selected
to assist on a film project in Mexico that was expected to last about four months. And the roster of people that were on that expedition were some of the world's best in extreme
adventure sports, and were led by revered cave explorer, Bill Stone. When Rob first arrived, Bill immediately liked him, but thought he was an overeager rookie
who would need constant supervision. Then once he saw Rob in his element
and how skilled he was at anything he did, that impression changed. And despite his penchant for extreme challenges, Rob was a model teammate with a personality
that people just wanted to be around. Like, for example, in the first few days of that
4-month expedition to Mexico, the truck carrying the team's equipment broke down. The driver arranged for the necessary parts
to be brought to them, but it would take a while for the parts to arrive. This setback spoiled the mood on the whole team, and Rob noticed this and came up with an idea. He grabbed some rope, climbed a few trees,
and made a 330-foot-long Tyrolean, which is almost like a zip line of sorts. And when it was done, it was like a switch flipped
among his teammates. Rob turned this group of well-respected,
highly-decorated explorers and scientists into a bunch of school kids at recess. Everyone enjoyed it so much that some
were still taking turns on it when the truck was finally repaired and ready to go. That's just what it was like having Rob around. Early in his career, Rob's name even became almost
synonymous with the word "fearless". It was the go-to adjective when his friends
and colleagues were asked about him, but one of life's universal truths is that
no one is completely without fear. As daring and as tough as he was,
Rob was no exception. But that begs the question, what's left to fear
for a cave diving prodigy who climbed Mount Everest, taught himself
extreme technical rock climbing, and shot films surrounded by sharks without a cage? Well, apparently, peas.
It was documented, corroborated, and confirmed by accomplished scientists
that Rob was afraid of peas. You might take that to mean that Rob
just didn't like the taste or texture of peas, but it was far more than that;
it was a literal phobia. No one knows why or how it came to be, but he
went to great lengths to keep it to himself. Despite his efforts though, it didn't matter.
All it took was one dinner and a single pea in his vicinity
for the veil to come down. When his colleagues saw this for the first time,
they couldn't believe that Rob's display was anything more than
a show he put on to get a laugh. When they realized he wasn't joking around though, their disbelief turned to shock, and then to vengeance. You see, this was extremely valuable information
to a group of people who were usually bested by Rob in every competition
he challenged them to. When they discovered his phobia, they'd essentially
discovered his kryptonite. From then on, when Rob wasn't around, his colleagues would debate the validity and severity
of this phobia. And because they were experimental by nature, there was only one way these scientists
were going to find out for sure. And so for years, Rob was their unknowing test subject. They put sautéed peas, powdered peas,
puréed peas, canned peas, any pea in any form they had available, into his food
or among his belongings, in his backpack, and eagerly observed what happened next. And maybe weirdest of all, every single time, they'd witness Rob almost instinctually
detect the presence of peas, even in situations where he had no reason
to check for them. The expedition scientists even got formal
about their experiments too. They developed hypotheses and tested them
under controlled conditions. One of their first experiments was to determine
whether Rob was so paranoid about peas that he always checked his
food before eating, thinking that maybe he just honed the skill
for so long that it wasn't noticeable. To their surprise, when they put peas
in his food, Rob would know. When they didn't, he never hesitated to start
eating or digging around his bag. And the story that made this a true legend
was one they called "Parker and the Pea". While having dinner at a restaurant one night,
Rob got up to use the washroom and left his pint glass unsupervised at the table. When the coast was clear, the team
got the attention of their waitress and asked if she could bring them one single pea. After a moment to convince her that they were serious, she went into the kitchen and returned
with a small cup containing one pea. They dropped it into his glass
and waited for him to return. And Rob's drink of choice that night was Guinness, which is a stout beer with a dark coffee color,
and there was no way he could see it. But when Rob sat back down at the table, he just
stared at the glass for a few moments. To the naked eye, nothing about the glass was
in any way different compared to how he left it. And then incredibly, everyone at the table
watched in pure awe as Rob grabbed a spoon and started swirling it
around in the glass. He suddenly stopped and pulled the spoon out,
and right in the middle of it was the pea. Bill Stone, the expedition leader, was at the table
that night to witness it, and joked that if they could just figure out how
to isolate his detection mechanism, they could all retire rich because it was beyond
the understanding of science. In any case, as Rob and Duffer
and their two support divers floated on the surface above Four Sharks Blue Hole, they went through a final check of their equipment
and double checked that they had everything. As antsy as he was to take on challenging dives,
Rob never sacrificed safety. When everything was ready, he raised his fist
above the water, and then pointed down. The other three divers gave him the "okay" signal, and then they all descended into Four Sharks Blue Hole. The plan was for all four to dive together
to the entrance of the large cavern about 30 feet below the surface. Once they were there, they would stash spare tanks that would help them with the decompression
on the way back up. The four divers looked at each other again
and gave the "okay" signal, and then Rob and Duffer turned
to enter the large cavern, and began their journey to the restriction
while the two support divers stayed behind. As with many popular underwater caverns,
a permanent guide rope, which divers used to find the way in,
and more importantly, the way out, was fixed to the opening of the large cavern. The two men then followed it about 300 feet
directly to the back wall where the cave came to an end
and the restriction began. This is also where the guide rope ended,
because no one had ever been beyond it, so they'd have to use their own from then on. Duffer then pulled a reel of rope from his belt
and tied the loose end to the entrance. Before entering the restriction, they stashed
another two tanks for decompression, and then leading the way, Rob squeezed through
the two-foot opening. In anticipation of these tight quarters, they were diving
with open-circuit side-mounted gear, which made their profiles more narrow
by positioning the three tanks they were carrying on their sides,
rather than their backs. Under one arm, they each carried
two tanks of a trimix, which is a mix of nitrogen, helium, and oxygen, and under the other was a tank
of compressed regular air. Each of these gases were ones that they
would be breathing during their trip, and the type of gas a diver breathe is determined
by how deep they planned to go. Their plan was to breathe compressed air
until about the 220-foot mark and then switch to trimix the rest of the way
to 250 feet. This would help to mitigate the effects of
nitrogen narcosis, which is a narcotic effect that can occur when divers breathe nitrogen
in regular air under pressure. Thankfully, this effect is completely reversible. While it's happening, divers have compared it
to almost like being drunk. How severe this impaired state is
depends on the depth the diver is at, and to illustrate the relationship between the depth
and the severity of nitrogen narcosis, divers refer to something called Martini's Law. This roughly states that every 33 feet
beyond a depth of 100 feet feels like drinking one Martini. At 133 feet, you feel like you've had one. At 166 feet, you feel like you've had two, and so on. No matter how experienced the diver is,
everyone is susceptible to nitrogen narcosis. And yet, the depth at which it sets in can vary
by person, or even by day. Some divers will start to experience
mild euphoria around the 70-foot mark, while others might not feel a thing
until they pass 150 feet. There's no way to change this either since it's impossible to build a tolerance
to nitrogen narcosis. So the number of dives someone has completed
has no influence when it comes on or how intense it is. During every dive with the film crew
during the previous two weeks, they actually went as deep as 200 feet,
only breathing compressed air. They had tanks of trimix nearby
at all times for safety, but neither one of them became impaired
despite the depth. Just like those previous dives, as they continued, they felt no effects from breathing air
well beyond the 100-foot threshold. As they slowly moved their way through the crack,
the space available to them would widen, and then just as quickly shrink right back down
to no more than 2 feet. But they took their time getting through it, and on top of that, navigating the restriction thus far was no different from anything else
they'd encountered before. After about 30 feet, a small crack in the wall
opened up into an ocean rift. Just like the restriction, a rift is created over time
by various geological processes, but the big difference between the restriction
and a rift is size. Rifts are massive. When they entered it, it felt like they were
suddenly in outer space. With the exception of the wall behind them, they were
now floating in a vast emptiness. Shining their flashlights around revealed nothing.
No ceiling, no bottom, no far wall, just a wide-open blackness on the edges
of their flashlight beams. And for the two cave experts, this is exactly
what they had come to experience. They only planned for about 20 minutes of exploring
before they'd have to begin a lengthy ascent, and since so much of the cave was unexplored,
no one knew how deep it really was. And of course, Rob wanted to see if he could find out. He made contact with Duffer and pointed down. Duffer then gave the "okay'" signal,
and they started descending. When they reached 220 feet of depth, they switched their tanks from compressed air
to trimix, and continued on. Incredibly, after dropping for a while longer,
there was still no bottom in sight. When they reached their maximum planned depth and still couldn't make out anything
that looked like a floor, they stopped for a moment, and then Rob gave
the signal to ascend. Despite wanting to see the bottom, they'd have to
admit defeat and turn back. They were right on schedule,
and everything was as routine and unremarkable as it could be to that point. Then Rob started to ascend, and Duffer
was about to be right behind him when the regulator on one of his trimix tanks malfunctioned. He tried to fix it but couldn't get it working, causing him to have to switch back to compressed air. He wasn't sure how this would impact him, if at all, and it's true that neither he nor Rob felt any symptoms
of nitrogen narcosis all the way to 220 feet. But the difference in severity between 220 feet and 250
is almost an entire Martini. If Martini's Law held true, Duffer was at risk
of suddenly feeling like he had just downed four and a half Martinis.
And sure enough, it only took a few breaths for a huge rush of narcosis
to course through his body. It wasn't to the point of producing severe symptoms, but it was just enough to make things worrisome
for the moment. Trying to keep calm though, Duffer started to ascend,
and his condition improved with every foot. Even so, the safe thing to do was communicate
to Rob that he had a regulator fail and that he needed to switch back to compressed air. The symptoms of nitrogen narcosis could return and Rob needed to know that in case Duffer
suddenly became incapacitated. Using hand signals, he did his best to mime
what happened to his trimix regulator, but instead of giving a signal that he understood, Rob tried to communicate something back to Duffer. Neither one of them really knew what the
other one was trying to get across, but it seemed to Duffer that Rob had at least
understood something had happened. They continued to close the distance to the opening that would take them to the restriction,
this time with Duffer in the lead. It took him a moment to realize that something was off, but when he did, he noticed that Rob
wasn't behind him anymore. Whipping his flashlight beam below him,
Duffer saw Rob, who was free-falling into the darkness. He immediately started to descend again, and it looked to him like Rob wasn't kicking,
and he was falling fast. After chasing him between 30 and 40 feet,
Duffer was able to stop his fall. Then, grabbing a hold of Rob's left ankle,
Duffer started towing him back up. As he kicked, he thought back to their last attempt
at communicating, and it suddenly crossed his mind that maybe
Rob was forced to switch to air too. At the same time, in his effort to drag
Rob toward the exit, Duffer had started to kick frantically, and as if
things couldn't get any worse, he managed to kick both of his flippers off his feet. Even still, he kept kicking and kicking,
and he continued to drag Rob all the way to the entrance of the narrow passage,
which sat right at around 170 feet (51.8 meters). And then as he approached it, he stopped for a moment. He realized he had no idea how he was going
to get Rob through the restriction. There was no way to swim side by side,
and pulling him while swimming backward would have been impossible in such a tight space. Just then, miraculously, Rob started to
regain consciousness, and Duffer noticed that he was trying to kick his feet. When Duffer let go of Rob's ankle, Rob's kicks were
right back to where they were when he fell. Immediately, a huge sense of relief came over Duffer. Whatever had happened, Rob was fine,
and that's all that mattered. Before entering the passageway,
Duffer looked at his air gauge and saw that there was only 300 PSI left in his tank. This was less than ideal
but he wasn't terribly concerned, because there were reserved tanks
just on the other side of the restriction. He then turned toward the entrance, and they started
to make their way through the restriction. Rob was just below Duffer as they
pulled themselves forward, and both of them were wedged sideways between
the rocks with no visible bottom below them. Little by little, they advanced until it got so tight that
Duffer would have to lead with Rob in tow. Duffer then signaled to Rob to follow behind him, and he turned to squeeze the rest of the way
out of the restriction. When he got through the crack, he hooked up
to one of the spare tanks they had stashed earlier. It was a different gas again
called nitrox. This is a different blend of gas that's higher
in oxygen than compressed air, which helps a diver decompress during ascent. And after a few breaths from his tank,
Duffer turned back toward the opening and shined his light, expecting to see Rob,
but Rob wasn't there. Duffer then started frantically waving his
flashlight back toward the large cavern where one of the support divers, Tom Iliffe,
was stationed. When Tom finally reached Duffer,
Duffer told him through hand signals that Rob had disappeared and that he needed to enter
the restriction to find him. Unfortunately, Tom was 6'4" and 210 pounds, much too large to safely go through the restriction. He was also running low on air, and he didn't
have the experience or training yet to dive through it anyway. This meant that Duffer couldn't do anything. His switch to nitrox moments earlier meant that he was breathing more oxygen that
is found in compressed air. If he went back down to look for Rob
while breathing nitrox, the oxygen would become toxic, and he'd die. Even if that wasn't the case, attempting to navigate
the restriction wearing three tanks while trying to pull someone out, was a death wish. So, Duffer and Tom had no choice but to leave
Rob behind and get back to the surface. And because of how long their dive was
and how deep they had gone, he had to endure three hours of decompression stops
on the way up. This was complete agony just being
with his own thoughts. At around 2 AM the next morning, Duffer and Tom
surfaced and climbed back on the boat. He then gathered everyone up to let them know
that Rob was gone. For a moment, there was a stunned silence until the other support divers started screaming
that they should have told her because she could have been in and out of the crack
in 15 minutes. Tragically, that other support diver was Steffie Schwabe,
the widow of Rob Palmer. To this day, Duffer disagrees with Steffie, and thinks that any attempt to find Rob
would have resulted in two dead divers. It would be two days until the tides would allow them to return to the restriction to recover Rob's body. They would eventually find him at 149 feet (45.4 meters),
wedged in a space less than two feet wide. In order to get him out, they needed to remove all his gear
and just let it fall into the abyss. With it went the opportunity to determine
what happened to Rob that caused him to lose consciousness in the first place. A US Coast Guard investigator concluded that
Rob's death was a drowning caused by nitrogen narcosis, but how Rob became narced in the first place
is a complete mystery. Rob's body was later prepared and flown back to
England where he was cremated. His ashes were then spread
around his favorite caves nearby. Hello everyone. My name is Sean,
and welcome to Scary Interesting. If you have a story suggestion, feel free to submit it
to the email found in the description, and remember to check out The White Vault wherever you listen to podcasts
for more horror content. Thank you all so much for watching, and hopefully,
I will see you in the next one.
