First cave dives

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Without going into too much detail - I have dived sea caves in the neighbourhood of Tonga and I would not recommend that particular place from a safety point of view.
I have no cave or cavern training. Before I contacted the op I looked at the part of the system that had been mapped and while the dive was 75% overheads and vertical drainpipes going down to lower level quite tight (single file) restrictions that emptied into a cavern on their website and watched a couple of videos I found on YouTube.
Sign a waiver we haven't had a travelling diver since we opened lets go ..... I didn't trust him, I trusted me. I took gloves and a reel of my own although in the second cavern had a rope that seemed to have 40 ATM while pulling myself up it.
Would I do it again on a single Al80 there? No. Would I do it again with some further instruction and training and some form of bailout .... Yes.
I've never dived land caves - but I will say water is heavy and training or at least some instruction/dive plan/any plan would've been nice. Time your dive if you're going into sea caves.
 
Without going into too much detail - I have dived sea caves in the neighbourhood of Tonga.

@Wingy Your profile looks interesting. A cave diving solo diver with 0-24 dives. :) Do you ever update it?
 
OP and others, you need to stop justifying this malpractice type cave diving without formal training. It’s a mix of ego and stupidity.

I mean, seriously, we’re talking about people’s lives here.
 
Is anybody who is commenting on this thread familiar with the dive that the OP made? It's possible that he was never in a cave zone as defined by the agencies, he could very well have been in a cavern zone. He said it was about a 15-20 minute dive in total. He was with a guide who supposedly was equipped for cave diving.

I'm sure many people on this forum have negative opinions about cavern tours, but that's what this might be. And like it or not, cavern tours go on all the time, without people dying. Sure there have been some accidents but generally they have a decent track record.

Of course, true cave diving without training is deeply reckless and the leading cause of death in caves. But I'm not at all sure that's what the OP did here. It could just be a lack of clarity in terms, and it seems unlikely to me that any outfit certified and franchised by one of the major agencies would take OW divers into an actual cave zone.
 
I've dived a lot of sea caves (both in Italy, Spain and some in France... ah yes there was this little thing in Cozumel too), and one is not the other. While some are totally fine for even beginning divers, others are really not, with pinches, silty bottoms, no place to turn around easily, extended...
Italy has a horrible record for non-cave-trained divers drowning in sea caves.
 
Dive center description says "The Great cave of Lindos in the Rocky Hill Under the Tomb of Cleobulus (one of the 7 sages of ancient Greece). The Entrance to the first dome is at 17 m depth. Following a corridor about 2m wide we reach the second and greater dome. At this second dome a second exit at approx. 30m, leads out on the wall of Lindos. The duration in the cave is approximately 15 minutes. Highlight the enormous schools of shrimps living in the cave and the breathtaking deep blue as we see the second exit. "

Seems to be two caverns connected by a short tunnel, sold as a "Great cave of Lindos" to AOW divers. Seen a few reviews of the dive and dive center, all positive.
 
Is anybody who is commenting on this thread familiar with the dive that the OP made? It's possible that he was never in a cave zone as defined by the agencies, he could very well have been in a cavern zone.

It is definitely a cave, not just a cavern. Somebody else’s video of this cave dive was posted earlier in the thread:
It’s so wrong that the dive op is taking open water divers in here.
 
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