How Rigorous Should Training Be?

[JahJahwarrior]

I didn't say there was a connection between the rigors of training and the Peacock fatality. The team of divers there ignored basic safety rules and the male diver apparently was in such bad physical shape that he was unable to attempt to rescue the female.

I just pondered if anyone had any thoughts on whether cave divers should ever be forced to see more entrances than their certification course asks for. These divers apparently only dove Peacock after training. Others, such as Jeff Hancock, rarely see anything aside from Ginnie. Is Hancock, with thousands of dives in Ginnie, safer or less safe than a diver with 100 dives in 15 different systems that presented him with challenges that Hancock doesn't face in Ginnie?

I see a lot of people diving at Peacock that make me go "OMG that's a fatality waiting to happen!" Lots of really old people diving in old equipment in manners that I see as less than maximally safe. Things like backup lights held on with suicide clips on the butt end of tanks, just dangling there waiting to snag on a line, along with a long hose stuffed on the back of their single tank which uses yoke valves. I never see them diving other caves. Doesn't mean they don't, but there are people I run into at caves all over the place, and people I run into lots of times at the same place. Is there any difference in safety between them and me, assuming we both have the same exact time in the water and number of dives? Because I've dealt with high flow, with tight cave, with silt outs, with solo diving, am I a better diver? Am I a safer diver?

I believe the safe cave diving awards require multiple systems to encourage divers to go face a variety of environments. I feel that is a good thing. I also feel it is great to hear thoughts from others. I'm posing all this stuff not because I lose sleep over this stuff, but just because I like to hear you all think. I've tried to pose all of my questions as hypotheticals to avoid making you think I think too strongly in any certain way.

 

[Kevin Carlisle]

Ok, JahJah. Thats a can of worms you opened. I think someone who dives multiple systems that cover both big and small and silty cave will have more skill than someone always diving big stuff, for the most part. There is always an exception to the rule tho. I know people that rarely dive anything other than JB or ginnie. Would I go into smal silty cave with them? Not untl we did quite a few of the small and silty jumps at JB so I could see they have it together.

 

[JahJahwarrior]

Not enough cans around here lately, and I don't usually get to open one

Good thought there: could it be that those who stick to fewer systems do so because they are prone to anxiety or panic? And could it be that this tendency makes them more likely to handle an emergency poorly, resulting in a fatality? The problem is even caves like JB and Ginnie can have tight silty areas, so a diver who prefers to stick to the huge bore tunnel passage could still find themselves disoriented in a siltout. If they are panic prone, they could handle things poorly.

Perhaps we should encourage cave divers to realistically examine themselves to determine if they are mentally and physically sound to dive?

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

I'm going to just focus on one question ...

How hard should cave training be?

I think it should be hard enough to test not just your skills, but your mental approach to planning and executing a dive, your judgment, and your ability to remain calm under stressful conditions.

When I decided to get certified, I shopped around and chose an instructor based on how he dealt with our e-mail interaction. I liked the fact that he not only answered all my questions about what would be taught, how it would be taught, and how much it would cost ... but he was very emphatic about what he would expect of me.

I liked the fact that when we went through my equipment setup he didn't just tell me how it should be done, he inspected how I put the rig together and asked me why I did things the way I did. "Because that's how I was taught" wasn't an acceptable answer ... he wanted me to think about how this configuration was going to serve me in a cave. He also didn't insist that I do things exactly as he did ... and that told me he wasn't looking to meet some standard, he was looking to get me to think about how I was going to be diving, and how my equipment decisions would factor into the efficiency of my configuration.

On our initial dives I think he was evaluating my physical skills ... and as the class progressed I felt he was creating scenarios and failures that forced me to put real effort into plugging "gaps" in the skills he felt I needed to improve. Sometimes we'd do skills over and over ... even when I felt like I'd gotten it. And sometimes he'd come back to something a couple dives later ... just to see how I'd react to it when I wasn't expecting it.

How hard should it be? Well, anybody who read my trip report knows I thought it was pretty hard ... certainly harder than I was expecting it to be, given my background. But it was thorough, and I came out of it feeling competent to dive at the level to which I'd been trained.

That, of course, doesn't make me an exploration diver ... I'll never be that. In part, because that's not what motivated me to learn cave diving ... and in part because there aren't any caves around where I live to practice keeping my skills sharp. And like anything else, you don't improve if you only do it once or twice a year. So when it comes to cave diving, I'm the perennial "tourist".

A huge part of the training should be geared toward making sure the diver understands the limits of where they've been trained to go, and what it will take to progress beyond those limits. Seems to me that when people get in trouble it isn't because they weren't adequately trained, but because they failed to recognize their limits ... or decided that those limits didn't really apply to them.

In that respect, maybe those people who only dive Ginnie or Peacock are onto something ... maybe they only dive those caves because those are the places that are within the limits of what they feel comfortable diving. In which case, they are where they belong ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[The Chairman]

Perhaps we should encourage cave divers to realistically examine themselves to determine if they are mentally sound to dive?

What would you do with all that free time?

 

[Kevin Carlisle]

I dont disagree, I know some that are up front and they dont do jumps or small stuff but I know they do love caves like JB. And in fairness I could dive it a lot more than I do and not get tired of it. I think most of us who have been around this a while know our limits pretty well. I am more worried about the new generation I see that doesnt want to spend the time to learn a system. Indian has a rule you must swm at least 5 times before scootering ( might be 3 times ) and I like that. I see too many too eager to want to see whats beyond an area they dont know yet.

 

[LiteHedded]

Funny thing is, I don't see many GUE divers out there pushing any limits. I see them fairly often doing routine, easy dives at Ginnie and Peacock. They look ok in their teams. Good trim, decently well run lines. Don't run into their cookies, arrows or line in any challenging, out of the way tunnels or caves.

I do. often at the end. but that's neither here nor there.
do you think, on average, the gue program produces better cave divers?

 

[Kevin Carlisle]

I also think that instructors should be doing as many fun dives as teaching dives. I think this balance is way out of whack!!

 

[Dive-aholic]

There haven't been many new posts in here lately, and I feel like rocking the boat just slightly.

This is discussed often, and some people take it incredibly seriously.

How hard should cave training be?

There are minimum standards, but instructors vary greatly in terms of the quality of students they produce.

In the years past, cave training wasn't a short certification course, it was a months or years long process of mentoring.

Nowadays, some people go and do a course in Mexico while others do a course in Florida. Within Florida, some do a course entirely at low flow caves while others do their course at high flow caves. Some instructors meet minimum skills requirements while others go above and beyond, pushing students to handle more drills than are required. Is there a difference in quality of diver? Is the diver who has never dove in a Florida cave, "as much" a cave diver as the diver who has only dove in a Florida cave? How about the reverse?

Whether an instructor sticks to minimum skills requirements or goes above and beyond doesn't make a difference. It's how the instructor evaluates the skills that are done. An instructor can incorporate dozens of skills in a course, but if he/she allows students to perform all the skills in poor trim, then none of those extra skills is worth a damn and will not produce quality divers. The good instructor pushes students to their individual limits and task loads them while making sure they maintain trim and buoyancy and can handle the realistic drills that are thrown at them. It doesn't matter where this occurs. The major difference between Florida and Mexico is flow, but flow can actually do a lot to hide poor technique.

Lets throw a crazy idea out there and discuss it. Lets say that we double the training length, and require half of the dives to be done in a cave with a minimum flow output, and also a minimum silt requirement, so a minimum number of dives must be done in a system with enough silt to show true technique. Additionally, lets put a requirement in place that divers must show a minimum number of dives in a year or else their certification is revoked. This requirement would be, lets say, 15 dives in a minimum of 4 systems, and somehow require divers to visit more than just the same 4 caves every year until they die or quit the sport.

For what reason?? Sure, double the training length. That will just get the lazy instructors to shorten their days. I know an instructor that already does this. His classes start at 9 and are always done by 1 or 2. Double the length and course fees will just double and students will just get twice as much worthless training from the same instructors who offer low quality training now. Requiring half and half (flow and silt) won't make a difference either. When systems blow out in Luraville everyone just trains at Devil's. And standards will never be changed to disallow training or require everyone to drive to the Mill Pond. Also, just because you require training in a low flow silty system doesn't mean any dives will be done in passage small enough to punish poor technique. Most instructors will avoid those caves/passages. Finally, who will confirm dives/systems?? I can sit here and log 15 dives in 4 different systems without ever getting off my couch.

Do you think this might increase the quality of cave divers, and decrease fatalities? Or do you think there is no problem with the current training?

The current training standards are adequate. The issue is the quality control of the instructors. Unfortunately, it's an issue that has been prevalent in the scuba industry for many decades. Scuba diving is a recreational activity and there just isn't the desire by the majority to pay the money into it to institute a quality control program. And even if there was, unless it was regulated there would always be a few who undercut everyone else just to sell classes. That's why you see cavern classes for $199/student.

On a related note, why do we see some divers with many years of cave training and a high number of dives who only visit the "tourist caves" and other divers who are relatively new to the sport who are actively diving new caves, in some cases finding, exploring and surveying these caves? Is there a difference in diver quality? In an argument, should we discount the opinion of either diver, the one because he only dives tourist caves, and the other because he has fewer total dives? What happens when the diver who has never been outside of their area (either Florida or Mexico, and I'm generalizing here because I do know there are caves in other areas, just trying to keep it simple) joins the discussion? Or is it just a matter of logic, and one person will be more logically correct than the other?

The difference isn't quality, it's desire. Some divers want to be able to back up to the water, gear up, and take a few steps. Others are willing to work a lot harder to get to different systems. As long as these divers only comment on situations they are familiar with, we shouldn't discount them. When a diver starts commenting on something he/she is not familiar with, then we should flame them.

w00t, now there's a post from the month of December in T2T...what's the point of T2T if we aren't going to have fun discussions here? Flame away, folks!

 

[JahJahwarrior]

Why don't one of you with HTML skills put together a "rate your cave instructor" website? I'd really love to see a place where people could rate instructors and leave reviews. We'd have to do something to keep instructors from leaving their own stuff, and it'd be great if we could get info from the training agencies regarding total certifications and those in each level, perhaps have instructors give consent to agencies to share this info on a monthly basis. Then, people could go to one website and quickly see how their instructor ranks, and how much experience they have.

Instructors could log dives in there as well, fund ives, so people could see where the instructor dives when they aren't teaching.