Bartłomiej Pitala reached a depth of 338 m in the Vrelo Cave of North Macedonia's Matka Canyon, the deepest point any diver has reached inside a cave. The figure comes from his dive computer and still awaits ratification. His nine-hour dive passed the previous cave record of 312 m.
From a vertical shaft to the deepest point reached underground
Support divers took Pitala 350 m into the cave, to a depth of 24 m, where the dive began shortly after 10am on 16 October 2026. He travelled alone on two Seacraft Ghost propulsion vehicles down the main shaft, reaching 212 m in under five minutes.
He crossed 100 m of horizontal passage to an almost vertical drop, then had to choose within seconds which dark opening offered a way forward. He took the one to his left, directly below him, entering a section no one had seen.
His plan allowed up to 45 seconds in the new passage, and at 315 m the floor was still dropping steeply. He turned at 338 m, saying he decided not to push his equipment any further, and reported no problems from high-pressure nervous syndrome or gas density. Decompression lasted more than eight hours, and he walked out of the water unassisted.
Three records and a cave that is still going down
The dive beat French diver Xavier Méniscus's cave record by 26 m, set in 2024. The Vrelo club announced three world records at base camp.
Pitala exceeded his own 2025 Vrelo depth of 287 m by 51 m. The expedition, run by his Polish BAD Exploration Team and the local Club Vrelo, explored more than 150 m of new passage with 15 divers from Macedonia, Poland and elsewhere. A helicopter, medical staff and a hyperbaric chamber in Skopje stood ready.
"I was the deepest man on Earth," Pitala said of the moment he reached the bottom of his descent. The team's aim had been to take Vrelo beyond 300 m, which he called an achievement on its own. He noted afterwards that the cave is still going down.
