John Volanthen

John Volanthen worked as an IT consultant and built his cave-diving skill in his spare time, becoming, alongside his regular diving partner Rick Stanton, one of a small number of people in the world experienced enough to push exploration into genuinely unmapped flooded cave systems, work that most professional divers consider too dangerous even to attempt.

When twelve boys from a youth football team and their coach became trapped by rising floodwater deep inside the Tham Luang cave system in Thailand in June 2018, Volanthen and Stanton were called in after several days in which Thai navy divers, hampered by strong currents and near-zero visibility in unfamiliar cave passages, had been unable to reach them. The two men dived alone through more than two kilometres of flooded, twisting cave, laying guide line as they went so they and later rescuers could find the way back out.

On the ninth day of the search Volanthen surfaced in an air pocket and found all thirteen alive on a muddy ledge, malnourished but conscious, a moment captured on his helmet camera that became one of the defining images of the rescue. Finding them alive was only the first problem; getting them out meant swimming each boy individually through hours of submerged passage too narrow and disorienting for an untrained, panicking child to survive unassisted.

Volanthen helped plan and carry out the sedated evacuation that followed over the next three days, working alongside an international team of cave divers and Thai authorities. All twelve boys and their coach survived; one volunteer diver delivering air along the route died during the operation. Volanthen was awarded the George Medal for his role.