Alachua man drowns while cave-diving

By Carrie A. Mizell

The body of a 58-year-old Alachua man was pulled from a Ginnie Springs cave system known as Devil’s Eye last Friday after he apparently drowned while diving.
Bruce Clark Bosshardt was a scuba diving instructor who launched Cave Dive Central, a north central Florida business dedicated to open water, cave diving and technical diving.
According to the Gilchrist County Sheriff’s Office, Bosshardt did not surface from a dive he was taking with his dive partner Gary Hildman after the two got separated.
Hildman told GCSO investigators Tracy Taylor and Eddie Merritt that once he lost track of his partner, he surfaced hoping Bosshardt might have already surfaced, but when he did not find the man waiting just above the water surface he reported Bosshardt missing just before 1 p.m.
Experienced cave divers from Ginnie Springs responded to the area and located Bosshardt’s body at 4:26 p.m. in an area of Devil’s Eye called Henry’s Crack.
The incident is still under investigation by the Gilchrist County Sheriff’s Office.
According to Maj. Tony Smith of GCSO, the results on an autopsy, which was performed over the weekend, will not be released until the Medical Examiner’s Office has the results of pending toxicology tests.