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Adding extra O2 to counter the effect of CO contamination does NOT work. The affinity of CO for hemoglobin is about 230 times higher than O2, and 60 times higher than O2 for myoglobin. What then happens - in a simplified manner - in the case of hemoglobin, once that CO is bound to it...

Make sure to look at gas volumes incl contingency scenarios. Hint: it’s a significantly bigger issue in these plans than the CNS clock. That one you can fix with gas breaks. But please don’t splash without having thought through the gas volume ...

Back on topic to the OP’s question: I guess the conclusion from this thread as judged by the number of first hand experiences shared, is either a) pretty much nobody takes advanced wreck classes or b) the ones that do are too busy diving than to post about it on SB. So who volunteers to take a...

I would beg to disagree on this. Yes, with air the pO2 and thus risk of oxygen toxicity checks out ok. But that doesn't mean that air is a safe breathing gas under all circumstances at this depth. Gas density, risk of hypercapnia and narcosis are significantly higher than other gases. Some will...

Proper procedure would also call for a setup dive, then you can be sure that the traverse is actually doable. Any reputable full cave curriculum includes the necessary procedures, potential hazards and executing a training dive of either traverse or circuit (or both).

wow, where did that chip on your shoulder come from? Did a cave diver steal your girl?

I agree with you. Unfortunately, sitting where I am sitting right now, is very far away from any of the big and busy caves, so that's the only hard data that I could dig up on the interwebz ;-)

I tried to piece together some numbers from GUE's annual reports. If you connect all the dots in the given data, you'd come to about 100 newly certified Cave 1 divers per year in recent years, earlier years maybe half that. If the numbers in the report are correct and the charts are to scale...

If you had looked at the pic in the post above, it should be self-evident ... but so you don’t have to click here we go ...

I would think it’s more like 1.5 dives per day. Most divers at or above full cave level likely do only 1 dive per day. For the most part, multiple dives per day will be seen with Cave 1 / apprentice divers. Also I don’t think the divers per day is a constant through the year, and your yearly...

No, provisional is provisional, it is its own rating. There are three possible outcomes: pass, provisional, fail (see the chart above). Provisional means that you are not unsafe (unsafe would be a fail), but didn't meet the standard in all dimensions, so you are encouraged to practice and come...

I’m not an instructor, but GUE does publish some figures in their annual reports (Annual Reports). Unfortunately the format and level of details varies by year, but if you connect the dots it gives a good picture. Fundamentals Most useful info is in the 2016 report, average pass rate of 78%...

@Marie13 you need to be careful as you’re on a dangerous path here ... keep going much further and you’ll end up as a GUE diver :p

That reminds me of the thread on here about stolen bottles ... one would hope that some form of leak, although unlikely especially if you turn off as you should, is more probable than a stolen bottle. Nevertheless, if there is the slight risk of freediving clowns that might steal bottles, I...

Disclaimer first: always get the right training, don’t use the below (or rest of SB) as a surrogate ... with that out of the way, a few comments for non-cave trained divers to put the rule of thirds into context: Let’s say that in a team of two, you swim into a cave using rule of thirds. At...

yep, what I meant above. Maybe I misunderstood the OP comment regarding subtracting deco gas from back gas and hence brought this up.

I’m not so sure on the subtract deco gas strategy ... if the cave allows it I would always prefer to take a dedicated deco bottle that can be dropped. Chances are you don’t have to take it far. (Obviously make sure that there is sufficient redundancy in the team incl the back gas to cover loss...

According to their website, ISE not only has a renewal fee, but also a mandatory check dive in order to requalify: Requalification | InnerSpace Explorers While I do understand the rationale behind this, I do prefer the honors system of GUE. (If I were to be out of the water for a...

This is probably one of the biggest factors in this accident. Not only the flow, but filming also, so spending significantly more time and gas on the way back than what the gas plan would dictate ...

There’s one more - highly speculative - option: one of the divers turned on thirds, the other didnt check and was already beyond thirds. It might happen if say diver A usually has better consumption than diver B, so A gets into the habit of waiting for B to turn, assuming that A himself will...