0 to Full Cave in 150 dives?

[lermontov]

Mountaineering is more dangerous than cave diving??

@tbone1004 has pretty much identified the nub of it - there are substantially more objective dangers that are out of your control, add to that you are exposed to them for much longer - a climb can easily take 10 hours a big climb can be 17 hours return and thats not even considering climbing at high altitude where your basically constantly hypoxic and every decision is a foggy blur.

 

[Squirm88]

Maybe so. Does that mean we can't discuss it here?

It seems to me that if you're going to be a cave diver, or any kind of tech diver, you want to set aside the mentality that your instructor or certifying agency is responsible for determining whether you're good enough, safe enough, experienced enough, etc. Just because they let you into a cave with X number of dives doesn't mean you should go. And if you do, it doesn't mean we can't talk about you.

Certainly not advocating for not discussing it.

If I hear you correctly, you are implying that the certifying agency requirements nor the instructor should be responsible for determining if a student is ready for taking full cave? If not the instructor then who? The cave diving police on ScubaBoard?

At the end of the day I am sure we can all advocate for safety. I am sure we don't want any diver deaths being an excuse to close public access to any sites. Instructors have to be accountable for what students they certify and in my opinion they are in the best position to make determinations on the efficacy of a student.

 

[rjack321]

Mountaineering is more dangerous than cave diving??

Maybe not in the Orlando area but yes. Quite a few 8,000m climbs have fatality rates per participant exceeding 20%.
World's top 10 deadliest mountains: The summits most likely to kill you (9news.com.au)

 

[Esprise Me]

Certainly not advocating for not discussing it.

If I hear you correctly, you are implying that the certifying agency requirements nor the instructor should be responsible for determining if a student is ready for taking full cave? If not the instructor then who? The cave diving police on ScubaBoard?

At the end of the day I am sure we can all advocate for safety. I am sure we don't want any diver deaths being an excuse to close public access to any sites. Instructors have to be accountable for what students they certify and in my opinion they are in the best position to make determinations on the efficacy of a student.

I believe the individual pursuing cave training is ultimately responsible. That's not to absolve the instructor or agency. But one of options in the poll was "depends on the diver," and that currently has the vast majority of votes. If some divers are in fact able to safely do this so quickly, does it really make sense for the agencies to increase the prerequisite number of dives? Or should they leave it to instructors at that point to accept and pass only those they think are ready? And certainly an instructor should refuse any student who meets the prerequisites on paper but about whom he has serious concerns. But there's no bright line between "safe" and "unsafe." I'm sure many instructors have at least some mild reservations about many, if not all, of their students. It's not just about whether someone can perform the skills; it's also about how careful they're going to be once they're no longer supervised, and how they're going to handle a problem when it's for real and not a drill. Those are hard questions the diver has to ask him/herself.

 

[Marie13]

I believe the individual pursuing cave training is ultimately responsible. That's not to absolve the instructor or agency. But one of options in the poll was "depends on the diver," and that currently has the vast majority of votes. If some divers are in fact able to safely do this so quickly, does it really make sense for the agencies to increase the prerequisite number of dives? Or should they leave it to instructors at that point to accept and pass only those they think are ready? And certainly an instructor should refuse any student who meets the prerequisites on paper but about whom he has serious concerns. But there's no bright line between "safe" and "unsafe." I'm sure many instructors have at least some mild reservations about many, if not all, of their students. It's not just about whether someone can perform the skills; it's also about how careful they're going to be once they're no longer supervised, and how they're going to handle a problem when it's for real and not a drill. Those are hard questions the diver has to ask him/herself.

Then there's the zero to hero cave class in one fell swoop...

 

[SMcC]

Maybe not in the Orlando area but yes. Quite a few 8,000m climbs have fatality rates per participant exceeding 20%.
World's top 10 deadliest mountains: The summits most likely to kill you (9news.com.au)

Shows what I know. Damn.

 

[rjack321]

I believe the individual pursuing cave training is ultimately responsible. That's not to absolve the instructor or agency. But one of options in the poll was "depends on the diver," and that currently has the vast majority of votes. If some divers are in fact able to safely do this so quickly, does it really make sense for the agencies to increase the prerequisite number of dives? Or should they leave it to instructors at that point to accept and pass only those they think are ready? And certainly an instructor should refuse any student who meets the prerequisites on paper but about whom he has serious concerns. But there's no bright line between "safe" and "unsafe." I'm sure many instructors have at least some mild reservations about many, if not all, of their students. It's not just about whether someone can perform the skills; it's also about how careful they're going to be once they're no longer supervised, and how they're going to handle a problem when it's for real and not a drill. Those are hard questions the diver has to ask him/herself.

If you make the minimum 50 dives you can be sure that some instructor somewhere will be passing students with the minimum. We have divers defacing and trashing caves now, making it easier for the masses with minimal dives who are chasing the next card is not a good long term conservation strategy.

 

[Esprise Me]

Fair point. It seemed like the OP was asking more about safety; for the issues you raise a top-down approach might be more appropriate. Do you think those issues are due to low dive counts, and that raising the minimum would help? I've actually seen a fair number of divers with excellent trim and buoyancy and fewer than 100 dives, and way too many seahorses with hundreds of dives. I was thinking in terms of how the first group might still benefit from more experience. Do you think the second group would also?

 

[Heat Miser]

including an academic diving program under their belt

What is an Academic Diving program ? Is this like an elective at College?

 

[Bazzathemammoth]

sometimes i think the diving community is too much in its own bubble- i remember reading a story about a reasonably newly minted diver who incurred some deco and was non plussed at having to spend time waiting to clear. seems he just recently returned back from active service where he was being shot at with live bullets on a regular basis - doing a few minutes of deco wasnt a stress. There are athletes from many high risk sports that are making critical decisions all the time, mountaineering for example is probably 10x more dangerous than diving.

I totally agree with this. Scuba is very low risk compared to hobbies such as motorcycling where a 1 second mistake can mean death or serious injury.

Funnily enough the most at risk group for both riding and diving are middle aged men.

I do find that divers tend to be a bit rigid in their thinking sometimes and can blow perceived risk way out of proportion. I see this a lot of the time on the industry i work in and occasionally the risk mitigation strategy becomes more of a hazard than the original hazard. This is because of the dogmatic way that health and safety guidelines are applied by those without the creativity and intelligence to think of a more effective solution.