Cave diver death at Ginnie Springs

[MG11]

I've said it before you cave divers are nuts! Just watched that video, I don't think you could pay me to go in there and I used to jump out of airplanes on a regular basis!

Just keep me out from under overheads

Mike

 

[Yoyodyne-88]

I don't think you could pay me to go in there and I used to jump out of airplanes on a regular basis!

Same rule for both... don't run out of air.

 

[ajduplessis]

They also use rule of thirds.

 

[scagrotto]

Does every cave dive encounter a deco obligation? Are there short cave dives that are fun that don't need deco? I am not interested in learning to cave dive but I am interested in how it works. I would imagine maybe just training dives or checkouts? Otherwise if you are not going for deco are you wasting your time in a cave?

From what I gather, the caves in Florida and the Yucatan tend to have fairly uniform depths even if that depth may be enough that even a short dive would incur a deco obligation. Of course most caves aren't full of water because most caves aren't entirely below the water table. Most caves are in areas with higher elevations than in Florida and the Yucatan, and water flows through the cave without filling it. The deepest known cave in the world, Krubera Cave, is currently explored to a depth of just over 7200 feet. Getting that far involved diving through several "sumps" which are stretches of water-filled passage in a cave that is otherwise full of air instead of water. Even in caves with far less vertical extent sumps are sometimes encountered, requiring cave dives that are usually of relatively short duration in order to push exploration past that point. In cases like that the dives are as short as possible because they're done in order to get somewhere rather than for the sake of the dive itself.

One result of caves having a significant vertical extent is that a typical trip might involve a lot of changes in elevation. That may involve technical rope work, but otherwise isn't a problem in an air filled cave. Following a similar profile on a dive would be problematic, since a passage ascending from a depth of 150' to 60' would require decompression in order to continue the dive, as opposed to decompressing in order to end a dive.

As a dry caver with no actual training for cave diving I've limited myself to the typical swim throughs, and one extremely easy cave dive. Chandelier Cave, in Palau, requires a dive of only a few yards at a depth of about 15' before surfacing in a section of cave that's above water. You could manage to ascend and hit your head on a section of sloping ceiling, but it's basically impossible to not find the surface within a few seconds. There are more extensive caves in the Yucatan that are quite shallow, and very easy (as cave diving goes), and of course there's plenty of cavern and cenote diving. Whether or not they're fun depends on what interests you. There's a small handful of very experienced cave divers who became cave divers only to further their interest in the exploration of dry caves, mostly while trying to extend the depth of caves with the potential for much more depth than was currently known.

You might enjoy this article:
In Deep: The World of Extreme Cavers - The New Yorker

They have done this before ... nothing every really goes wrong... complacency.

There are two ways to plan a dive (or almost anything else). You can plan with the mindset "What if?" or you can plan with the mindset "What for?". The second works perfectly well when everything goes right.

 

[PfcAJ]

From what I gather, the caves in Florida and the Yucatan tend to have fairly uniform depths even if that depth may be enough that even a short dive would incur a deco obligation.

HIGHLY variable. *Some* caves are pretty uniform, but some are absolutely not. Examples:

 

[dberry]

hehe, I started to ask why your profiles are so perfectly symmetrical... Doh!

 

[TSandM]

Yeah, I can recognize my cave dives in my logbook by their shape!

 

[apitkin]

The last one is definitely Manatee. Cannot be sure about the others.

 

[kensuf]

Peanut line to Waterhole 3 kills my ears due to the changing depths.

---------- Post added May 4th, 2015 at 08:29 AM ----------

The last one is definitely Manatee. Cannot be sure about the others.

#3 is Indian.