Solitude Diver
Contributor
wb416:Is that a euphemism for becoming "fish food"?eepwalla
LOL.....funny. (I sure hope not).:lol2:
danger: solo openwater vs. cave diving w. buddy
- Thread starter duckbill
- Start date
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LOL.....funny. (I sure hope not).:lol2:
"The main reason I posed this question was because I was baffled as to why cave diving tends to be catered to in the diving industry and community, and the divers are often respected as risk-taking "explorers"; while solo diving is strongly discouraged on the whole, and the divers viewed as foolhardy. Why, to access this forum I had to register and acknowledge a disclaimer, while anyone can freely access the cave diving forum. "
There is no answer to this, it is prejudice. Prejudice is hard to explain and when you get to the bottom of prejudice you usually find deep seated fears and ignorance. And, DuckBill, you have an excellent observation but your not going to get a logical answer because there is none. The dive community likes to make solo divers out as some sort of loose cannons and cave divers who die by the droves over the years as some sort of lofty goal to be strived towards. The only dead divers I have had the heart sinking, sickening feeling of seeing in the water were cave divers. I am sorry, an overhead environment adds to diving risks well beyond what the typical solo diver deals with.
Scuba diving is a risk, it is not needed for life. There are no guarantees, stay in bed and you still will die.
There was a thread about diving being a hobby or a sport. there were various answers. All could be right. Some divers do dive as a means of relaxation. It is a hobby for them. Some divers think of it more as an adventure sport with a more edgy, atheletic component including a tinge of danger (like fast motorcycles, rock climbing, whatever). They do not dive for relaxation but for adventure and yes a certain edge of the envelope danger component--I fall in the later most of the time so my view of diving comes from that vantage point.
Safety is way over rated anyways, live dangerous and die free. N
There is no answer to this, it is prejudice. Prejudice is hard to explain and when you get to the bottom of prejudice you usually find deep seated fears and ignorance. And, DuckBill, you have an excellent observation but your not going to get a logical answer because there is none. The dive community likes to make solo divers out as some sort of loose cannons and cave divers who die by the droves over the years as some sort of lofty goal to be strived towards. The only dead divers I have had the heart sinking, sickening feeling of seeing in the water were cave divers. I am sorry, an overhead environment adds to diving risks well beyond what the typical solo diver deals with.
Scuba diving is a risk, it is not needed for life. There are no guarantees, stay in bed and you still will die.
There was a thread about diving being a hobby or a sport. there were various answers. All could be right. Some divers do dive as a means of relaxation. It is a hobby for them. Some divers think of it more as an adventure sport with a more edgy, atheletic component including a tinge of danger (like fast motorcycles, rock climbing, whatever). They do not dive for relaxation but for adventure and yes a certain edge of the envelope danger component--I fall in the later most of the time so my view of diving comes from that vantage point.
Safety is way over rated anyways, live dangerous and die free. N
wb416
Contributor
That must be why the LDS's in the area look at me like I have two heads when I talk about cave or tech diving, yet they regularly practice "same ocean diving" (i.e. solo) and scatter to the winds when diving a wreck... hmmmm...Nemrod:
...but droves? ...hardly..
There were about 480 fatalities from cave diving from the years of 1950 to 1999. From 1990 to 1999 there were 5-10 cave fatalities per year with the general trend going down (perhaps due to safety awareness factors). I attached a cave fatality summary for that time period.
The fatalities in ALL of scuba are much higher. Review the DAN graphic below and then talk about "droves".
In general, we could say that all of diving has gotten safer if the trend line indicates anything.
Nemrod:
A venturesome minority will always be eager to get off on their own, and no obstacles should be placed in their path; let them take risks, for Godsake, let them get lost, sunburnt, stranded, drowned, eaten by bears, buried alive under avalanches that is the right and privilege of any free American.
From Judge Dolan's ruling in favor of Gary Gentile's suit against NOAA to allow civilian divers take pictures of the Monitor; originally from Edward Abbey's book Desert Solitare (1968)
To get a more analytical, and less anecdotal look at cave fatalities, there is a Cave Fatality pdf breaking down cave deaths from 1950 to 1999 that is informative.From Judge Dolan's ruling in favor of Gary Gentile's suit against NOAA to allow civilian divers take pictures of the Monitor; originally from Edward Abbey's book Desert Solitare (1968)
http://www.iucrr.org/fatalities.pdf
For a more general analysis of injuries and deaths, several files are stored in the Diving Accidents yahoo group.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/divingaccidents/
If you look at some of the DAN reports there, solo is mentioned in some of the individual cases, but they don't break it out as a separate fatality category in their analysis.
I would be curious to see if there are any reports that attempt to break out solo OW diving as a category like the cave fatality report did.
I appreciate the attachments and the more statistically analytical approach. It is too bad that the statistics cannot be broken down PER CAPITA showing deaths while solo diving versus cave diving.
All statistics must be shown PER CAPITA, or per 1000 (or any other disclosed fixed number for that matter), to be used for a comparitive study. Number of deaths itself means absolutely nothing.
The one graph showing diving deaths per capita reducing while the number of certifications is rising is somewhat misleading.
Consider:
a) Is a certified diver taken off the number of certified divers once he is deceased? If not, then the number of certified divers can only continue to rise, even though there may actually be far fewer actually living certified divers. This would destroy the whole legitimacy of the per capita figure.
b) In the early years one actually had to work to demonstrate high watermanship abilities and knowledge to become certified. No weekend courses. How many people do you know who took one of the weekend courses and never dove again. Are they still counted as certified divers even though they do not dive? I would assume that those who took more time and effort to become certified in the previous generations were probably more devoted to diving on a more continuous basis; so, logically, the number of deaths per 1000 certified divers in the early years would show a higher number just for the fact that certified more likely meant ACTIVE/certified.
I'm not a cave diver, so I am not experientially aware of the risks involved. I only know what I hear and read on the topic. But it does just seem odd to me that cave diving is viewed as legitimate while solo diving is not, on the whole.
I thought about this. Advertising changes peoples' attitudes and levels of tolerance and acceptance. I wonder if the diving industry caters to cave divers because there is money to be made in all of the safety equipment and redundant gear, whereas solo divers pretty much have everything they need once they have their basic open water gear. If solo diving required more gear to be bought, I think it would be a safe bet that the diving industry would hold solo diving up in their advertising as a thrilling sport for which you need to purchase x, y, and z to engage in safely. Then, when divers see the advertisments showing what fun solo diving is, they would come to accept solo diving as a legitimate form of SCUBA diving right up there with cave diving.
All statistics must be shown PER CAPITA, or per 1000 (or any other disclosed fixed number for that matter), to be used for a comparitive study. Number of deaths itself means absolutely nothing.
The one graph showing diving deaths per capita reducing while the number of certifications is rising is somewhat misleading.
Consider:
a) Is a certified diver taken off the number of certified divers once he is deceased? If not, then the number of certified divers can only continue to rise, even though there may actually be far fewer actually living certified divers. This would destroy the whole legitimacy of the per capita figure.
b) In the early years one actually had to work to demonstrate high watermanship abilities and knowledge to become certified. No weekend courses. How many people do you know who took one of the weekend courses and never dove again. Are they still counted as certified divers even though they do not dive? I would assume that those who took more time and effort to become certified in the previous generations were probably more devoted to diving on a more continuous basis; so, logically, the number of deaths per 1000 certified divers in the early years would show a higher number just for the fact that certified more likely meant ACTIVE/certified.
I'm not a cave diver, so I am not experientially aware of the risks involved. I only know what I hear and read on the topic. But it does just seem odd to me that cave diving is viewed as legitimate while solo diving is not, on the whole.
I thought about this. Advertising changes peoples' attitudes and levels of tolerance and acceptance. I wonder if the diving industry caters to cave divers because there is money to be made in all of the safety equipment and redundant gear, whereas solo divers pretty much have everything they need once they have their basic open water gear. If solo diving required more gear to be bought, I think it would be a safe bet that the diving industry would hold solo diving up in their advertising as a thrilling sport for which you need to purchase x, y, and z to engage in safely. Then, when divers see the advertisments showing what fun solo diving is, they would come to accept solo diving as a legitimate form of SCUBA diving right up there with cave diving.
wb416
Contributor
duckbill:
I you want to look the perceptual side of things (e.g. marketing), consider this. When a cave diving fatality occurs, the environment is immediately implicated (whether it is or not), or at least associated with death in peoples' minds. This matters little if the real issue was gear or physical conditioning.
When a solo diving death occurs, a similar thing can happen. I recall that a few years back on Grand Cayman, the manager of popular dive resort died solo diving. Cayman has a very safety conscious mentality, especially when it comes to how they want to be perceived from a marketing standpoint. This death drew negative attention to the island(s), so much so that when I wanted to rent a couple of tanks for a simple shore dive from the condo, an unrelated op said no even though I was doing allot of diving with them.... unless I could produce a Solo Diving Cert.... I had logged over 100 cold water solo dives at that point, but they pointed to the incident that occurred a couple of months earlier as one of the factors. (Disclaimer: I no longer choose to solo dive... but that's my choice! ..too many competent buddies available
)So what I'm saying, it that for a resort or in a specific locale, solo diving incidents can negatively impact revenue and perception of all OW diving or student recruitment. Whereas, with a cave incident, cavers typically won't be discouraged from diving, but rather will just make a mental adjustment or self-analysis and drive on.
I think you're on to something.... marketing perception. Caving can be marginalized as dangerous, but the rest of the diving world can distance (and insulate) themselves financially to some degree. That's more difficult to do regarding solo incidents, because folks will freely associate the region of the incident with the accident. I've seen it to some extent with non-cave and non-solo deaths at other sites.
Those statistics are useless without the per capita comparison, per numbers of divers and per numbers of dives.
Equally well trained for the task at hand with equipment suitable for the intended dive, a Solo Diver vs a Cave "Team" or whatever they call it---one has a few hundred or more feet of rock between them and the surface. Anytime you cannot directly return to the surface be it from the need for decompression or rock strata blocking your ascent you have magnified the danger level by many degrees. You can argue all you like but a few strands of mono around my leg vs several hundred feet of rock and say you have had multiple equipment failures, become ill, whatever, which would y'all prefer, cutting the mono and ascending directly to the surface or having to work your way back out of hundreds of feet of cave? This does not take a rocket scientist to see the difference. I carry a 14 inch long knife that goes through mono and even cable like through butter but I don't think I could dig my way back out of a cave with it should I need a direct ascent.
This is the Solo Diving Forum.
N
Equally well trained for the task at hand with equipment suitable for the intended dive, a Solo Diver vs a Cave "Team" or whatever they call it---one has a few hundred or more feet of rock between them and the surface. Anytime you cannot directly return to the surface be it from the need for decompression or rock strata blocking your ascent you have magnified the danger level by many degrees. You can argue all you like but a few strands of mono around my leg vs several hundred feet of rock and say you have had multiple equipment failures, become ill, whatever, which would y'all prefer, cutting the mono and ascending directly to the surface or having to work your way back out of hundreds of feet of cave? This does not take a rocket scientist to see the difference. I carry a 14 inch long knife that goes through mono and even cable like through butter but I don't think I could dig my way back out of a cave with it should I need a direct ascent.
This is the Solo Diving Forum.
N
Nemrod:
Proper training, protocol, procedure and equipment negate that danger in both instances.
wb416
Contributor
The numbers are what they are.... you can enlighten yourself with them, or ignore them... your choice. I never declared they were the "Be All.. End All" of analysis, but to declare them as "worthless"??? :06:Nemrod:
Your entitled to your opinion, as am I.
Really?!? :14:Nemrod:
captain
Contributor
I would guess that just like aircraft accidents diving accidents resulting in death or injury are the result of human error. Other than light aircraft most commercial airliners have multiple redundant systems and two pilots and operate in one of the most controlled enviroments in respect to training and maintenance and yet they still crash. A pilot error on a clear calm day might result in a momentary high heart rate and an ah S--t before recovery. That same error on a dark stormy night may likely result in a smoking hole in the ground. I equate the open water dive to that clear calm day and a cave to the dark stormy night. It seems a lot more planes crash on those dark stormy nights.
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