Just read this thread, Almost every cave diver thinks he needs to learn cave diving... Then he can dive wrecks , Because cave diving is so much more demanding and wrecks are easy ( IMHO how they feel )... I've never been in a cave... I have been 3 decks into a wreck solo salvaging brass... If you want to dive wrecks ( Penetrations ) then find a " GOOD " mentor... I would not take a scooter tour of Ginnie because I'm a wreck diver... And I would hope a cave diver would not think they are able to go play in the engine room in 150' deep open seas...
Jim..
In case you missed this:
My opinion is that all of the truly competent wreck divers have at least some cave training.
My opinion also is that cave diving is much safer. Part of it is a much better culture of training and equipment configuration, and part of it is the much more predictable environment in caves.
I've had a shark fisherman chumming up current from me during 45 minutes of decompression after an off shore wreck dive, but that's never happened in a cave. The hook never pulls loose during a cave the dive, I've never had a boat run over me on deco, and I've never had to abort a dive early due to a sudden storm moving in. I've also never had a cave collapse a couple weeks after I visited the engine room, as has been the case on a wreck.
You need cave training to dive in cave safely, and the same is true for wrecks if you're penetrating anything other than touristy wrecks that have been properly prepared for untrained OW divers.
But if you want to start somewhere, start with cave training. You'll learn a lot more in a lot less time that you ever would in an advanced wreck course.
As a cave diver, I don't think that cave divers automatically think they can safely go three decks down to the engine room of a wreck at 150 ft (although I've done exactly that down to 210 ft) and I am sure most of them will assess the additional risks involved in wreck diving.
However, the odds of a cave diver finding his way back out of a wreck without advanced wreck training is a lot better than the odds of a wreck diver finding his way back out of a cave without cave training - or more correctly, without the line skills pioneered by cave divers and introduced to the wreck community by cave divers.
Whether they'll admit it or not, the wreck community owes an awful lot to the cave community. Without cave divers introducing lines we'd have even more divers getting killed in wrecks when 'progressive penetration' without lines fails as a technique.