Wreck v Cave Diving

[DevonDiver]

Which environment will you be diving in first/most?

Cave doesn't qualify for wreck.
Wreck doesn't qualify for cave.

It'd be bloody hypocritical to disagree with that.

Whilst full cave and technical wreck (should) teach comparable skills/protocols/procedures, the environments are fundamentally different and have varying hazards. Learning skills is one thing... learning to apply skills in a specific environment is another.

Cave diving.... generally inland on private sites... is easier to regulate. Certainly in Western countries, anyway. So you won't be allowed on site without a cave card. If the site is also used by non-cavers, you'll be prohibited from taking torches etc.

Wrecks aren't private land... So regulation is much harder. It falls to the dive industry. Charters (unguided) dont generally care what you do once you're off the boat... they can't see you anyway. Guided dive trips will be much more regulatory...

Here in Subic Bay, the tech diving operations run technical wreck (penetration) dives.... But you need a technical wreck card.

 

[Veritably337]

I would dive mostly wreck, but I have read several books where cavers dove wrecks with great success. I was wondering if divers started with cave then went to wreck. There is a real ethos here that suggest cave divers are the best- that it is the highest most rigorous training. I'm just stepping into technical with an eye to wreck diving. I want to spend my time and money wisely getting the best training.


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[Steve_C]

Assuming that your goal is to do a kind of diving that you enjoy and not just to max the training (nothing wrong with that. To each their own).

What kind of diving do you want to do when you run out of cards to learn? I would go with that. Answer has nothing to do with cold/warm near/far. It is what you want to do.

 

[DevonDiver]

I would dive mostly wreck, but I have read several books where cavers dove wrecks with great success. I was wondering if divers started with cave then went to wreck. There is a real ethos here that suggest cave divers are the best- that it is the highest most rigorous training. I'm just stepping into technical with an eye to wreck diving. I want to spend my time and money wisely getting the best training.

Yeah... books about the glories of cave divers, written by cave divers, for cave divers...

The drills, skills and protocols on cave/wreck courses are near identical. So there should be little disparity in that respect between a cave or wreck diver.

Everything else is about application of those drills, skills and protocols to a given environment. How can a guy that predominantly dives cave environments hope to ever claim he has better knowledge of the wreck environment than a guy that dives wrecks primarily? That's just ludicrous... and egotistical.

Caves dont qualify for wrecks.
Wrecks dont qualify for caves.

There's some cavers who think that wreckers should never enter caves.... but think nothing of fluttering into a wreck with no real training. It's hypocritical, very short sighted..... and, well,.... it's pretty dumb and illogical because their own assertions work against them. It's one rule for all... not selective rules.

If you're going to dive wrecks.... then TRAIN wrecks. There's some undeniable logic... surely?

As with anything specialist... you have to get a specialist instructor...with true expertise. Technical wreck (as per full cave) is a pinnacle level course... you need a pinnacle level instructor for that.

Both cave and wreck have their share of true experts..... and a goodly proportion of wannabies, muppets and has-beens also...

 

[Centrals]

Cave doesn't has fragile, rusty and sharp protruding objects ready to meet your delicate body unexpectively. There is no dangling cable, wire ready to entangle you. There is definitely no net to snare you or mono filament with hook to welcome you either. Most wrecks are in open water and miles away from civilization. Surfacing alive is not enough if you cannot get back to the boat.
But cave have natural hazards that wrecks don't provide.
Two completely different kinds of diving.
I would do both because they are readily available in your own country.

 

[DogDiver]

After 36 years of Great Lakes wreck diving I drove to Florida and took a cavern and intro course to be a better wreck diver. I learned more in 3 days of cave training than 30 years of Great Lakes wreck diving. [emoji41]


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[DevonDiver]

After 36 years of Great Lakes wreck diving I drove to Florida and took a cavern and intro course to be a better wreck diver. I learned more in 3 days of cave training than 30 years of Great Lakes wreck diving.

Care to name and shame your wreck instructors?

 

[tursiops]

Wrecks will try and kill you. Caves let you kill yourself.

 

[CAPTAIN SINBAD]

The book "Shadow Divers" documents a very tragic incident involving a father and son (expert cave divers) who died due to an incident inside the submarine wreck. The factors that killed them could never have killed them in their primary environment "Cave." They placed their deco bottles outside the submarine. Son went inside and did not realize that furniture can fall on you! He tried to get a map from under a cabinet and tried to move it and it fell on him trapping him underneath. When he did not emerge in the appointed time, father went in after him. It took a long time to move the cabinet to pull him out. When they came out of the submarine, the could not find the deco bottles! Cavers place them at the entrance and it is waiting for them on the way back. Cant miss it. Placing it in a submarine wreck on its side turned out not to be so convenient. They missed the bottles, missed the stop and came to the surface and died. Their blood had turned into sludge.

I used to think that overheads are overheads but that story made me realize that cave is cave and wreck is wreck.

Now there are some agencies that developed their diving protocols in cave environments and insist that they are the only ones doing it right and their "standardization" has been optimized for all environments. They have standardized training and now offer some of the best advanced scuba training there is. This is part of what gives cavers their "elite" status. Now there are elite wreck divers in NJ area who would strongly disagree. unfortunately they have not organized their diving protocols into a community or training agency etc so there is not as much mythology around them.

 

[DevonDiver]

Now there are some agencies that developed their diving protocols in cave environments and insist that they are the only ones doing it right and their "standardization" has been optimized for all environments. They have standardized training and now offer some of the best advanced scuba training there is. This is part of what gives cavers their "elite" status. Now there are elite wreck divers in NJ area who would strongly disagree. unfortunately they have not organized their diving protocols into a community or training agency etc so there is not as much mythology around them.

Now there are some agencies that developed their diving protocols in cave environments and insist that they are the only ones doing it right and their "standardization" has been optimized for all environments. They have standardized training and now offer some of the best advanced scuba training there is. This is part of what gives cavers their "elite" status. Now there are elite wreck divers in NJ area who would strongly disagree. unfortunately they have not organized their diving protocols into a community or training agency etc so there is not as much mythology around them.

The other difference is that wreck divers wouldn't presume their experience qualified them for caves, whereas (some) cave divers consider their training allows them to go anywhere and everywhere... yet would throw a sh!t fit if a non-cave qualified diver so much as glanced inside a dark rocky hole...


Cave diving benefits from regulatory bodies.... and they can exist because most cave diving is inland... on private land... thus access can be controlled... and people can be restricted. That's it...


Wreck diving deserves equal representation... regulatory bodies.... but such agencies would be useless as they couldn't enforce (limit) access to wreck sites.


The precise arguments that (some) cave divers give for denying that wreck divers can dive caves (awareness of environment factors and risks) is exactly the same argument that should mean they understood why they shouldn't go inside wrecks.


There's more than a few advanced/technical wreck instructors that teach with solid protocols and procedures... with a standardized approach and cutting-edge methodologies. It's not just NJ Wreckers versus Florida Cavers.... there's a big wide world out there.

There are people 'doing it right' in wreck diving. And people still 'doing it wrong' in caves also...