Warped View of the Dive World Vol 2 - Diving Beyond Your Training

[MauiScubaSteve]

I was planning this installment to include diving deep, but that seems to have already been a popular thread topic without my help.

I am interested in hearing everyone's thoughts on following an instructor/guide through a cavern, that may or may not be a cave by cave diving definitions, with just an OW certification and less than, say, 20 dives?

Here are just a few quick examples;

Tunnels, North Shore of Kauai
Shark's Cove, North Shore of Oahu
Cathedrals, South Coast of Lanai
5 Caves, Makena Coast of Maui
Cenotes, Playa del Carmen, Mexico
Devil's Throat, Cozumel, Mexico

That last one may be controversial due to ~130' depth of exit, not many OW divers with less than 20 dives being allowed and not positive all the guides are instructors, but the others would be guided by instructors if you go with one of the established local operators.

For reference, here are a couple posts from the first installment of...

http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/basic-scuba-discussions/369121-warped-view-dive-world.html

For example ... I doubt you'd find a single agency out there who would agree with you that there's something "normal" about someone with OW-only training and very little practical experience diving overheads. I can tell you for certain that the agency I teach for doesn't believe it's acceptable to dive beyond your training ... and I'm fairly certain yours doesn't either.

I think your correct here, agencys do not support it, however, I am sure there are inst. and LDS that encourage it. ie. I know someone that took his OW this past year, the shop owner also the inst. encouraged him to do swim throughs. A bus, a airplane and a fish hachery. All three of those were on different events. Not to mention the careless way this owner talks about his diving adventures. Going OOA only to buddy up with his dive buddy to finish out the dive. I also believe that when someone goes on vacation to someplace like HI, and they feel as if they will NEVER get to do something like the caves again, they will take that chance as to not miss it.

Are there guided tours of these cave sites in HI?????

 

[EmptyTank]

I suspect the standard answer will be no for the most part. They would fall into the category of "trust me" dives. In the early stages of a diving career my guess is that most dives are "trust me" dives no matter how meticulous and careful the planning is. You can never plan for every contingency in the first place and the less experience you have, the fewer contingencies you are aware of. That said, it is an individual choice.

 

[*dave*]

I am interested in hearing everyone's thoughts on following an instructor/guide through a cavern, that may or may not be a cave by cave diving definitions, with just an OW certification and less than ,say, 20 dives?

I'd call it playing the odds, were it not for the fact the <20 dive diver typically has no concept of what those odds are. It's a trust me dive of the worst kind because many of these new divers think they're safe with a DM. Many of the divers I've seen on vacation seem to equate the experience with a ride at Disney.

The reality is, were things to go wrong, it would not end well.

Statistically, it's relatively safe. By SSI standards, it's definitely violating established parameters.

 

[Sas]

I think it depends a lot on the safety record of the operation and how they run things. Yes it is a trust me dive but some operators are trustworthy. There is a 120m (or 393ft for the yanks) long sea cave here that is very popular, max depth 24m/79ft that tonnes of OW divers get taken through (always guided) all the time with no incidents. I don't see that as a big deal. It's a case by case thing in my opinion (and I am not familiar with the sites listed in the OP so can't comment on them specifically).

Another example is the J4 Submarine in the Bass Strait (90ft deep), which I went into with less than 30 dives as does nearly every single diver regardless of training and experience. No silt, wide open in most parts, can be quite surgy though, but I doubt there have been many incidents with it. I HAVE seen however, a woman who had no plans to penetrate accidentally ditch her weight belt on the outside and rocket to the surface...

Another local example is the HMAS Canberra (23-100ft). OW divers are taken through that on single tanks by dive guides often and so far no incidents. Guides are required if you do not have a redundant airsource if you want to go inside but people go in it unguided all the time with no training and no redundant air - I do have a problem with that as it is VERY surgy and I think it is only a matter of time before something happens. So really, it's case by case.

I mean people can argue that good history does not mean that incidents in the future won't happen, and that it is more risky, which is true but people have incidents in very shallow OW all the time and that risk is something that people should decide on themselves.

Ok flame proof suit on...

 

[Scubagolf]

Cathedrals, South Coast of Lanai

I did my OW cert off the beach at Makena on the south shore of Maui in August of 2002. On my 3rd post-cert dive (logged dive #7 overall) I dove the 1st Cathedral. My log book records that it was a 70' dive for 35 minutes. It was a great dive, with fairly short, if somewhat narrow swim-throughs. I had no problem with it at all.

 

[Lopaka]

There is 7 Rooms cave, well south of Kona, that probably fits into no direct ascent category for some of the dive. Only been there once with Jack's, on an extended 3 tank trip. Most of it is benign, lava tubes, sure. But periodic skylights are found along the way.

Biggest thing that I saw as a potential problem at the time was a very constricted pass-through that was a moderately tight squeeze for me. Did have a bulky SP Classic at the time, but most others also had jackets. I can definitely see it as a place for some to panic if they felt too tight.

No one did my trip, so maybe Jack's knows how to winnow out the suspects? They did instruct very clearly that the skylights were there for any that did not want to go through the tight stuff.

 

[function12]

I think caves are not something to be played with. You never know how a new diver is going to react. The new diver doesn't even know how they are going to react. I did a couple of very stupid dives with two certified cave and rescue divers. I though I was SAFE. Wrong!!
My log book still says "there is nothing to be seen in caves. Very scary dive."
Just my 2 cents.

 

[Kingpatzer]

On a recent trip with some friends we were considering diving through a fairly long lava tube. The dive was tricky due to a tough surge at the entrance, lots of fire coral to run into, and some tricky currents. It was the third or fourth day of diving with this operator, so they had seen us in action.

They needed to be able to see us in the water to see if they could trust us to do the dive. They could, so we did, and it was one of the more memorable dives of the trip.

Could a person with 20 dives have done it safely?

Sure. If they had decent buoyancy control and an ability to follow directions. The structure of the cave meant a silt out was not possible, and the tunnel was wide enough for two people to swim side-by-side, making an egress on air-share using a standard octo possible. The dive wasn't very deep or long.

But even so, the dive operators knew that a certain level of skill was required and they evaluated us before allowing us to do the dive.

And that is the key, in my mind. Everyone has different limits, and while you can never be absolutely certain what those limits are, observing a diver in the water for a few dives will give you something of a clue as to what they are capable of.

Any time a diver is going into an unknown dive site, they are trusting the operator to not put them someplace where they'll be in over their head.

So my view is that it is about the operator and how well they know the diver they are leading. Some operators are responsible, some aren't.

 

[2 Big 2 Fail]

Some operators are responsible, some aren't.

And it's really not even that simple. Among operators, there might be great diversity in what they consider appropriate and responsible, and when it's short of all the way against the stop on the conservative side, someone is still going be appalled. And with anything just short of all the way the other direction, someone's still going to think that's okay. And for any given person of specified experience in some particular venue, any of them might arguably be right or wrong.

Are there different levels of responsibility for instructors and guides? I have to think that part of being an instructor is that you are much more serious about evaluating performance, because you take on some responsibility to undertake to act to save a student in trouble, and you organize and plan your activities so that you could do that for any student in difficulty, because you would really like to avoid the risk of a rescue. Seems to me a guide's responsibility is to accurately represent the nature of the venue and its hazards so that you're not surprised by something the guide could have told you but didn't and to not ignore obvious incompetence for that situation and act to the limit of the guide's authority to protect the obviously incompetent. And I would say that the guide's responsibility is more weighted toward protecting the operator from all the effects of a tragedy, and how vigorously they act is up to the operator. Instructors have an inherent high responsibility that should not vary with the operator or venue that is weighted toward the benefit of the student and happens to also protect the operator.

I think there are very few people who manage to get certified without being informed that depths, wrecks, caverns and caves present dangers the basic OW can't guess and that training is appropriate and available. I figure if they then follow a group or a guide into one of those venues, they are offering themselves up as grist for Darwin's mill.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

A few months after I learn to dive my (then) wife and I travelled to Ambergris Caye, Belize. We were diving with Amigos del Mar, who put us in a small boat with two other couples for our dives each day. One couple had just completed their certification the same day we arrived, and were doing their initial post OW dives that week. On the third day, the operation had a trip to the Blue Hole scheduled. We were all encouraged to go. Of the six of us, the only two who opted to go were the couple who had just been certified. The next day we heard all about it from the wife ... who had been taken to 150 feet and ran out of air. The DM put her on his tank and rushed her up to 20 feet, where he left her breathing on a hang tank until another DM escorted her to the surface ... meanwhile the first DM went back down to assist another diver. She thought it was the coolest thing she'd ever done. I thought it was probably the stupidest.

There's this perception thing ... gotta wonder how cool her husband would've thought it was if she'd managed to panic or drown before the DM got to her ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)