Would you do it THAT way?

[The Chairman]

So much so you said it twice!

I'm sure that I have no idea what you're talking about.

 

[BDSC]

I'm gonna get me some new glasses. I think I'm suffering from double vision!

 

[fsardone]

I need to increase He in my mix, I am so narc'd that I see things appear and disappear!

 

[andrei_c]

You lost me. I go diving.

In my bathtub

 

[Neilwood]

If it's truly a cavern, I would have no problem going in or following a dive guide. If it were a cave, I wouldn't go.

I will say I have been diving in a cave in Mexico. There is a system called Dos Ojos. It's basically a figure 8 where there is one dive guide to either 3 or 4 divers. It's really not very long or deep and there are a few places along the way that you could surface and even leave if you wanted to. But at certain points, that is not an option. It's an easy dive and if you follow simple directions from the dive guide, I view it as quite safe even without cave training. Would do it again in a heartbeat. Would be very difficult to get lost unless a diver purposely tried to.

So it does have overheads therefore making an immediate escape to the surface impossible - correct?
So in the event of someone (of whatever experience) kicking up silt (due to poor finning, stress, claustorphobia, panic etc), you could find yourself disorientated with no idea which way is forward, back or sideways and no chance of simply going up to the surface. At this point it doesn't matter how good your DM is or how "easy" the dive is. Given that silt in caves can take an inordinate time to settle (depending on currents or lack of them), you could be waiting a while until you find out which way to go by which time you quite possibly have less gas left than it will take to get to a point where you can surface.

Personally not a situation I would want to find my self in as similar situations have killed people before.

Why do you think trained cave divers use line, have redundancy in equipment, are trained to swim in a particular style and so on? For fun? No because people have died learning the hard lessons (and are still dying in caves despite the training)

BDSC, thanks for post. I have a comment on it.

The issue (in my opinion) is that you never know if it is "just a truly cavern". What is start as a cavern, could actually develop as a labyrinth cave. The guide's intention is to take a tour of the cavern and get out but... He knows there are some lateral passages (sometimes even one is enough!) which he will avoid so no problem but... again but. Some of the guided tourists, usually an OW, will kick hard on the floor - exactly when the guide is looking after the others-, the silt will engulf the tourist (sometimes more than just one), the poor guy panic, swims in the wrong direction, more silt, pace increase, the exit is not there. The OW diver swims harder, faster, exist is farther and farther... and that's it. Another casualties in the black record.

Exactly and as Bob and Fabio mention above, similar situations killed a number of people in a "simple" cave dive in Italy a few years ago.

 

[The Chairman]

Personally not a situation I would want to fiabide by them. nd my self in

This is really the bottom line for any dive. I remember having an SB function at Devil's Den shortly after I became an instructor. These two guys, @MB and Reggie Ross gave a lecture on safety and Reggie told us that if he had to remove a body from a cave, it was most likely an OW instructor with no cave training. That really hit home to me, but Devil's Den was open to the non-cave diving public, so off I went. Wow. It spooked me. I made the first dive and found myself on the wrong side of the grate at one point. Needless to say, I didn't make a second dive and a few chided me for that decisions.

Looking back on it, Devil's Den is not that bad, but I'm glad I made the decision that day to not go back in. Why push your luck? Paradise Spring is another open water dive spot that looks a lot like a cavern to me. Hudson grotto has places that border on that and the same can be said about Buford Sink. Not having been in the system being discussed here, I would be hesitant to pass judgement on other divers. I know what my personal limits are and I abide by them.

 

[andrei_c]

totally agree, Neilwood!

I'm amazed people continue to believe (and sometime to advocate) in such kind of dives, despite the strong arguments against them. As you said, cave divers are following rough trainings and carry "tons" of equipment not because they are masochists but because they want to stay alive. Otherwise, everybody would go in with a 10l tank and wearing only a t-shirt.

 

[fsardone]

There is something called normalisation of deviance. It happens when breaking the rules and nothing happens. At this point, you believe it is ok to break that specific rule and you keep breaking it until the reason why that rule was set, bites you.

I have very little experience in cave diving, but I did take the time to get certified to 'understand' the rules.

The rule you cannot afford to break is 'ALWAYS have a continuous guideline to open water'.
When you do just a cavern dive you still have to have a continuous guideline to open water.

Rules in dangerous activities are written in blood of those who did not follow them because the rule did not exists or because they thought it did not apply to them.

 

[BDSC]

Since it has been about 10 years or so since I have done that dive I went to their website and Dos Ojos is marketed as a Cavern dive. I really can't remember if at all times I could see some type of ambient light but I do know at times you were definitely in an overhead environment. Most of the time actually. There were a couple of places, one was called the bat cave, where we surfaced and the guide pointed out the bats above us and then continued the dive.

I also did a search to see if there had ever been any fatalities at that particular location and I did not see any that had ever been reported but that doesn't necessarily mean there hasn't been any but I would suspect if there had, you'd be able to find out about it. My take on the safety aspect is this, if it were truly a dangerous dive or dangerous situation to be in and realizing that they likely take 100's of divers thru there each week, we would have a body count by now. That doesn't appear to be the case and I don't believe that everyone has just been lucky so far so I still characterize that dive as being quite safe and no special training is needed to do it.

 

[fjpatrum]

No overheads for me. I'm claustrophobic enough when I have all the air I could possibly want. No way am I doing one with a limited supply of gas. A small cavern I can see the end of from the opening, maybe, but not more than about 10 meters deep and at least that tall. Anything beyond that in depth or significantly smaller in width/height I say no way.

I did do the "cavern" in crystal springs but it was more like an alcove, maybe 2 meters tall and a meter deep, in 5 meters of water.