Cavern diver certification

[giles45shop]

A couple other thoughts on skills:

1. Buoyancy and trim - swimmming w/o using your hands. Keep them clasped together at your chest/belly. You won't necessarily dive this way in caves/caverns, but a good way to keep from inadvertantly using them and helps train yourself to dive w/o using them. Horizontal in the water.
2. Frog kick - know what it is, and have a general idea how to do it if you are not already proficient. Sometimes it helps to have a mentor or instructor show you the finer points, but usually folks can pick up the basics by watching some of the videos online or seing talking to other divers.
3. Swimiming w/ eyes closed and/or mask off. You will be doing this in class, so its not a bad idea to get comfortable with it before class.
4. Buy an inexpensive cavern/safety reel like a blue dive rite one. Play around with it a little both above and below the water. Tie it off to something, get used to holding it, reeling it, etc. You don't have to be an expert w/ it, but having some experience would be good before you show up for class. You will learn lost more about proper usage/etc in class.
5. If you have a dive site like a shallow lake with a mud bottom, you can practice swimming along, 6-12" off the bottom, trying to keep from creating silt (look behind you) with your frog kick. Alternatively, you can also purposely create your own mini silt out for the experience.

Good luck w/ the class and have fun! You may also find that there is cave diving beyond the world of the internet and that it's not as cynical and flame-filled as it sometimes seems

John

 

[TSandM]

I echo everybody else. Nail your buoyancy and trim -- that's something you can do in open water. Learn what horizontal feels like. Be able to hover WITHOUT MOVING in a horizontal position. Be able to do your basic diving skills (mask flood and clear, mask remove and replace, regulator remove and replace, regulator exchange) while hovering, without losing trim or changing depth. Practice no mask swims until you are quite comfortable that way (and yes, if home diving is cold, that is NOT all that much fun!).

If you have the resources, learn the frog kick and practice it -- but don't try to teach yourself. It is quite easy to get it thoroughly wrong, and then you have to unlearn, which is harder than learning.

I think you can leave line skills to your cavern instructor. Line can be very frustrating if nobody shows you how to manage it correctly.

My recommendations for cavern instructors in Mexico would be Steve Bogaerts or Bil Phillips at the moment -- a friend, Jason Renoux, would also be a good choice, but he is in Malta for the summer.

I hesitate to write this, because I think some of my friends may be annoyed with me for it (and I've already stuck my foot in my mouth once in this thread) but who you choose for your instructor may depend a bit on why you are doing the class. If you are looking to have fun on your vacation, and polish some skills, or learn the kicks, but you don't intend to dive in caves, then you want someone who is affable and entertaining, good at presenting information but probably not too critical. My cavern instructor was like that, which was perfect for me -- but I knew I was going, in essence, to retake the class at a later time, if I found that I liked diving caves (which I did, because I did).

If you are taking cavern as the first step to a serious interest in cave diving, you want the most thorough and demanding training you can find, because ALL of the base skills of cave diving are presented there. Get it really right the first time, and nobody has to go back and fill in the holes. That's a different kind of instructor and instruction. The person looking to take a fun class on vacation would not have enjoyed, I think, the number of times my Cave 1 class had to repeat and repeat and repeat our air-sharing drills, until the instructor was happy that they were all but flawless -- but I liked it, because that was what I wanted.

So not only do you have to match personalities (and that is really important), you have to match the instructor and instructional approach with what your needs and wants for taking the class are.

 

[Trace Malinowski]

To Hagan:

Look at the You Tube videos by Andrew Georgitsis and Bil Phillips (one "L" in Bil) regarding propulsion techniques such as:

Frog Kick
Modified Frog Kick
Modified Flutter Kick
Shuffle Kick
Modified Dolphin Kick
Helicopter/Flat Turns
Backward Kick

You'll want to be able to maintain your body position in horizontal trim between 0 degrees and 20 degrees. Head back all the way through its full range of motion, with chest to knees flat, and legs bent at the knees (approximately 90 degrees or where you find your "sweet spot"), and your fins should be flat and parallel to the bottom. When your head goes back to allow you to see as much as possible forward and not just down, it should not contact the first stage of your regulator in a single tank or your manifold in doubles until it is back as far as is comfortable.

You need to be able to "freeze" and hold still with no sculling of the hands and ideally no sculling of the feet and not move forward. Some divers find they need a little ankle sculling for stability, especially in drysuits, until they master their balance. But, you should be able to stay still even when sculling with the fins gently.

Since you are in Colorado, you may want to take a UTD Essentials course at BoulderJohn's dive center, Ocean First Scuba in Boulder, CO. You'll be properly trained in these techniques, including streamlining your equipment, valve shutdown drills, safety drills (S-Drills) involving long hose deployment, and proper DSMB deployment for open water diving.

Once you have proficiency in these techniques, you can take a cavern or cave class and not experience the frustration many students have with buoyancy and propulsion in cavern and cave training. Instructors like Jim Wyatt, Rob Neto, (both on this board) Rich Courtney at Cave Excursions East, or Dan Patterson (my predecessor as the international training director for PSAI who now works at Extreme Exposure) in North Florida will be happy to take those skills, improve them and add the skills and drills you'll need to master for safe cavern and cave diving. In Mexico, I recommend Steve Gerrard, Steve Bogarts, or Danny Riordan. In the Bahamas, I recommend Cristina Zenato or Brian Kakuk.

With solid foundational skills you'll be able to better concentrate on perfecting the emergency skills you'll learn in class, enjoy the beauty of the overhead environment, and protect very fragile cavern and cave features. Limestone is easily broken or damaged and Dolomite is also not a big fan of impact from divers.

Hope this helps!

Also, do yourself a favor and try to avoid becoming caught up in the politics of cave diving and always remember why you started in the first place - to go and experience these delicate, dangerous, and beautiful natural resources.

 

[TSandM]

Trace, just a quick comment on your post -- Danny Riordan no longer teaches cavern classes. He only teaches GUE Cave 1, which, although a superb class (and Danny was my instructor for it) is far more of a time, energy and financial commitment than I would recommend to someone who is only taking cavern to improve his OW diving skills.

 

[Peter Guy]

Gee Trace, I really don't see a whole lot of difference between what you just wrote and what TSandM wrote a ways back that you then wrote was "Farm animal stupid." I don't think that what YOU wrote was Farm Animal Stupid nor what TSandM wrote either.

In fact, I absolutely agree with what you both wrote -- IF YOU WANT TO GET CAVE TRAINING perfect all the skills you can in OW before entering the overhead training so you, and your instructor, can focus on the special overhead skills. And, as far as I can tell, those special overhead skills relate to line work and blind work. (Note, I was able to get my introduction to line and blind work in OW doing a wreck workshop. In many ways, perhaps there is very little you can't learn in OW to get ready for the overhead environment - EXCEPT the environment itself.)

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

Re PADI's Cavern Class vs. other classes -- I just did a quick review of the skills to be demonstrated and learned in the PADI Cavern Class and realized that it does NOT include lost line or lost buddy drills. I honestly can't remember if I did lost line and lost buddy drills in my Cavern Class (TDI) so I don't know if this is the norm. I know I did Lost Line and Lost Buddy drills during my first set of training dives but I did Cavern/Intro together so I just can't remember what was done in which class.

BTW, I am a self-certified PADI Cavern Instructor who has never interned, been part of only one Cavern class (my own) and would NEVER think of teaching a Cavern class by myself! I got the Card so that I could take a friend on a Cavern tour if she needed a guide (she didn't -- she spent the time with a REAL cave instructor!).

 

[PfcAJ]

The Bil Phillips skills videos leave a lot to be desired. He has done some badass cave diving, but those videos are not exactly "demonstration quality".

 

[Trace Malinowski]

The Bil Phillips skills videos leave a lot to be desired. He has done some badass cave diving, but those videos are not exactly "demonstration quality".

No, they aren't what I'd consider demonstration quality either. But, I think they do a good job of showing other techniques and that you don't need to be perfect to be in control and not create silt or damage. Also, many divers don't strive to be 100% perfect all the time, but merely adjust their skill level to fit the environment. I've seen many cave divers who will tighten their butts, lock their heads back and go chest to knees flat to trim out at 0 degrees horizontal when the cave dictates.

 

[Trace Malinowski]

Gee Trace, I really don't see a whole lot of difference between what you just wrote and what TSandM wrote a ways back that you then wrote was "Farm animal stupid." I don't think that what YOU wrote was Farm Animal Stupid nor what TSandM wrote either.

I discovered I misread Lynne's intent. It had sounded like she was defending Fiona "poking around in caverns" without a guide or without training - which is farm-animal stupid given the nature of the environment and the world-wide availability of quality cavern and cave training.

 

[PfcAJ]

I think thats the wrong answer to training. If you're demonstrating how something should be done, then do it the way it should be done. Don't half ass it. Cave divers can get away with less than perfect, but you pay for it in cave damage.

Your tune would change is he was doing those skills close to a silty bottom in a delicate area of your favorite cave.

 

[Trace Malinowski]

I think thats the wrong answer to training. If you're demonstrating how something should be done, then do it the way it should be done. Don't half ass it. Cave divers can get away with less than perfect, but you pay for it in cave damage.

Your tune would change is he was doing those skills close to a silty bottom in a delicate area of your favorite cave.

But, he's not near silt or fragile formations which is the point.

One of the best divers that I have ever met is Cristina Zenato. What makes her the best is that she is the "go anywhere girl" and lets the situation and who she is diving with define the tools she will use. She is a great ambassador for both sharks and caves.

Her surface swimming skills are beautiful, fast, and powerful. She can freedive with grace and beauty to world-class depths. When she leads reef dives she wears her Scuba Pro BCD and a typical recreational rig and her body will be in any position she wants for fun or expediency. When she does shark dives she will stand and kneel on the bottom in a chain mail suit, yet right afterward, she and I could go cave diving and she'd be in perfect position in the cave.

As a cave diving instructor, she trained with Harry Averill as her NSS-CDS sponsor and interned with Tyler Moon, Tamara Kendell, and several others who were part of GUE's original group. She has demo-quality trim, buoyancy and propulsion - when she wants. You may see her looking like Bil Phillips in the cavern zone. But, in tight tunnels with delicate formations she'll thread the needle without a touch.

She can dive sidemount or rebreathers and she can be a model for any shot you want in any position with ease.

I think the wrong approach to training is to teach that a diver must be in demo quality prone position all the time. Caves are damaged by divers who worry too much about being demo quality rather than where their equipment, knees and fins are in relation to the cave. Too many divers think about their trim rather than the purpose for their trim angle and whether or not their trim angle is currently acceptable as dictated by the formation and decorations within the tunnel. Divers who are taught to be too rigid have trouble adapting. Adaptation is part of a diver's evolution.

We need to constantly strive for perfection but perspective is needed to understand what is acceptable, when, and why it is acceptable. We also need to educate students to understand before they condemn someone else's behavior and that to prevent damage or injury sometimes you need to throw away the book and think about what you are doing, the problems at hand, and the solutions. For example, I'd rather have a student put a finger down on a rock and touch something intelligently with a hand than mindlessly do damage thinking, "Gotta look good. Must be in trim. Must not touch." He may not pass my class if he touches, but he'll be praised for thinking and learn touching is okay at times, but we also need control.

And, that's kind of like knowing you shouldn't begin sentences with the word, "And," but you do it when you want because you want to make a point or be artsy.