Ear Biscuits with Rhett & Link - Rhett Survived Scuba Diving In A Cave (Stories From Good Mythical MORE)

Episode Date: April 20, 2026

Rhett tells all about how he survived scuba diving in a pitch black cave! To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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I went scuba diving in a pitch black cave. Welcome to Good Mythical Moore. Yes. So, I mean, survived. Whatever cave you were in. That's what I texted my wife right after I got out of this cave. That you survived? Uh-huh.

Well, because she was worried, as wives tend to be. Oh, okay. Okay. Were you worried? Yes, and I'm gonna tell you about that. Oh, really? So I was in Mexico, Tulum to be exact, never been there. Okay.

But lots of people have recommended it. It was a nice sort of halfway point to meet Jesse's sister and her husband for a little celebration of her birthday. And we were, and Chris, my brother-in-law, is scuba certified. And I was like, I'm scuba certified. I didn't go scuba last year

because I was kind of dealing with the heart stuff last year and I didn't want to have it, even though it wouldn't have been dangerous. I didn't like the idea of having an AFIB episode while scuba diving because that's just kind of disconcerting. And so I was excited to get back at it. And I asked him if he wanted to go and he was like, yeah. And then I was like, okay, we were getting ready for the trip

and I was like, you gotta send me your scuba certification card. And he sent me his paddy, open water certification. It was from 1990. It was like, he was a baby. And he wasn't even concerned? No, no. I mean, yeah, when we miss a, if I go a whole year,

I'm like, I feel really rusty. Well, here's the thing about Chris. First of all, he's a very, like, you don't ever worry about him in situations like, you know Chris. He's like, he's kind of like, he doesn't panic, and he knows how to do things. His last dive was in Costa Rica in 2014,

but they asked all these questions, and they were like, okay, well, what we're gonna do is we're gonna get in there and we'll do a little refresher with you guys in the, you know, before we go into this thing. So I was looking up possible dives in Mexico. And so when you're on the Yucatan Peninsula, which is where like Cancun is,

and then you got Touloum, south, of that. So that's like the eastern side of Mexico, that big peninsula, where the meteorite hit, or the meteor hit and became a meteorite, I guess, that ended dinosaurs. Oh. That's one of, that's the theory. And, but anyway, there's... And now there's water in it and you swim in it. I don't know if the crater is actually related to this, but it's just, you've been a sonote before. Are you seen this No, I haven't. No, I haven't. So these are these beautiful underground rivers

that is freshwater and the Mayan people, it was very important in the Mayan culture throughout history. It was a holy place, but it was also a place where they would drink the water. And I thought it was like a, the way that I've seen it from like a flyover drone, it's just a hole that were like very lush and then it's just, it looks like a pond.

Yeah. But you're saying that that's an underground river. So basically what it is, it's a giant limestone formation that goes from miles and miles and miles, maybe across the entire Yucatan Peninsula. I don't know how long it goes. And what happens is,

is you've got these limestone caverns that were empty at one point forming stalactites and stalagmites. And then at some point, it filled up with water. And then parts of it, once it filled up with water, collapsed and created openings that you're seeing from... From the top.

In fact, the place that we went is called Dos Ojos, which is two eyes. And that is because... Too old? There was a guy looking at it from a helicopter and he saw the two openings and then a little, like, a smiley face of trees or whatever, and he was like, oh, two eyes, dos ojos.

And so that was what they named this one. And I was looking at the possible dives. And one of them, and I was like, I thought you had to be advanced or cave certified to go into a cave. And I was like, I don't wanna go into a cave. I want something that's open water. So in scuba diving, you got open water certification,

which is like you've just learned how to scuba dive and you've done some training. That's what I have. You can go to a certain depth, like maybe 60 feet, I don't know what it is. And, but I looked at options for being able to do this open water certification and they were like, you can dive in this sonota

and it's basically a cavern dive And apparently the definition of a cavern is that you always have some focal line to light. Okay. Which by the way, turned out to not be true, which I will get to in a second. Doesn't sound like it. It's dark.

So we go to the, and I'm gonna show you some pictures of the video in a second, but I'm just gonna tell you what we did first. So the way that they have built these things, and interestingly, at some point in the past, because these sonotes were so sacred to the Mayan people, the Mexican government gave all of the sonotes back to the Mayan people.

So the Mayan people, like the indigenous people, run all of the Sanotes. Hmm. And they do very well with this, because people are constantly in there paying to dive and to snorkel. A lot of people just snorkeling like in the open part. But then, look, so Jesse and I went snorkeling

in one of these outside of, I think it was outside of Cabo, which of course is the other side. of Mexico, but I think there's a sonote over there. And I saw people scuba diving, like, there's a line, like going into a deep, dark cave, and they were just like, these dudes like, going on this line and with their light,

and I was like, oh, that's kind of scary. I'm a little bit claustrophobic, but I wanna do that. That's what I'm in. And so I was like, I'm gonna sign myself up for it. And they were like, there are two lines that we're gonna take. One of them, we're gonna go into this thing and then come back, and then the other one, we're gonna go and we're gonna come up

into a big air pocket. It's a bat cave, and there's gonna be bats all on the ceiling. And I was like, yeah, and I was telling Chris, and Chris was totally down. He wasn't word at all. But as we were in the, so the guy who was our dive instructor, tour leader, was the guy who picked us up from the hotel. And so it's just the three of us.

Oh, okay. Daniel, and local guy, boys from Mexico City, but local now. And he's telling us, and I'm like, so I'm like, so we're gonna be able to like see light the whole time, right? He's like, uh, yes. Uh, yes. And I was like, okay.

And then, and then he asked like, but there's like air pockets, right? We're not going that, I was reading about it on. I was like, we're not going that deep, and then there's like air pockets. There's places to like come up, right? He says, um, yes. There's some places to come up,

but the air is toxic. So he was like, you wouldn't want to breathe it because it's just this air that's trapped. in this cave. And I think the guano from the bats has been going into the water. And I don't, he was just like, you just don't want to do that.

He's like, in order to have access to an air pocket, it has to have access to the outside in order for us to go up into that. So I was, I had on my watch because I was going to use my watch as a dive computer, which I did. And I am like looking at my heart rate go up on my watch.

And I'm like, okay. In the car? I'm already nervous. And I'm thinking, I don't want to get in there and use all my air because I'm asking these questions. He could tell I was a little bit nervous,

and he was like, you're gonna be fine. He was like, I've never had anybody run out of air. He was like, I've got two whole tanks. He had two giant tanks. He was like, I'm only gonna use half of one of my tanks. So you've got your brother-in-law's extra air, excuse me, he doesn't run out. And then you've got my whole tank,

and then there's other divers and also like, we're always gonna be like five minutes away. He's like, you're fine. So I was like, okay. So then we get into, we go into the snow tank, and you like get your buoyancy down and all that stuff, and then we start diving.

I'll show you some of the pictures in the video now. So, okay, here we go. Who's taking this video, Daniel? No, so Daniel's in front with those two tanks, and then that's me, the very long person. And now you'll see when he tilts up a little bit here that this is at the end of the dive where, okay, see all these people,

this is like the access to the whole thing. Like this is the access to where you would walk down and come into that thing, right? Okay. So this is because the guy who's taking pictures is hanging out here where all the people are snorkeling. And he's just like going around,

taking pictures and videos and then charging you a lot of money to air drop them to your phone when you get to the shop at the end. And I was like, yes, I'm going to talk about this on my show. So please give me those. Okay, so here's a... This is a little bit dark deeper into the cave there.

He gave us that light. Are you under a big fish? No, that is just a ceiling. It looks like scales. So there were little teeny fish throughout this thing. Very, very small fish. And that was almost the only wildlife that you could see in there

because it's almost just completely crystal clear water as far as you can shine your light is as far as you can see. And how cold was it? I think, so we were in three minutes. I think and the water temperature was like 62, 63. So it wasn't bad. That's cold water, but it's not California cold. You know what I mean?

Let's go to the next picture. So you got Chris coming up with me, Chris, he's chill, he's fine. Are you holding onto a line most of the time? Can you see the line in this picture? No, you're not holding onto the line, but you are following the line like it's a highway. So you've got the rope. And so you're going like this

and there's other people coming out on the other side. You know what I'm saying? Okay, next. I think this is another video? No, this is just a picture. Okay, this is a cool one. So that's Chris.

And this is like when you're getting back to the end again and you've got the... Is that when he ascended to heaven? Beams of light coming down. And I think there's another one of me that's kind of... Go to the next one. Oh yeah, look at that.

Is that when you descended to hell? Well, here's what I'm going to do. I'm gonna get this printed out and I'm gonna put an inspirational quote under. It's gonna be like, motivation, what I need to do this again. Oh, look, peace sign? Oh, you gave the peace sign to the photographer? Yeah, I did lots of signs,

and this is the one that I chose. Okay. So this isn't that crazy because I'm there at the end, but let me tell you about the- You should have done one of these. What is that? Three Stooges. That's a turkey. And then you've got, I can't remember what the,

any of them are at this point. Sea turtle? What is this, Chase, you know, you're a scuba diver. Have you put your hand the other way so that the fist is on the back of your hand? And then do that, yeah, that's a jellyfish. Yeah, jellyfish. And then if you lose the fist, then it's an octopus.

And you should make it swim. If you do this. This is a turtle? No. I think it's just a shaka. There's something with a turtle. Let's see, show the other video if we've got that, and then I will, is there another video?

Yep. Okay, so I'm doing that kick and you'll see. The audio makes me need to pee. Look, I go to the frog kick, which I think looks kind of dumb. He told us to do the frog kick to keep from kicking up the sediment. So this is like right when we were getting in and I was like practicing the frog kick. I kind of gave up on it a little bit.

Yeah, you need to work on that. I gave up on it. Okay, but here's the thing. So we get to the Batcave, you know that I am, I am not into bats, but we got into the bat cave, and we came up and we looked up, and there was light coming in from the sun. And he was like, oh, all the bats have left.

He was like, the bats have left because people, he says, oh, it's because there's been people coming in here and shining lights, and they're like, ah, what the hell, and then get out of there. But then we found one little hole that had like 20 bats. We finally found a little bat. There's a furry hole.

I was like, oh, there they are. And I got right beneath them. and then I started thinking about the guano coming down and going in my mouth and giving me an infection. And so I closed my mouth and moved to the side. Because in the bottom of the, all throughout the cave, and these little, like little, the lowest spots throughout the cave, there was poop and then seeds like that big.

And he's like, those are all the seeds that the bats eat, the fruit bats. Okay. Or the bats that eat fruit. And so it's just these collections of seeds just all around. the bottom. Not growing, of course. And then he showed us some fossils, like in a couple of places because that used to be the ocean floor.

And then he reaches down and he shows me like this skeleton of a bat that was like on the bottom. And I didn't really what he was doing until he reached down and he like picked up a bone and he like hands it to me. I'm like, what is this? And then I pick it up and I was, oh, it's a bat bone. I put it in my wetsuit.

you're gonna hand it to me. I put it underneath my wetsuit to be like, I'm gonna take this bone with me. Probably not supposed to do that, but it's a bone. You can't touch the rocks and you can't take any of that with you. But he handed you a bone. Handed me a bone. I put it in there and then when we got out of the dive,

I forgot about it. So my bat bone is just out there somewhere. I totally lost it. What were you thinking you were gonna do with the bat bone? I was gonna frame it in a thing. I was gonna put motivation under it. You could have put it on the picture of yourself. Yeah, I would do a little necklace.

I'd have a little bat bone necklace. Now, so I will say there was one time that I got a little uneasy. And that was, he could see that we were, after our first time, he was like, you guys are like really good. Like your buoyancy is, we got, because we were only like 20 to 30 feet the whole time.

And you know how you can like set your buoyancy then you control your buoyancy completely with your breath. Yeah. And you're not like using your BCD. So that's what I was doing. And so we were like, you would like kind of write. I mean, it's so cool. Like I highly recommend Scoobie Guy.

Because you're like flying through this thing. It feels like you're in space and you can see this guy in front of you with these two lights. He had giant lights, Daniel did, so we could see everything. Yeah, I love it. And you feel like you're in the abyss, you know? The movie? Yeah. And, but then he's like, okay, you guys are doing good.

He's like, I'm going to take you down this little, we're going to go into this cape. He said that, and I didn't really understand, but we went into this thing and like, went kind of around a corner and went for a little bit longer. And I'm like, look, I'm like, this, I don't see, I don't know. We're on the line, so we're fine. And then he's like, he like stops and he like gets our attention.

And then he's like points at the light. and he's like, you know, cut the light off. And we turn all three of our lights off. No, first of all he said, he was like, hold, he was like, grab the line, we grabbed onto the line. And then we turned our lights off. Total darkness. Nothing, the complete darkness.

And like, I am, my heart rate immediately went up. Because I was like, because I just, I started, I started thinking about how, if you were by yourself, like, let's just say you're, right, the things you're. thinking about down there. No, you're not supposed to think at all. Well, when I was a kid, at least I don't.

When I was a kid, we went to this place called Radium Springs, which was a natural spring in Georgia, and my dad used to say, there's crazy guys that scuba diving those caves, and they die all the time. You know, he like told me, he made me, and they did because you would go in there, and this was back in the day. Toxic fune. In like the 80s, where like, you are the one figuring out the pathway, and you're the one tying the line.

These are, these lines are really well established. But I was just thinking, could you imagine? But complete nut or darkest? If you got completely separated from your group and then your light stopped working and you were in a cave, and it's not like you can feel your way because you know how disorienting it is.

You can't tell if you're going up. And so then when we got out, he probably left the light off for maybe 30 seconds. And towards the last like 10 seconds, I was like, I can't take this anymore. Oh, really? I was like, I really. But I wasn't gonna be the one to cut the light back on.

I was gonna let him do. I was like, I'm holding on to this line. And so then he cuts it back on and I'm like, if you give this symbol and diving, it means we're going up. Yeah, you can't give them. You give this, you mean you're going down. This means you're okay. That's the international symbols.

So I was like, I'm so cool, man. This means octopus. And then we came out and then we were talking about it after. He was like, yeah, he said, as soon as it went dark, you guys lost your buoyancy control, and he was like, I could feel the line like going up. I had no idea, I couldn't feel it going up, but he could because he's like, you know, he's done it forever.

A lot of shout, you're doing a lot of shallow breathing. Did you want something? But then I got out. As soon as I got service, I texted Jesse, I survived. But that feeling of being in complete and under darkness, I mean, we, I've been in a cave before, not underwater where you do that. And it, it, you're,

your body does have a reaction, even if it's not stress. It's just like, your eyes want to open, your eyes want to see so bad that they just like peel themselves, it feels like your eyes are peeling back. And you're just like, oh my, I just don't think about worst case scenarios, man. I just go with people who do that, like Chase. Yeah, yeah, Chase is, Chase, you asked me,

Are you gonna take your camera? Yeah. Because, I mean, you got into scuba diving first, Then Link got into it and then I got into it. We've been on a couple of trips with you. And you've got the camera and I have a camera, like a 360 camera, but I have just learned. I have learned too many things to think about.

I don't need the camera. I'll let this guy do it and then I'll give him pesos to- AirDrop. Also, it's almost a rule that when you don't take your camera, you end up having a better dive where you see more awesome stuff. Because the animals look for cameras. Oh, yeah. They get shot.

They're so shy. The one time my camera flooded, I immediately saw an octopus and a harbor seal over at the Channel Islands. I'm just going to, you know what? Just have to remember it. I will say I used my Apple Watch, not a sponsor, and the Oceanic app is also not a sponsor. But I was like, I'm going to use this thing.

And it has an app. And it automatically created locks. and it automatically recognized that the pictures that I had taken at the same time, the pictures that got taken at the same time as my dive. Oh, wow. So it logged and it includes all of the media and it has where it was, your dive profile,

and your- It's cool that it brings in the photos. Yeah, and so it's like, I'm so bad at keeping my log. Yeah. So now it's just automatic. That's nice. And I've gotta tell you, I caught the bug again. My favorite type of diving is-

I'm ready to go again. Cave and cavern diving. But I think when you're talking about not knowing what to do if you're separated, there is a cave certification, right? Oh yeah. Yeah, there's cave certification. And like Rex kind of similar to. So then you learn how you're supposed to react

to those kind of things. Now, I'm not gonna- and I would guess that it has something to do with, you probably need to have a noise-making device. I'm not doing, I don't wanna do, I don't wanna do real caves. I'll stick with caverns. But question, Chase, do you know about this wreck that's off San Diego that they sunk?

That's supposed to be crazy awesome? Yeah. Uh-huh. If it's the one that you're, it's one that I'm thinking of. I dove it once. It's like 360 feet long. Yeah. And it's kind of at an angle slightly.

A lot of times they'll take one of these old warships and they will sink it for the purpose of diving. And they did that and then when they sunk it, it flipped on its side. So now, and it's sunk early. So everything is on its side. And so now you dive through all of the wreck, but the doors aren't in the right places because of all that. And so you get disoriented? I'ma do that.

But, so you've done it. Yeah. There's the Yukon and then there's the Ruby E. I think I did the Ruby E. And they're like in Mission Bay, right? Like when I first got certified 2018-ish. Okay. And I, that was one of the few times that I was like,

Oh, I dived beyond my means. I went a little deeper than I had for then the just basic open water cert that I had at the time. Yeah. It was dark and I didn't know my buddy that I just met on the boat. And I immediately was like, I shouldn't be here yet. And so I don't really remember much besides like... Panicking. Don't panic.

Don't panic while I actively was. When I dive with Shepard because he's 17 and, you know, when I dove with him before, he was like 14 and 15, having a 14-year-old is your dive buddy. you're thinking, you're worrying about him the whole time and he's never checking on me. Never. Like you're supposed to check constantly on your buddy. I will say that was kind of what it was like dining with Link too.

Like he was like you were just having such a great time and you're always a little behind. Or when you decided to lead all of a sudden you were just like way ahead of us because you were excited. Yeah. Gotta keep up, man. We, I mean last time we went, we had a stranger with us and I regret that. I would, you know, if I really regretted it,

we could have done something about it, you know. Stranger danger. Go down with three, come up with two. Yeah, that's right. That's a great way to get rid of something. I don't think you deserved it. So, Rhett, how deep did you end up going in the snow things? I think my max depth, which I can look at my logbook,

and tell you, was 33 feet, so it was not bad at all. It was... No, not terrible. Yeah.