donald cerrone was diving through aralito cave in cozumel mexico when something went horrifyingly wrong this is his story [Music] donald cerrone was born in denver colorado on march 29 1983. growing up donald was considered a bit of a troubled child as a teenager he took up street fighting and this would result in him often ending up spending the night in jail when donald was 16 his parents had had enough of his behavior and the fighting and sent him to live with his grandmother his grandmother welcomed him with open arms and would even bail him out
of jail after some of his street fights the next morning after she would bail him out she would never bring up what happened the night before she would simply say you know what you did and then leave it at that at the age of 20 donald started kickboxing and then muay thai after that and as it turned out he was pretty good after winning a few kickboxing competitions he decided to pursue a career in mma also known as mixed martial arts where he adopted the nickname donald cowboy cerrone for his tendency to wear cowboy hats
he would win his first nine fights in a row and was soon contending for championship fights in the wec after leaving the wec donald signed with the insanely popular fight promotion company the ultimate fighting championship also known as the ufc as a fighter in the ufc donald rose to super stardom and became one of the largest drawing fighters in the promotion's history in addition to fighting on the world stage and the largest fight promotion in the world donald is a bit of an adrenaline junkie as are many of the individuals in that community in his
spare time outside of training and competing in the ufc he competes and participates in all sorts of other high adrenaline pursuits like dirt biking off-road racing water skiing and even bull riding another thing donald really loves to do is scuba dive after getting his certification in high school he fell in love with all things diving in his own words he just loves diving he loves shipwreck diving he just loves everything about it however his favorite is cave diving in august of 2018 donald cerrone was in cozumel mexico where he planned to go diving with a
friend of his who we'll call alex the first three or four days of their trip they went diving to some shipwrecks and to some coral reefs with a few other friends of theirs they also planned a slightly more serious dive for just the two of them at a cave known as aerolito cave in the old south harbour of cozumel in an area known as kaleta there is an unremarkable looking pond that is easy to get to and easy to access most divers and tourists pass by this pond and think nothing of it however this pond
is actually very remarkable in fact it is actually named cenote erlito de perezo a cenote is a natural pit or sinkhole that forms when the limestone underneath the surface collapses revealing the groundwater underneath many of these cenotes actually lead to subterranean water bodies that can range from just small pools to massive and expansive cave systems cenote erlito is unremarkable on the surface but leads to one of these massive and expansive cave systems and connects to over six kilometers of mapped caves that exist below the surface of cozumel on august 17th donald kissed his wife and
new baby goodbye before he was leaving to go meet up with alex before he left his wife told him that she was really uncomfortable with him going caving with alex the reason she was uncomfortable was that she was worried about alex's capabilities as a diver for many years alex and donald had been caving together and alex was even sort of a mentor to donald but alex was now getting older and his motor skills had declined with age his mind was still as sharp as ever but his body just couldn't keep up donald reassured his wife
that everything was going to be fine and that he was going to come home after the dive just like always his wife was still worried though and so as an extra precaution and to reassure her donald ordered an extra cylinder of air originally he had planned to take two cylinders for the dive and so now he would have three total for their dive as is typical in cave diving they would be diving in thirds this means that they were going to use a third of their air going in a third coming out and then they
would have a third in reserve in case something unexpected happened in cave diving as well the first divers who discover and map out a cave will run long ropes called guidelines throughout the cave to help divers find their way in and out of the caves this is because many of these caves are massive and winding low visibility corridors that are just difficult to tell apart making it easy to get lost if you're not familiar with the system these guidelines are also marked with directional signals known as cookies that are clear and easy to read and
point towards the exit of the cave one of the leading causes of death in cave diving is when the guidelines are improperly used or improperly marked by the divers as they navigate the cave these guidelines typically come in two different varieties first are the fixed or main lines that are permanently installed in the cave system and eliminate the need for divers to install a large portion of the lines in a cave each time they dive these can either start right at the exit or bit into the cave to ensure that recreational divers don't find them
and then enter the caves without proper training or equipment main lines are also not all connected requiring that divers bring reels with them to connect from one to the other using lines known as jump lines jump lines are attached by divers as they move through a cave to connect from one main line to the next jump lines are also removed by divers as they exit a cave to help simplify the lines within the system donald and alex entered erlito cave from the little unassuming pond on the surface they then traveled along the various lines of
the cave to explore the gorgeous and expansive system they had come to see at some point they needed to transition from one line to another alex went first and grabbed his light and hung it around his neck so that he could make the switch with two hands as alex went to tie off his buoyancy device which is a little device that fills with air to increase or decrease your buoyancy got loose and shot up to the ceiling of the cave he then kicked his feet spun around and when he did that the guideline their lifeline
wrapped itself around him donald immediately swam over to alex to help him try to untangle the line but alex started panicking he then started thrashing violently spinning around hitting the walls of the cave and kicking up all of the silt from the bottom of the cave silt is the dust and sediment that sits at the bottom of the cave and when it gets kicked up in the small spaces inside of a cave it brings the visibility to almost zero it's like swimming around in mist so thick that you can barely see the hand in front
of your face an aerolital cave was now completely silted out knowing how dangerous this situation was donald took a few big steps backward away from alex so he didn't get caught in the line either and so he could regain visibility within arm's reach of the main line now donald watched helplessly as alex thrashed around even more one of the unspoken rules of cave diving according to donald is that you only worry about yourself in a panicked situation the idea is the panicked person poses a threat to anyone trying to help and there's no reason for
two people to die if one person can still make it out as he sat there holding the main line he looked towards the exit of the cave and knew that he was safe if he went that way he knew where the exit was he could easily swim to it and be sure that he would get out alive he also looked at the completely silted out section where alex was and knew that alex would almost certainly die without help in the panic alex had somehow turned off his light and donald just sat there thinking that he
hopes that he also didn't drop his mouthpiece and that he wasn't drowning to death just a few feet away from him donald decided to break one of his unspoken rules and decided to go into the silt to try to save alex as soon as he entered the silt he lost all sense of direction he didn't know which way was up or down and then he started to panic as well all of a sudden he was taking deep fast panic breaths completely freaking out more panicked than he's ever been in his entire life in his panic
he smashed his head off of the ceiling of the cave and then closed his eyes the hit to the head gave him a brief second of calm and then he managed to tell himself to slow his breathing down with his breathing slowed barely able to see the hands in front of his face he looked at his glowing watches that indicated his depth and time he then checked the two pressure gauges on each of the cylinders he was using and knew that he had a third one that was completely full still unopened he then closed his
eyes and sat there in the pitch black silted out room trying to think through the panic and figure out the plan the first thing he did was try to feel around the silt and try to find alex but alex was nowhere to be found thankfully he had calmed himself down a little bit more and then decided to start moving his hands along the wall of the cave to see if he could figure out where he was typically in good visibility divers will make a mental note of the different landmarks in the cave so they can
find their way out but the channel that they were in was one that they were on their way to explore they weren't coming out of it so it was entirely unfamiliar to him he then decided to check his compass because when they came into the cave he had measured the direction of the exit from the first jump to be 126 degrees this was a bit of a long shot because in the winding tunnels of a cave you can be facing the correct direction towards the exit but if you're not in the right section of the
cave that direction might just lead to the wall of another tunnel without any other choice he tried to swim in that direction but immediately came up on a wall he then tried to swim lower and went right into another wall and now he was right back in full panic mode so now he's kicking and thrashing and freaking out and swimming violently and then all of a sudden he exited the silt and stumbled on the main line donald grabbed it and tried to calm himself down once again but there was a new problem he was on
the wrong side of the silted section of the main line behind him deeper into the cave was silt free and clear the way out of the cave the way that he needed to go was completely silted out still and the exit was almost a thousand yards away in addition there was a jump in between where he was and where he needed to be meaning that he would have to find his way untethered through the silt to make it out of the cave he sat there for a moment thinking about the maps of the cave that
he had scoured before they entered that day he knew that up ahead there was a split in the cave one side went to the exit and the other went deeper in the cave so he re-entered the silt and started to feel around and managed to find a hole not sure if this was correct or not he kept on going and came up on another hole he felt around and thought that it felt familiar and decided to swim into it but then he noticed that he was swimming against the current when they had come into the
cave he also noticed that they were swimming against a small current meaning that given that he was now traveling in the opposite direction he was swimming in the wrong direction beginning to panic once again he frantically swam back to the mainline on the opposite side of the silt sitting there literally hyperventilating from panic all he could think of that morning was when he kissed his wife and baby and assured them that he was coming home so he swam back into the dark abyss of silt once again and panicked once again and now in the pitch
black darkness of the cave he thought to himself all of this heavy breathing is sucking all of the air out of my tanks so in addition to being lost in the darkness he started to worry about running out of air entirely trying to calm himself he looked at his watch and then his gauges and then back at his watch and managed to figure out that he had roughly an hour left of air he started to think about what would happen once he ran out of air on the air only system he was using once he
ran out the mouthpiece would just fill with water and then he would inhale the water and he would drown ironically enough one of donald's biggest fears is drowning so not wanting to drown he grabbed his buoyancy device and began breathing into it to fill it up completely with it full he shot up to the ceiling in the cave and was now resting upside down at first he sat there thinking about his wife and daughter and thought about grabbing his grease pen and notepad to write a letter to them about how he had messed up and
how sore he was then he thought about how terrified he was of drowning and decided that once he ran out of air he would breathe from his buoyancy device until there was no more oxygen left in it once it was only expelled carbon dioxide he would keep breathing until he slowly passed out at which point he wouldn't be awake when he drowned as he sat there thinking about writing the goodbye note and how he intended on just going to sleep in the darkness he was infuriated with himself that he was giving up hope and succumbing
to the situation he thought to himself i'm a fighter that's not what fighters do and so he began crawling along the ceiling of the cave upside down this time he remembered that there was a large crack that ran the length of the cave on the ceiling in his panic he frantically crawled along the ceiling breathing hard hyperventilating and then all of a sudden he found it so he latched onto the crack crawled along it and then it started to widen and then there was light off in the distance he could see the green glow of
light filtering into the cave so donald swam frantically to the glow all the while still panicking still hyperventilating and when he reached the opening his tanks got stuck and they wouldn't go through and so he was kicking and thrashing and freaking out but he managed to follow the crack some more and then his tanks went through and then there was the opening of the cave he made it upon making it out the relief was just unbelievable one second he was writing a goodbye note to his wife and kid and the next he was going home
to see them as he left the water he saw that alex was just sitting there as it turned out alex managed to somehow grab the main line in his panic and just followed it out of the cave the two of them looked at each other and alex said to donald so we're not diving together anymore are we and donald would answer back nope that was it donald then grabbed his phone text his wife and said had a bit of a scary moment today but i'm coming home this story is based off of the first hand
account given by donald cerrone i will post a link in the description of that video i highly recommend you check it out because he does a wonderful and terrifying job of walking you through his exact emotions and panic during the entire ordeal if you made it this far i just want to thank you for watching i hope you enjoyed the video this is part 6 of my cave exploring gone wrong series so if you like this type of content be sure to check out my other videos if you want to support the channel give this
video a like and drop a comment down below if you're new here i hope you'll consider subscribing to my channel so you don't miss any of my weekly videos once again thank you so much for watching and hopefully i will see you in the next one
