guys,before you consider any sport...

[Aguablanco1]

I would never make a decision to get involved in a sport based on a magazine article. The quality of this article showing exactly why. How about whitewater kayaking, or climbing. Most sports are exactly as dangerous as the participants make them. And, as an earlier poster asked, what does this have to do with diving in general, and new divers in particular?
RichH

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

I would not consider Bull Running a sport, thats just Darwin sorting things out.

... looks pretty sporting to me ... how else does one learn to walk on water ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[BDSC]

I would not consider Bull Running a sport,

A lot of folks I know don't consider scuba diving a sport. I'm right there with them.

 

[TSandM]

It is actually kind of interesting to compare the things he lists. Of all of them, the risks of cave diving are probably the most predictable, and the ones you can best prepare for. I'd put my odds of a cave not collapsing on my head much higher than the odds of a bull not catching me in Pamplona, or the odds of getting whacked in the head by my own surfboard when I make a mistake on a 30 foot comber . . .

 

[merxlin]

From the "article":

On top of that, it’s still a wilderness experience, and some of the caves actually have wild animals living in them.

As opposed to the rest of the ocean and most lakes.......

All fear the Aquatic Honeybadger!

 

[boulderjohn]

This post is directed to the purpose of this forum: providing information to new divers and those considering diving:

Please don't be fooled by the opening post in this thread.

Scuba has many levels of certification. Beginning divers learn to dive in safe waters, with no overhead environments such as caves and wrecks allowed. After a lot of practice, divers can take more and more courses as their skills develop. The vast majority of divers, probably more than 90%, go through their entire dive career, some making thousands of dives, without ever going into a true cave.

If you ever wanted to become a cave diver, it is a long and difficult path. I had completed nearly 700 dives and had numerous advanced certifications before I started training for it. The training was very intense.

But that first post should be a warning to you. When you have reached the point of feeling that you are a safe and confident diver in the open water, you should not mistakenly believe that you are now ready to go into a cave without that intense training I mentioned. Cave diving is indeed dangerous, and it should only be attempted by people who are thoroughly trained and equipped for it.

 

[rovic]

if you want to look at the "Accident section" of this forum,you'll notice that 60-80% of the fatalities involves professional divers doing cave divings. i know you can't help but scratch your head and wonder why. accidents most likely to happen to novice and new divers right? but professional divers tend to explore more,dive deeper,get into complicated cave dives etc then they end up being trapped inside the cave., yes they are fully trained but if you are down there it's a totally different story. it's like half of your body is already in the grave when you dive.

just my observation,,i maybe wrong.

 

[boulderjohn]

if you want to look at the "Accident section" of this forum,you'll notice that 60-80% of the fatalities involves professional divers doing cave divings. i know you can't help but scratch your head and wonder why. accidents most likely to happen to novice and new divers right? but professional divers tend to explore more,dive deeper,get into complicated cave dives etc then they end up being trapped inside the cave., yes they are fully trained but if you are down there it's a totally different story. it's like half of your body is already in the grave when you dive.

just my observation,,i maybe wrong.

It goes to exactly what I said in my post above, when I warned people not to be fooled into thinking the fact that they are so comfortable with their open water skills means they are ready to dive caves without additional training. The worst offenders are open water scuba instructors. I completed more than 300 dives after becoming an open water instructor before I started cave training. The cave training I took taught me how unprepared I would have been to deal with a problem in a cave without that specific training.

In cave training, you learn to take certain vital equipment, and you learn how to use it. You learn techniques of kicking that do not create silt-outs, techniques rarely taught in open water training. You learn to have pinpoint buoyancy control beyond what most OW instructors have ever even seen in their lives.

When you have mastered open water diving, you may well be about as good at what you do as anyone you have ever seen. That gives you the false sense that you are as good as anyone else. Your problem is that you have never seen cave diving skills at work, so you don't know what to compare. I am a certified cave diver with a fair number of cave dives under my belt. I am pretty confident that at my age, I will never acquire the skills that my cave instructors and others I have dived with display. Ironically, I was much more confident of my skills as a diver when I was just an open water instructor than I am now.

 

[knotical]

The original post is like telling someone who’s going on a hike that some rock-climbers fall, so they should think twice about hiking.

 

[merxlin]

if you want to look at the "Accident section" of this forum,you'll notice that 60-80% of the fatalities involves professional divers doing cave divings. i know you can't help but scratch your head and wonder why. accidents most likely to happen to novice and new divers right? but professional divers tend to explore more,dive deeper,get into complicated cave dives etc then they end up being trapped inside the cave., yes they are fully trained but if you are down there it's a totally different story. it's like half of your body is already in the grave when you dive.

just my observation,,i maybe wrong.

Can I ask you to justify your comment about the percentage of dive accidents involving caves? I just looked at the last months worth of accident reports and do not see the high percentage you refer to.

Advising people to avoid diving because cave divers may have a higher mortality rate is like not driving because a guy dies during the Indianapolis 500. Here are a couple statistics for you: Drowning deaths -about 4,000 per year in the U.S. alone and motorcycle fatalities - about 4,500 U.S. deaths annually. This is compared to the 10 deaths per year you claim (using your source of information in the first post) occur.

I'm not encouraging anyone to minimize the risks involved in cave diving, or in scuba diving. In fact, the most adamant proponents of proper training and safety that I have met, whether you dive inside a cave or not, are cave divers.

I have a question for you Rovic, do you dive?