Tulum - what training should I get?

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cbright

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Hi All,

First time poster and fairly new diver - hoping that you guys can give me some advice! I certified as an OW diver late last year, have done eight dives to date, and am absolutely loving it!

Last week I was in Tulum Mexico and spoke to some of the dive shops about diving in cenotes. The dive shop operators were eager to assure me that it was safe to do, provided you were with an appropriately skilled and trained guide, but I remember the OW course saying that you should seek additional training before diving in an overhead environment. I asked about getting additional training and was told that the cave diving course typically takes nine days and includes skills like laying lines. To add some context, I am not interested in exploring new caves, or diving without a guide, I just want to follow lines and 'safe' dive routes that more experienced people have already identified. Furthermore, underground diving probably wont become a permanent hobby for me, the Tulum dives are likely to be a once only event.

I'm also aware that there is a distinction between cave diving and cavern diving, but am not sure what this means in terms of training.

I'm planning on going back to Tulum in a couple of months, and want to make sure that I am appropriately trained before doing any cenote dives there. I am NOT interested in doing anything that I'm not appropriately trained for!

My questions to the forum are therefore:

1. What level of training should I have before diving a cavern with a guide?
2. What level of training should I have before diving a cave with a guide?
3. Can anyone recommend a dive shop with good safety standards in or around Tulum?

Many thanks for your help!
 
Not a cave diver but I am an overhead environment (wreck) Instructor. IMO the last thing you want to do is put your life into someone else's hands. Especially someone you don't know. Divers have died in the cenotes doing that. It's called a "trust me dive", and those have killed people. If you need to follow a line in and out it says to me that at some point if the lights you were using went out you could not see the entrance. That could be an instant death sentence. Do you know how to conduct a lost line drill, find your way out by following a line in TOTAL darkness, and know what the arrows on that line mean if you come to a junction? IS the guide someone who you would trust in any situation with your life and the lives of your loved ones? If no to any of these why would you even consider doing it?
"We do this all the time and it's safe" is often heard just before things go pear shaped. I hear that and I run from that operation. You don't say where you are. But at a minimum I would want to be cavern and Intro to Cave certed so I can judge for myself how much BS the shop/guide is shoveling at me. With 8 dives you have no business in an overhead. Many overhead training classes require about 50 dives to start and some would like to see you have 3 - 4 times that many.
If you were my student or better yet my son I'd want you to have Advanced, Rescue, about 75 dives, then an Intro to Tech, followed by Cavern and Intro to Cave at a minimum to do these things. And I would never go with an operation willing to take a diver with less than advanced and rescue and some kind of overhead training into a place where you would need to follow a line.
But then that's me. I put a pretty high value on my life and on that of the people I care about. Others seem to think these practices are ok. I would not dive with those people either.
 
If you've only done a total of 8 dives to date, I wouldn't recommend you go anywhere near a cavern or cenote. Keep your diving to places where you have easy access to the surface until you gain some more experience.

Only you are responsible for your safety. A guide may be well qualified to lead you through a cavern zone, well within "recreational" limits of no more than 130 feet total distance to the surface, as long as nothing goes wrong. But a competent, safety-oriented guide wouldn't even think of taking you there with just eight dives worth of experience. It's the rare individual who, after only 8 dives, has conditioned themselves mentally to be able to deal with a sudden loss of air or an unexpected failure without reactively trying to head to the surface ... and even in a cavern you'll only bump your head on a rock if you do that.

To answer your questions as directly as I can ...

1. You can dive a cavern with a guide with no more training than you currently have. But I wouldn't do it without a LOT more practice underwater than you currently have. You'll be OK as long as nothing goes wrong ... but if anything does, the surface is a long ways away ... and the potential risk of stress and panic is too high in a new diver dealing with a problem they weren't prepared for. Your safety margins are just too thin to call it a good idea.

2. Under no circumstances should you EVER enter a cave without cave training ... the cave can kill you quick if something unexpected happens ... like a light failure or a siltout ... and you don't know how to deal with it. And in that case, it's doubtful a guide will be able to help you. The predominant problem is finding your way out of the cave ... and particularly in Mexico, that's not always easy even for the trained cave diver if they allow their attention to slip for a few seconds. New divers simply haven't developed the awareness skills needed to even think about going in there ... those that do are taking SERIOUS risks that can be easily fatal.

3. A dive shop in that area with excellent safety standards .. Zero Gravity. There are others, I'm sure ... but I'll tell you what any of the responsible ones will. Get some more dives before even considering it.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)
 
Listen to Jim. He knows what he's talking about. Sure thousands of people dive the cenotes every year with the guides but having dove the Mexican caves many of those "safe follow the dive guide dives" are well past the zone that is even considered safe for cavern. If the lights go out in one of those areas things can go very wrong. Not to mention half the divers they take there shouldn't be diving in a mud puddle let alone an overhead environment. No buoyancy control, feeble flash lights, roto-tilling the ground, etc. It's a disaster waiting to happen. I'd say get a few more dives under your belt before you go on one of those tours. There is plenty of OW ocean diving to be had for new divers in Mexico.
 
Thanks for the advice everybody! I'm glad I didn't listen to those dive shops! I'll be taking overhead diving off my agenda for the next couple of years (or at least until I've racked up a lot more experience) . . . as others have said, it's just not worth the risk!

---------- Post added July 16th, 2014 at 05:35 PM ----------

PS - I like Jim's expression "a trust me dive". It's seems like a good rule for a newbie like me - use your own skills first and foremost, rather than putting faith in other people's skills.
 
Even though the safety record of the guides in the cenotes is very good, they're still "trust me" dives, and you might not even realize when the guide has deviated from the standard practices. A guide got himself and both his clients killed a couple of years back when he took them off the cavern line and into a cave, no doubt trying to show them something he thought special, but something went wrong and they couldn't find their way out. When I did my guided cenote dives a few years ago as an OW diver, I was with a group which had pretty good trim, buoyancy control, and propulsion(I think everyone had a working back kick). As a result, we were quite a ways off the line at times because the guide wanted to show us fossils or something else unique and felt comfortable taking us there.
 
Even though the safety record of the guides in the cenotes is very good, they're still "trust me" dives, and you might not even realize when the guide has deviated from the standard practices. A guide got himself and both is clients killed a couple of years back when he took them off the cavern line and into a cave, no doubt trying to show them something he thought special, but something went wrong and they couldn't find their way out. When I did my guided cenote dives a few years ago as an OW diver, I was with a group which had pretty good trim, buoyancy control, and propulsion(I think everyone had a working back kick). As a result, we were quite a ways off the line at times because the guide wanted to show us fossils or something else unique and felt comfortable taking us there.

Can you show me where it was determined that the guide led them off the cavern line, as opposed to chasing a diver who chose to leave the line on their own? I seem to have missed that...

We have done 14 tanks in the cenotes, 12 of them with Alvaro from AlwaysDiving. The cenotes that are used for these guided tours, and the people who guide them, have an outstanding safety record. Take a peek over in the Accidents & Incidents forum and see how many of those threads involve these guided tours.
Yes, you need to have decent buoyancy and trim, and non-silting kicks are a good idea. On the other hand, the cenotes used for tours with new divers have been effectively scoured; it's really difficult to stir up any significant silt. Frankly, I find visibility worse if I'm bringing up the rear in most swim throughs than bringing up the rear on a cenote tour.
If the cenotes are something that interest you, go on one of the tours, with a reliable dive op.
Yes, you should familiarize yourself with the guidelines for these dives, but as long as you're with a reliable guide, who follows these standards, there's no reason to consider these guided tours as being particularly dangerous.

If you know the standard practices, then you do know if the guide deviates from them. And you can (and should) be responsible for ensuring that you stay on the line, even if your guide leaves it. Just as you can stay out of a swimthrough or a wreck, even if your guide enters.
 
Hi All,

First time poster and fairly new diver - hoping that you guys can give me some advice! I certified as an OW diver late last year, have done eight dives to date, and am absolutely loving it!

My questions to the forum are therefore:

1. What level of training should I have before diving a cavern with a guide?
2. What level of training should I have before diving a cave with a guide?
3. Can anyone recommend a dive shop with good safety standards in or around Tulum?

Many thanks for your help!

My advice is take a good AOW course with Peak Buoyance, Deep, Wreck, Night and Navigation dives. Each of these will lend itself towards your Goal. Then look into a course such as GUE Fundies or other intro Tech course. These will give you some gas management skills and approach buoyancy and trim a little bit differently. Plus introduce you to new equipment configuration and dive skills. Now take the Intro Cavern course...after this course you will know if this was right for you or not. Regardless you will get some great training along the way, thus making you a more skillful diver.
 
, , have an outstanding safety record.

I would call it damn luck.

Entering the overhead without proper training engages your luck meter,and depending on a guide means there is someone around to report the incident and locate the body faster.

How come the lessons from the past keep coming up and we don't learn from them. If you enter the overhead without training then your put your life in jeopardy. Yes,these guided cavern/cave dives for untrained people have resulted in deaths. As long as people support these activities with paying guides to conduct this,then we will continue to see this lunacy. There is a thread on Cave Diver's Forum that rebukes private spring owners in Florida that allow "safe cavern" diving for the untrained,but we see fatalities.

I see nothing wrong with discover scuba diving where you give an interested person the opportunity to try scuba diving in a controlled environment,but a certified open water without overhead training being guided in the overhead begs for an accident-melodrama,no, too many deaths to accept this activity as safe.
 
I know nothing about cave diving, but I would like to hear more from anyone with a similar viewpoint to Dirty-Dog. Didn't I read that at some point the tour operators got together and established some sort of criteria for these intro cenote tours? For example, I think I read that the guide is supposed to have certain training and experience and have full-cave kit? I am in no way advocating doing these tours. But on a risk management scale, where do these tours lie currently? Do a greater percentage of customers get killed in these intro cenote tours than, say, in the oft-maligned Belize Blue Hole tours?

Not to derail the thread off into a discussion of "trust-me dives" in general, but as I see it, most of us put our lives in the hands of trusted professionals everyday. The best we can do is educate ourselves as much as possible about the risks and what the people we "trust" are doing to mitigate them. For example, some professions have licensing requirements. I take commercial flights because I feel I understand the risks and safety measures, even though one could refer to it as a "trust-me flight," but I might not take a friend up on his offer to fly me in his Cessna. It all depends.

Okay, let me back up to full disclosure and say I took one of these tours once. I was clueless at the time--it was before I discovered SB. Thankfully, the guide handled it the way I have since learned it might best be handled. The guide took me alone. He was a full cave instructor--told me a bit about his background and where he had taught. He had the full kit (as far as I could tell). Before entering the overhead, he observed my skills and gave me a surprise gas-sharing drill. I now know I should not have done this tour, but at least in retrospect I believe he was probably following best practices. Still--not having any cave training--I am not in a position to be certain.
 
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