SPEAKERS

Rick Stanton

Cave explorers generally fall into one or other of two categories; technical divers who dive in flooded caves but rarely leave the water, and cavers who dive but treat the flooded section as a barrier to finding further dry cave. Rick Stanton is a rarity in that he is at the top of both disciplines. Time and again he has exhibited a knack for pushing beyond the limits at which others believed the cave to have ended.

Rick, a 45-year-old fire fighter from Coventry, in England, has been at the forefront of British cave diving for over twenty years. Initially a dry caver he learnt to dive while at university in 1979 with the primary intention of exploring caves & sumps in the British Isles. This has been an ongoing process right up to the present day.

During the last 9 years, Rick has been involved in more technical cave diving using rebreathers, (often two at a time) for long penetration and depth. He has concentrated on the long deep siphons of N Europe, mainly in the Lot region of SW France, but also in the other French, Spanish and Italian caves where he specialises in combining caving techniques with long and often deep multiple sump systems, transporting large amounts of diving equipment through the dry sections of the cave in the pursuit of exploration.

In 2004 when six British soldiers were trapped in a Mexican cave by flood water, Rick Stanton was one of two divers flown out by the British Government to accomplish the rescue.

Constantly making and adapting equipment especially for the cave environment, Rick believed that small, lightweight rebreathers offered a way of furthering exploration at many sites. He has developed and manufactured two CCR units, most recently a unique side mount, fully closed circuit rebreather which has been instrumental in his achieving the British cave diving depth record of 90m in challenging circumstances at Wookey Hole, the birth place of UK cave diving.

In 2007, prior to his appearance at OZTeK, Rick Stanton joined an expedition to explore the Pearse Resurgence cave system, in New Zealand, during which he established a record-breaking dive to a depth of 177-metres.