why enter a cave

[Max Speed]

If everyone avoided doing things they weren't trained in we'd still be rolling rocks around in front of our caves... and no one would have ever gone diving. :what:

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[MXGratefulDiver]

Fully trained cave divers with more than a few cave dives would argue that it's no more dangerous than driving to work.

I think it's far less dangerous than driving to work ... especially if you work in a state full of old people driving very large automobiles ... :shocked2:

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

---------- Post Merged at 05:54 PM ---------- Previous Post was at 05:44 PM ----------

How is it any different than all the people who go hiking in the desert without knowing what they are in for? Or driving 4x4 trails, or climbing rocks/trees, or boating, or walking through urban areas, or running marathons?

Well, because in those cases, nobody else is going to have to put themselves at great risk in order to haul your dead carcass out to someplace your family members can claim it.

I've got no problem with people doing stupid things and killing themselves ... we've way too many people in the world anyway, and the gene pool needs a little cleaning from time to time. But when you die in a cave, it's bad form to leave the body in there. It bloats up and sticks to the ceiling ... and leaves a nasty taste in the water for everyone else. Personally I think if they could just bag one of these dead fools in clear plastic and leave them attached to the reaper sign it might be a more effective deterrent. But instead volunteers will go in there looking for you ... frequently putting themselves at risk going places where they think you might have gone ... until they locate your body. Then they have to haul it out, which can ... depending on the circumstances ... put them at far greater risk than they would normally put themselves in if they were just in there diving on their own.

So you see, it isn't just about you. We're all adults, and capable of deciding what risks we find acceptable. It's when your actions put other people at risk that it becomes more than just your business.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[antattack]

Divers are an adventurous lot. Some diver, long ago in the stone age, was the first person on SCUBA to enter a cave. That person knew that if they got lost in the cave, that there was nobody who could help them.

Of course, today we have the luxury of many years of accumulated experience.

Our sport is maturing from being ONLY about adventure and bravado to include discipline and knowledge. I'm hoping that our diving culture promotes those values.

 

[RonFrank]

Lets see, some OW divers PAID to have a PROFESSIONAL cave diver guide them into a cavern. This should not have been dangerous. The only reason it went bad is because the guide did not know what he was doing, got lost, and led the group into a cave. Very bad mistake and I blame not the divers who paid for a guide, but the operation who was doing the guiding.

Lets face it, we as a fun loving people sometimes do things that we could not otherwise do without a professional guide. This includes trips all over the world with professional guides into dangerous areas where the average individual has no business going BUT with Professionals the risk is considered tolerable. This could involve dangerous animals, dangerous tundra, or caves.

Cavern diving is not all that dangerous. Bonne Terre takes novice divers into their cavern daily and they have a good safety record. Caverns are not overhead environments, and are not much different than a night dive. If you need to surface you can so how is that extreme risk? The answer is when one can get confused and enter a cave, hence the professional guide to prevent untrained folk from entering a cave in the first place.

Now the BASIC Discussion and New Area is inundated with messages from cave divers, BEWARE, you're not trained, bla bla bla. I for one am tired of these public service announcements from Cave divers in the name of safety. IMO if your foolish enough to go caving without training you may die. Its been beat to death, so I have to question are cave divers that bored? Is it they feel the need to pound their cheats and announce their training while telling everyone else how stupid they are to go into a cave? Cave divers are proficient at killing them selves and we do not lecture them when they do. I would appreciate an end to these lectures every time a caver screws up, and in this case that is exactly what happened.

 

[Cave Diver]

Post Added:

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A ScubaBoard Staff Message...

The preceding post has been reported for containing some misinformation regarding the hazards of cavern diving.

Caverns are an overhead environment as defined by most major training agencies and should be dove only with the proper training and treated with respect.

Due to the high number of subsequent posts dealing with the erroneous information and the followup discussion it has generated, the post is not being removed at this time.

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[kotik]

Personally I think if they could just bag one of these dead fools in clear plastic and leave them attached to the reaper sign it might be a more effective deterrent.

Okay, now I feel like a real wimp. I swear on my mother's name, this exact idea occurred to me today, but it was so far out of the realm of PC I didn't even consider saying it out loud.

 

[LowDrag]

Dumb question...What is a reaper sign? I don't know a whole lot about caving other than I am not trained enough to even consider it yet.

 

[kotik]

Dumb question...What is a reaper sign? I don't know a whole lot about caving other than I am not trained enough to even consider it yet.

It's a sign the NSS-CDS commonly donates and posts at the transition into the cave area, giving the unready one last chance to get a grip.

Sometimes I think it might be time to update the number of deaths quoted, that's a fairly dated reference by now.

 

[tstormdiver]

Caverns are not overhead environments, and are not much different than a night dive. If you need to surface you can so how is that extreme risk?

I disagree. You may be talking only some of the Mexican cenotes that have air spaces above, but most Florida caverns do not. They are still caverns & yes, they are overhead environments, as you can not make a direct ascent to the surface; you will hit your head on solid rock. You must generally swim out the way you came in. By all training agencies, caverns ARE considered overhead environments.

 

[TSandM]

Caverns are not overhead environments, and are not much different than a night dive. If you need to surface you can so how is that extreme risk?

There is a misconception here. A cavern does not have an air space at the top of it. If the space is under a rock ceiling, but has air between the ceiling and the water, and that air communicates directly with the outside world, that is still considered open water.

A cavern, for diving purposes, is full with water to the top -- or, if it has an air dome, that air dome does not communicate with the outside world in a way that you could surface swim out.