Is cave diving safer than Open Water

[kaylee_ann]

Amen, sister, amen. However, we have a few cavidiots around who don't have the sense God gave a goose.

So I’m a certified regular diver. A friend at the time didn’t wanna spend the money to get certified and kept asking me to teach him and take him on a dive. I told him **** no

 

[kaylee_ann]

i also definitely wouldn’t with tech and cave diving. There’s no way I’m aiding and abetting someone’s death

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

So I’m a certified regular diver. A friend at the time didn’t wanna spend the money to get certified and kept asking me to teach him and take him on a dive. I told him **** no

A buddy of mine wanted me to take out his uncertified buddy diving out at Edmonds Underwater Park. Just no way. So his friend enrolled in my class, and in his first post certification dive, he went with our mutual friend to EUP where another diver as they were surface swimming handed a body off to them. They had to drag him a long way to shore where LE was waiting for them, but wouldn't get their feet wet.

Unfortunately, my newly certified student shared this with my best student ever, a 14 year old competitive synchronized swimmer, who then never ventured into the Puget Sound again, but did go on tropical diving trips with her family

 

[kaylee_ann]

A buddy of mine wanted me to take out his uncertified buddy diving out at Edmonds Underwater Park. Just no way. So his friend enrolled in my class, and in his first post certification dive, he went with our mutual friend to EUP where another diver as they were surface swimming handed a body off to them. They had to drag him a long way to shore where LE was waiting for them, but wouldn't get their feet wet.

Unfortunately, my newly certified student shared this with my best student ever, a 14 year old competitive synchronized swimmer, who then never ventured into the Puget Sound again, but did go on tropical diving trips with her family

that random diver did...uhh...WHAT?
I'd be so mad. Who the hell does that? I thought rescues/recoveries have to be meticulously planned with divers trained to do so, not someone handing a body off to two divers going back to shore....unless I'm reading it wrong

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

that random diver did...uhh...WHAT?
I'd be so mad. Who the hell does that? I thought rescues/recoveries have to be meticulously planned with divers trained to do so, not someone handing a body off to two divers going back to shore....unless I'm reading it wrong

We don't know what that diver did exactly other than hand off the body. Apparently that person committed suicide, but how they got all the way out there doesn't make sense to me exactly.

I will give the diver the benefit of the doubt as to possibly having to extricate the body from a sunken boat or something and saw my friends as an easy way out. I would like to think I wouldn't do that, maybe ask for help. People under extreme duress don't always do the right thing.

 

[kaylee_ann]

We don't know what that diver did exactly other than hand off the body. Apparently that person committed suicide, but how they got all the way out there doesn't make sense to me exactly.

I will give the diver the benefit of the doubt as to possibly having to extricate the body from a sunken boat or something and saw my friends as an easy way out. I would like to think I wouldn't do that, maybe ask for help. People under extreme duress don't always do the right thing.

Maybe they found out midway that they couldn't handle it? Not sure. But someone should've been with them. Whether it was a rescue/recover mission, or they came upon the body on the dive, it shouldn't have been all alone. I feel bad for them, and at the same time irritated.
Regardless, all 3 may be traumatized on some level

 

[Six Feet Under]

The last open water rec trip I went on, they let one (?!?!) asshat spearfish. The guy wasn't very good at spearfishing. He wounded and lost a grouper which caused a bullshark feeding frenzy. I had no idea what was going on until I surfaced. I was beating bullsharks away with my go-pro for 5-10 minutes trying to GTFO.

I'll stick to cave diving.

I can't tell you how many times I've been invited to go spearfishing, and it's always by the same people who tell me they had to beat sharks away from their stringer on their last trip... No thanks. lmfao

 

[ginti]

@kaylee_ann, your post #238 is a bit drastic, in my opinion. I noticed that you are very curious, so I'll spend a bit of my time to give you a bigger picture. However, keep in mind that everything following here is my own view, and my experience is very limited (I think I have no more than 70 cave dives under my belt, including training - less than 10 at full cave level).

When we speak about safety, we basically have a risk assessment problem. A (very simple) approach to risk assessment is to take into account the likelihood and the impact of a specific threat. From Wikipedia (colors represent the risk level):

If you follow the line inside a cave, everything is usually easier than in open water. Navigation consists only in following the line (and some cookies/arrows); currents are predictable, and big blind man-eater white sharks exist only in movies (maybe).

However, getting lost has a catastrophic outcome, especially with a small amount of gas. I can think of only one situation in OW where getting lost is critical (still, not catastrophic): very deep diving (say, hypoxic range) far from the shore with strong currents at the surface (because, assuming a proper ascent, you will likely emerge far from the boat and get lost at sea - anyway, still better than drowning).

For untrained divers, getting lost is "possible" because of all the things you mentioned. Still, it isn't likely. For example, zero visibility situations happen, just not as often as you may think; they also depend on the cave: a cave with a very rocky bottom and ceiling may become less pleasant to dive if you don't use proper finning techniques, but hardly completely dark. To make "getting lost" likely, the diver must go (far) away from the line or be diving some challenging caves (I have never been to Mexico or Florida, but I think these places are more complex than Europe in terms of navigation - and here getting lost might be easier). The other problem is checking the gas; untrained divers following typical OW gas rules may make it (very) likely to run out of gas, and, in some cases, certain.

Anyway, "possible" is an unacceptable probability of a catastrophic outcome. So, for an untrained diver, caves are a no-go.

What you do with training is just to reduce the "possible" to a very-very "rare" (so rare that the risk becomes low). The risk, despite being low, still exists. So, for trained divers, caves are (often) an easier environment (again: easy navigation, usually predictable currents, etc.) but risker - in other words, less safe.

You can rephrase it differently: caves are easier but have less margin for errors (my instructor's words).

Clearly, there exist several exceptions (namely, situations where cave diving is harder than the average OW) - for example, cave diving after heavy rain, specific karst areas or caves that are especially challenging, side-mount passages, rescues, etc.

Maybe people with more experience want to argue with my simplistic view or add something.

 

[kaylee_ann]

@kaylee_ann, your post #238 is a bit drastic, in my opinion. I noticed that you are very curious, so I'll spend a bit of my time to give you a bigger picture. However, keep in mind that everything following here is my own view, and my experience is very limited (I think I have no more than 70 cave dives under my belt, including training - less than 10 at full cave level).

When we speak about safety, we basically have a risk assessment problem. A (very simple) approach to risk assessment is to take into account the likelihood and the impact of a specific threat. From Wikipedia (colors represent the risk level):

View attachment 795397

If you follow the line inside a cave, everything is usually easier than in open water. Navigation consists only in following the line (and some cookies/arrows); currents are predictable, and big blind man-eater white sharks exist only in movies (maybe).

However, getting lost has a catastrophic outcome, especially with a small amount of gas. I can think of only one situation in OW where getting lost is critical (still, not catastrophic): very deep diving (say, hypoxic range) far from the shore with strong currents at the surface (because, assuming a proper ascent, you will likely emerge far from the boat and get lost at sea - anyway, still better than drowning).

For untrained divers, getting lost is "possible" because of all the things you mentioned. Still, it isn't likely. For example, zero visibility situations happen, just not as often as you may think; they also depend on the cave: a cave with a very rocky bottom and ceiling may become less pleasant to dive if you don't use proper finning techniques, but hardly completely dark. To make "getting lost" likely, the diver must go (far) away from the line or be diving some challenging caves (I have never been to Mexico or Florida, but I think these places are more complex than Europe in terms of navigation - and here getting lost might be easier). The other problem is checking the gas; untrained divers following typical OW gas rules may make it (very) likely to run out of gas, and, in some cases, certain.

Anyway, "possible" is an unacceptable probability of a catastrophic outcome. So, for an untrained diver, caves are a no-go.

What you do with training is just to reduce the "possible" to a very-very "rare" (so rare that the risk becomes low). The risk, despite being low, still exists. So, for trained divers, caves are (often) an easier environment (again: easy navigation, usually predictable currents, etc.) but risker - in other words, less safe.

You can rephrase it differently: caves are easier but have less margin for errors (my instructor's words).

Clearly, there exist several exceptions (namely, situations where cave diving is harder than the average OW) - for example, cave diving after heavy rain, specific karst areas or caves that are especially challenging, side-mount passages, rescues, etc.

Maybe people with more experience want to argue with my simplistic view or add something.

I agree, I did have a very cynical view in that post. Maybe too cynical. Pretty much all I have heard about untrained cave divers going in caves has resulted in death of at least a few people in the dive group. In some cases, it's been all of them. So that's where my kind of jaded view comes from, as well as hearing many experienced tech/cave divers saying it's highly dangerous without training. My main idea was pretty much trying to reiterate that last point.

Definitely if you tie a line, navigation (seems to me) is much easier- but, a lot of divers who aren't at the technical/cave level don't know how or that they should do that. Hence why they go through all these false openings, get lost in general, etc (I think, at least, based on the stories- not any personal experience).

They usually don't know any special gas rules. In their minds, at least it appears to be, they think it's a regular dive. "Just" in a cave this time.

Basically, my thoughts were on completely untrained divers going in caves. It appears that the risk is pretty low when you know what you're doing and can mitigate the dangers. I can't really have a significant input on this because I'm not in the cave diving community. However, of all the cave deaths I've heard about, it's from people who absolutely should not dive there, diving there.

 

[ginti]

However, of all the cave deaths I've heard about, it's from people who absolutely should not dive there, diving there.

That was true in the past.

Nowadays, people are more aware of the risks, and untrained divers seldom go into caves. Most recent deaths I heard of are trained divers bending the rules.; A few relatively recent deaths involved students (because the instructors were bending the rules). But maybe others know different stories involving untrained divers.

PS nobody is going to tell you how many untrained divers entered caves and come back alive. I bet they were the majority... But let's say that only 5% or even 1% of untrained divers died in the past - this is fu**ing too much

It appears that the risk is pretty low when you know what you're doing and can mitigate the dangers.

Exactly. But the risk is still there, even with all the training of the world, and is still much more than in OW. Easy environment, but very small margin for errors. Never underestimate it.