How Safe Can Cave Diving Be?

[jjoeldm]

When I started cave diving in 1990 there was a run of eight years where no certified cave divers died while cave diving in the US. Or at least that was the consensus. OW divers were still dying in caves in the usual and in some creatively unusual ways as well, but I felt I could go home and tell my girlfriend that for me, and for most trained cave divers, cave diving was "safe".

Since then we've seen a number of high-profile cave diver deaths in caves and OW and every time one of these happens my friends wonder if I'm nuts. Maybe, but I've always felt pretty safe because I have a healthy level of respect for the environment and I try to keep "end of the line" fever at bay whenever I'm diving.

Still, cave diving is an inherently dangerous activity. I think it says that in the manual somewhere. So I wonder in the light of these fatalities, how safe is it and how safe can it be?

I know it _can_ be safe, but as most people practice it, _is_ it safe? Can most people be focused enough to keep all their **** wired during multiple cave dives in diverse and challenging systems?

Sure, I see people pushing air rules, doing "trust me" dives; getting certified, then a month later they're scootering to the Hinkel and air diving to the bottom of Henley's Castle. Pushing the "rules" seems to be common. How common I don't know. Those adjusted "thirds" for low flow and scooter diving? It often seems that no one observes them. Once-a-year cave divers from up North doing "big" dives at the ends of their weeks in N Florida and not setting jumps in "familiar" systems. But how common is this?

I've had experienced cave divers tell me that the strict air rules are for the newbies, that once you're experienced enough you'll figure out what air rules work for you. I've had others say they ALWAYS follow air rules, but I wonder . . . .

Are highly experienced cave divers at MORE risk because cave diving has become as common to them as driving a car? Are they no longer afraid? Should you be afraid while in a water-filled cave? Does fear keep you sharp on a dive or does it dull the mind?

So, can cave diving really be safe for the diver who follows the rules, dives conservatively, advances incrementally, gets the training, does the dives and the practice before jumping on a scooter and always takes a buddy who feels the same way?

How focused are most divers on safety and how focused are most divers on "one more jump" and another 1000'?

JoeL

 

[chickdiver]

Well....

After 10 years of cave diving (and quickly closing in on 1000 cave dives), I have only experienced one situation that made me nervous (it was a visibility issue exiting an exploration dive). Of the many cave diving friends I have, none of us has ever had out of gas experiences, etc. We are vigilant about the planning and execution of dives, and we regularly practice basic skills to maintain proficiency.

So... in short, I think that when one "follows the rules" cave diving can be a very safe activity.

 

[daniel f aleman]

"follows the rules"

Sadly, as we found the day before yesterday, that isn't always the case, even by experienced cavers; and when they do violate those rules they are just as at a risk of a fatality as any newbie.

Arrogance mixed with complacency kills...

 

[SparticleBrane]

every time one of these happens my friends wonder if I'm nuts.

Do your friends every think they're nuts for getting in their car and driving somewhere?

 

[karstdvr]

I think the paradigm of OW divers had accidents in caves,and not people who are cave certified,has shifted. We now see more people getting cave/cavern trained,whereas in the past it was the OW diver who took a peek. Fatalities among trained cave divers fall into two basic categories 1)medical related problem and 2) too far,too fast,too soon (of course there are those exceptions that skew the statistics). We used to see that a cave diving fatality used to have a ripple effect,and has been known to shut down cave access in other places,but since people look at cave diving as a commercial industry,this doesn't hold true like it used to.

 

[karstdvr]

After 10 years of cave diving (and quickly closing in on 1000 cave dives),

Pretty cool. The perfect dive to celebrate your 1000th dive is the mega-traverse. I did it for a friend and myself when I hit my 1000th cave dive. P1 to OG back to P1

I have only experienced one situation that made me nervous (it was a visibility issue exiting an exploration dive). Of the many cave diving friends I have, none of us has ever had out of gas experiences, etc. We are vigilant about the planning and execution of dives, and we regularly practice basic skills to maintain proficiency.

.

Heather
I agree. I have had 3 "come to Jesus" episodes,but training and practicing skills made it an inconvenience more than a paniced emergency.

 

[jjoeldm]

Do your friends every think they're nuts for getting in their car and driving somewhere?

No, and me telling them that they're more likely to die on I-285 than deep in a water-filled cave is going to result in a smattering of glazed and rolling eyes.

I know that cars are more dangerous generally, but there is one difference and it's the same thing I heard in sky diving classes. "If you have a problem you have the rest of your life to figure it out."

If you run out of gas in a car you coast to a stop and if you're not in a remote, snowy region then the result is a hike and a gassy smell on your fingers. You do that in a cave and suddenly we're talking about you here.

On the other hand you're less likely to end up with a Ford Expedition in your lap deep inside Hole in the Wall . . . .

JoeL

 

[jjoeldm]

Well....

After 10 years of cave diving (and quickly closing in on 1000 cave dives), I have only experienced one situation that made me nervous (it was a visibility issue exiting an exploration dive). Of the many cave diving friends I have, none of us has ever had out of gas experiences, etc. We are vigilant about the planning and execution of dives, and we regularly practice basic skills to maintain proficiency.

So... in short, I think that when one "follows the rules" cave diving can be a very safe activity.

I got to just under 500 cave dives before hitting the skids (so to speak) when my three kids were born in 2001 and 2003 (twins). Since then I've done maybe 20 cave dives until about 2004 when I did my last dive. My main buddy quitting also contributed. I say "last" but lately I've been wanting to return to active cave diving. I just miss it. This is part of my thought process about coming back.

Over the years I've never had a true close call, I've had a pair of regs free-flow on subsequent dives into a cave we were exploring in Cozumel in a tight area at 6000' of penetration, I've wandered off the main line in Mexico by going under an outcropping and missing the gap and going off on the wrong line until I realized the cave was getting smaller (and my buddy caught me). I've had a homemade light implode at 215' in a Blue Hole off Andros. I've had a buddy panic at depth in Falmouth and shoot up to the roof where I had to "OK" her back to a condition of sanity, then had to chase her INTO the cave once I got her back down on the main line where she took off in the wrong direction only stopping when she hit the duck-under there! And a few times I've had "wait a minute" moments when the lines didn't look right and it took me a few ticks to get myself oriented in the cave again, but nothing I would call ultimately life-threatening.

I suppose it's the individual diver in those situations because less stressful incidents than those have set off a chain of events that have ended in fatality, so it all depends on how confident and comfortable you are in a cave. How prepared you are to deal with situations that arise and how well you keep your training.

Since those eight years when no certified cave divers died, when there _was_ a cave diving fatality I could look at the report and say, "Well, I don't do THAT!" In almost every case there was a violation of some rule that said, "this is why" that diver died. These days I keep marginally in touch with the sport, but now I'm contemplating a return to active diving and I see this poor fellow from Va dies on Valentine's Day.

He was solo and maybe he just got too involved in his survey from what I've read about how meticulous he was in his surveys. He apparently had to make a dash for it and sadly fell short. He had logged a similar dash on a recent dive when he got delayed in a restriction. He was an experienced sump diver and those dives are often best done solo. Certainly the cave he was in was probably not conducive to a buddy dive, sounds a lot like Convict Spring. So I wonder, what else could he have done to have survived this dive? Had a buddy? Preset some safeties? I don't accept the "it was his time" argument. There is always a reason, I don't believe in ghosts or fate and I don't believe in accidents; things happen for a reason. Sometimes you can't control them, but in a cave, usually you can. Caves are mostly static over short periods of time, they don't change much, people and the things they bring in do. Every dive fatality has a clear warning about some practice. These accidents are signposts for cave divers, as clear as the Grim Reaper signs.

If there isn't one now, there should be a searchable database online of these accidents for the use of cave divers online. Purged of names as in Exley's book, "Basic cave diving: A blueprint for survival," which lists examples of cave accidents and analyzes them. That book was a touchstone for me in my cave diving development. Something like that could be invaluable to cave divers especially if we really are in an era where the accidents aren't wandering OW divers so much as they are trained and even expert cave divers.

That's scenario is especially frightening to me because it either means that the democratization of the sport is inevitably leading to deaths because "average" divers are being lured in by the excitement and not weeded out by the instructors, or it means that the instruction or the agencies that certify are missing something in some other area. Or it may just be that cave diving is a sport that's acceptably safe only for the obsessed -- and not always, clearly, for them! That's the way it was when I started, you had to be a little bit obsessed to find someone to train you (outside of High Springs), to pull the equipment together, to do the dives to find the buddies. Now becoming a cave diver seems to be _too_ easy, deceptively easy, just like caves.

I'd like to see another eight years without a fatality of a certified cave diver. Vigilance and constant practice is exactly what is needed, but in today's reality, that may just be a fantasy.

JoeL

 

[jjoeldm]

I think the paradigm of OW divers had accidents in caves,and not people who are cave certified,has shifted. We now see more people getting cave/cavern trained,whereas in the past it was the OW diver who took a peek. Fatalities among trained cave divers fall into two basic categories 1)medical related problem and 2) too far,too fast,too soon (of course there are those exceptions that skew the statistics). We used to see that a cave diving fatality used to have a ripple effect,and has been known to shut down cave access in other places,but since people look at cave diving as a commercial industry,this doesn't hold true like it used to.

I think this is exactly right.

JoeL

 

[H2Andy]

a newbie's perspective:

cave diving has risks. protocols are developed to deal with those risks.

if you don't follow protocol, you are facing those risks head-on and basically playing Russian roulette

can you die even if you follow protocol? sure, of course ... but the chances are greately diminished

how safe is cave diving? as safe as your dive plan, dive skills, and dive protocol make it