O2 Bottle for Cavern, Cave or Deep OW
- Thread starter MikadoWu
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PfcAJ
Contributor
There are Rocks over your head at Blue Grotto, yet there are hundreds of instructors that take OW students there for instruction and checkout. I can not count how many OW classes I have seen around the back side.
To those of you that PM'd me or posted excellent feedback thank you.
For now, I think I will be moving off this thread at this time as to many seem to be distracted from the original topic and commenting to dives that I have not provided details on.
Good Luck all,
PfcAJ
Contributor
That's an interesting point. One that brings up an interesting thought process for me...
After what training is a person certified to be in a cavern zone with a deco obligation, and does that make sense? Does a cavern diver, certified to do deco in open water, gain something specific from additional training that makes a deco obligation in the cavern zone safer? Is going to full cave and then on to deco cave certification necessary in order to be able to safely hit a deco obligation in Buford Springs for instance? Is there anything in that training that wasn't covered in TDI cavern and AN/DP that will make that dive measurably safer?
We can all read that a TDI cavern diver is certified to do cavern dives without deco, but as far as I can tell, a course doesn't exist that makes a "deco cavern diver", so is that simply because deco isn't addressed, but a deco diver who is also a cavern diver could safely do so or is there something about that particular scenario that needs full cave training?
Disclaimer - I'm actually asking this question, as I haven't done cave training at this point, so don't yet know what is involved in learning about cave deco or how that would or would not apply in a cavern.
Cavern is a "baby overhead diver" you have your hands full just managing the reel which is a big part of cavern. Cavern is an extremely limited penetration course which historically serves to get people's skills squared away (buoyancy, trim, reel work, simple failures) so they can go practice and eventually continue onto Intro cave which allows the diver to go beyond the daylight zone. Even intro cave dives are no-deco as intro level dives are about learning the cave, practicing reel work, refining buoyancy, trim, kicks, and buddy communication.
As a cavern diver you don't have refined enough skills to go beyond the daylight zone yet (and should be practicing those), if you are diving doubles you are also limited to 1/6ths.
AN/DP is an air or nitrox based course in the 130-160ft range with doubles and a deco gas. One of the basic rules of cave diving is not to dive deep on air - especially in caves as its known to be significantly correlated with fatalities since the 1980s.
So the skills in cavern (simple), the objective of cavern (to give you enough cave skills to the practice them safely in the daylight zone), gas limits of cavern (1/6ths), and the depth limits of cavern (100ft) all...
Conflict with the gas choices of AN/DP (air) and the depths of AN/DP (130+ft).
There are many cavern divers exceeding their limits in FL and occasionally they die which is just silly when you can take the requisite courses so easily.
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CDS has come out and said officially that Cavern is a recreational specialty and no longer counts as a pre-req for intro to cave.
Cavern Diver - NSS-CDS Training Program
TDI/IANTD still consider it a pre-req for intro to cave, but it really is a specialty course with them as well. In either instance, it has only trained you to be in a pseudo overhead where you are using sunlight as your primary light source and can essentially make a free exit at any time. It may not be straight up, but it's unrestricted. This is why you are restricted to the daylight zone, i.e. can't dive at night, can't dive in limited vis, etc.
There are two types of overhead. Physical overhead, i.e. rock, steel, etc. and simulated overhead, i.e. deco. Part of the restriction with deco is that you don't know what the conditions are going to do while you are in the cavern and since you haven't gone through all of the 0-viz training that is included in full cave, you may end up in a pickle. You are required to demonstrate it during the course while following the line, but having done it once or twice is not enough. You do you, but the goal is to have you comfortable diving in the overhead while you can't see before you are "stuck" in the overhead without the ability to see.
I'm aware of what each course teaches, as I have done AN/DP and cavern. I'm getting ready to do my Apprentice Cave course, but I'm having a hard time understanding what would be unsafe about diving in a cavern, in the light zone, with a deco bottle and incurring a deco obligation there that I satisfied prior to surfacing. I can easily see hopping in Paradise springs, taking a bunch of pictures of the fossils in there, accumulating some deco time, and satisfying that deco obligation before surfacing. Taking an AL40 deco bottle with me doesn't seem like it would impact my ability to follow a line, run a line, or otherwise make being in the cavern area unsafe. Using my AN/DP training to do a gas switch and perform my deco before surfacing doesn't seem like it would be unsafe there. As such, I'm not getting understanding the reason, being trained and certified to be in a cavern, and being trained and certified to perform accelerated decompression dives, that doing those things at the same time like the scenario I just posited would be unsafe. Of course, I don't know what I don't know, so maybe something about the training I'm moving towards will make a light click in my head, but I just don't see the reason so far.
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This is probably not something that was ever thought about when setting the requirements since most people want to go into the caves and there are limited big and deep caverns in Florida where the standards were written.
There are no cave police though, and if you choose to violate the restrictions of your certifications, then that is your choice. Someone like @kensuf who has been heavily involved in writing standards can probably elaborate.
I'm not planning on violating anything, I'm asking a question. I'm guessing that "probably not something that was ever thought about" is probably the reason it isn't something people get certified to do by the classes. Perhaps it is just a case of "the standards never considered or made an accommodation for someone that is certified to do deco as they were written assuming the cavern class was just one of many that would be taken before doing deco in caves, and potentially doing deco in just caverns was never thought about". Maybe the answer to my question is as simple as 'it's probably perfectly fine and you should have all the skills necessary, if you are certified for both cavern and deco, to safely do deco in a cavern, but the certification wasn't written to show that. Perhaps there's some skill that isn't covered, however, and it isn't safe. I don't know, but I like to understand things, so I'm asking the question.
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