Are Cave divers missing out?

[Joanna.Cordry]

...by avoiding certain systems/characteristic properties (High/Low flow, clay sediment, dark walls, 'fluffy insulation type of silt' etc, etc, are we not cutting ourselves short in practice, creating awareness, honing technique, comfort and overall better cave diving?

I suppose it depends what your goals are and how you define "missing out." If your goal is specialize in one type of cave and to perfect your technique (Yeah, right - like there's not always room for improvement...) specific to that type of cave, you may feel like be "missing" out whenever you're in another system... If you want to visit every system on the planet, you may think you're missing out if you have to dive the same one twice. I'm sure some people think that anyone who dives mostly in caves is missing out by not spending more time in the ocean, and I've met some freedivers who think all scuba divers have completely missed the boat...

That said, IF your goal is to "be the best cave diver you can be" (and I think quite a few people are probably happy being "good" cave divers and sticking to recreational caving w/o always having to push themselves), I would guess there would be a lot to gain from either (or both) approaches - diving a variety of types of caves to become experienced and comfortable in a range of different environments, but developing the depth of your knowledge/understanding/skill in specific environments. A combination of depth and breadth...

 

[jeandiver]

Florida caves suck. They are all too deep with too high flow to do any decent diving. And they're ugly. Stay away or you may end up like scubafool.

Er , if I was 1/10 the Diver Da Fool is , well , er , I'd be a strutten dem doubles
I could only HOPE I could end of as GOOD as Da Fool is.

OH and one more thing , when you live right in Cave Country , you kind of like , er , dive dem Florida caves.
High , low , medium flow ... All Wonderful and Beautiful in their own way. I am still one of these divers that STILL LOVES just being in the water. And blowing bubblies of course!
(Gads , I am still HAPPY diving Ginnie's ballroom ... )

Jeano of Beano

 

[PerroneFord]

Interesting topic. One I was discussing recently before a cave dive with a friend who's quite an accomplished cave diver.

He is from outside the area and was talking about how so few people were at some of the sites he visited, while so many were at Ginnie. I mentioned that I don't care for Ginnie due to the high flow. He agreed for much the same reason.

I think much of this comes down to your goal of being in the water, and what you enjoy. Personally, I dive to have fun. On any given day, that might entail trying to see how far I can swim on a stage, or burning up a set of doubles looking around the cavern at JB, or riding a scooter around the basin at Morrison. Sometimes it might even be working on ascents for 2 hours in the pool. I am not in the caves to be the worlds best cave diver. I'll leave that to others. And frankly, diving Devils is more work than I enjoy. Some enjoy the challenge. More power to them. I get my exercise playing soccer, and when I dive, I prefer to take it easy. On that dive with my buddy, we swam for an hour and probably didn't do more than 1000ft total. We both finished deco just beaming about how much fun we had.

So the idea of "missing out" seems to be tied to "opportunity cost". If you are doing exactly what you want to be in the water when you dive, that opportunity cost is quite low.

 

[BabyDuck]

"the time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time."

true dat, perrone!