The wife of a Cathay Pacific pilot who died on a mercy mission in one of the world's deepest underwater caves said she had long faced the possibility of her husband's death.
'There was always a chance he wouldn't come back one day. It is something I have always known I might one day have to face,' Ann Shaw said yesterday.
Australian Dave Shaw, who holds the world record for deep-cave diving, failed to return on Saturday after swimming 270 metres down into a cave in South Africa to try to retrieve the body of a diver who disappeared there in 1994.
The 50-year-old father of two, who had worked in Hong Kong since 1989, first located the body of 20-year-old Deon Dreyer when he dived into treacherous Boesmansgat, or Bushman's Cave, in the Kalahari desert last October, while breaking his own world record for deep-cave diving.
Mr Dreyer's family then appealed to him to go back into the cave and retrieve their son's body.
Shaw returned with a nine-member team of international divers as support but - after diving down to 270 metres using special equipment that recycles air - he failed to make it back to a checkpoint 50 metres closer to the surface.
Mrs Shaw, the deputy principal at Hong Kong's German-Swiss International School, yesterday described her husband's hobby as 'unforgiving'.