The 2018 Tham Luang cave rescue in Thailand involved a multinational team of elite cave divers, but a small core group made the operation possible. Two British volunteer cave divers found the trapped boys, an Australian anesthesiologist devised the extraordinary plan to sedate them for extraction, and a rotating team of about 13 international divers carried the children through miles of flooded passages over three days. Two Thai Navy SEALs ultimately gave their lives in connection with the mission.
Rick Stanton and John Volanthen: The First to Reach the Boys
The two divers at the heart of the rescue were Rick Stanton and John Volanthen, both British civilians who volunteered their time. On July 2, 2018, after nine days of searching, they found all 12 boys and their coach alive on a muddy ledge roughly 2.5 kilometers inside the flooded cave system. Their now-famous exchange with the boys, captured on headcam video, was the first confirmation that anyone had survived.
Stanton, a firefighter from Coventry in his mid-fifties, had more than 35 years of cave diving experience at the time of the rescue. He combined expertise in dry caving and technical diving, and was widely considered the best cave diver in Europe. He had received an MBE in 2012 for services to cave diving and was often described as the face of British cave diving.
Volanthen, a computer engineer from Bristol, started as a dry caver and became a pioneer in developing equipment that allows cave divers to stay underwater longer and reach greater depths. His technical specialty was rebreather technology, which recycles exhaled air and is far better suited to long underground dives than standard scuba tanks. The British Cave Rescue Council described both men as “experts in low-visibility cave dives within small passages,” which was exactly the challenge at Tham Luang. Both worked in a voluntary capacity throughout the operation.
Richard Harris: The Doctor Who Sedated the Boys
The rescue plan hinged on one seemingly impossible idea: sedating children and pulling them unconscious through hours of underwater passages. The person responsible for that plan was Dr. Richard Harris, an Australian anesthesiologist and experienced cave diver from Adelaide. His combination of deep cave diving skills and medical expertise made him uniquely qualified for the job, and possibly the only person in the world who could have filled that role.
Harris initially rejected the idea outright. “I can’t think of a more certain way to sentence those kids to death than give them an anaesthetic and then try and bring them out under water 2.5 kilometres,” he recalled. He offered instead to swim in and provide medical support while the team figured out another plan. But after a night of meetings with the British divers and Thai rescue authorities, it became clear there was no alternative. The monsoon rains were intensifying, and the cave was flooding further.
Harris chose ketamine, administered by injection through the boys’ wetsuits into their thighs. He calculated doses based on body weight, but to keep things simple and reduce the chance of errors by non-medical divers, he divided the boys into two categories. Each diver received bags of pre-measured syringes labeled “big kid” or “small kid,” with top-up doses at half strength for any child who started to wake during the journey. He also gave each boy an anti-anxiety tablet about half an hour before their turn to help them stay calm.
On the morning of the first rescue day, Harris gave the dive team what he described as an “anaesthetic lecture,” trying to convince them the technique was safe while privately harboring serious doubts himself. It worked. All 13 people were brought out alive over three days.
Craig Challen: Harris’s Diving Partner
Working alongside Harris inside the cave was Craig Challen, a retired Australian veterinarian and cave diving specialist. Challen was Harris’s regular diving partner, and the two operated as a team throughout the extraction. While Harris handled the sedation at the boys’ ledge, Challen assisted with managing the children during the early and most dangerous stages of the underwater journey. The two were later jointly named Australians of the Year in January 2019, one of Australia’s highest honors, and both received the Most Admirable Order of the Direkgunabhorn from the Thai king.
The International Support Divers
Beyond the core team of Stanton, Volanthen, Harris, and Challen, the extraction relied on a broader group of international cave divers stationed at relay points throughout the cave system. Each sedated child was passed from diver to diver through the flooded sections, with some stretches requiring the divers to physically guide the unconscious boys through passages so narrow they could only be navigated in sidemount configuration, with tanks strapped to the diver’s sides rather than their back.
Among these support divers were Ben Reymenants, a Belgian diver who owned a diving school in Phuket and contributed his cave diving expertise. Finnish diver Mikko Paasi assisted with the rescue efforts, as did Ivan Karadzic, who ran a diving center. In total, about 13 international cave divers were directly involved in the underwater extraction, supported by dozens of Thai Navy SEALs who managed logistics, carried equipment, and staffed dry sections of the cave.
The Thai Navy SEALs
The Royal Thai Navy SEALs were the backbone of the operation on the Thai side. Led by Rear Admiral Arpakorn Yuukongkaew, the SEAL commander, they managed the overall operation, maintained supply lines of oxygen tanks through the cave, and supported the international divers at every stage. Several SEALs remained inside the cave with the boys for days, keeping them fed, healthy, and calm before the extraction began.
The mission came at a devastating cost. Saman Kunan, a former Thai Navy SEAL who had volunteered for the rescue, died on July 6 while returning from delivering oxygen tanks deep inside the cave. He lost consciousness underwater and could not be revived. Petty Officer Beirut Pakbara, another member of the rescue team, contracted a blood infection during the operation. He sought medical treatment over the following year, but the infection eventually reached his bloodstream. He died in December 2019. Both men are remembered as heroes of the rescue.
Recognition and Honors
The key divers received significant recognition from multiple governments. Stanton and Volanthen, along with other British participants, received honors from the UK. Harris and Challen were named joint Australians of the Year and received royal honors from Thailand’s king in a ceremony at Bangkok’s Government House, where they also met Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha. It was their first trip back to Thailand since the rescue. Harris also received the Pask Award from the Association of Anaesthetists in December 2018 for his role in the mission.
Saman Kunan was posthumously promoted by the Thai military, and Beirut Pakbara was honored by the Royal Thai Navy upon his death. A statue of Saman Kunan was later erected near the cave entrance.