Cave diving discussion - Split from Curious Question thread

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WTF, this thread makes no sense now... and lots of posts with good advise in them have been deleted. :shakehead:

After watching that video, all I can say is wow! About cave conservation, what say you if I came and trashed your reefs, messed up your shot etc? I'll echo LiteHedded, please stay in California!
 
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What a bunch of snobs! Elitists and know nothings! So call up Bill and giving him a good talking to! He has a copy of the DVD! Point out how much you know and how little him and Orlowski know! Give it to them boys! I dare you! He has forgotten more than you know! I love people who judge others and they can't find their butts with both hands! The example of a video given here was terrible, unprofessional, shaky and nothing but fins and asses! Hands all over the walls and bumping into everything in sight, which isn't much since the camera work sucked! So go ahead and stick you nose in the air! My SCUBA is inclusive not exclusive and we welcome even you to California! There is a big difference between million year old reef and living reef! If your not smart enough maybe you should talk to your Brother who is your uncle, isn't that how it goes back in the swamp? Wrong Gas? Where you there? No your Mother who is your sister was, right?
 
What a bunch of snobs! Elitists and know nothings! So call up Bill and giving him a good talking to! He has a copy of the DVD! Point out how much you know and how little him and Orlowski know! Give it to them boys! I dare you! He has forgotten more than you know! I love people who judge others and they can't find their butts with both hands! The example of a video given here was terrible, unprofessional, shaky and nothing but fins and asses! Hands all over the walls and bumping into everything in sight, which isn't much since the camera work sucked! So go ahead and stick you nose in the air! My SCUBA is inclusive not exclusive and we welcome even you to California! There is a big difference between million year old reef and living reef! If your not smart enough maybe you should talk to your Brother who is your uncle, isn't that how it goes back in the swamp? Wrong Gas? Where you there? No your Mother who is your sister was, right?

...And we revert to stereotyping, and a pretty poor one at that, good one! Having watched both videos, it's clear who was touching the cave more...
 
Is it bad form to put someone on ignore because you find them to be too exclamatory?

Having seen multiple first stages knocked off a tank by a small impact force, I refuse to believe they are possibly safe in an overhead environment. Dive as you wish, but I won't use a yoke reg in overhead, nor will I dive with anyone who does. I'm not DIR, I'm not hardcore, I'm a Common-Sense-Diver.

I also agree that divers who see no need for their conservation efforts, need to stay out of caves. Divers who don't care about protecting the cave obviously don't care that much about cave diving. Anyone who cares about diving in caves will take steps to keep caves open to divers, which includes an active concern for cave conservation efforts. Cave diving is being actively promoted to the modern generation of divers, and I feel that might be something we regret as a community in the future. We are sharing these amazing resources with people who do not have the same respect for them as we do. We are observing a generation of thrill seeking divers who see cave diving only as another challenge, or another card to acquire, to prove you have good bouyancy and trim.

For that reason, I go out of my way to discourage people from cave diving unless they do it because it amazes them, not because it gives them an adrenaline rush. Sure, a smaller pool of divers increases gear prices and gas prices, but caves should not be destroyed in an effort to prove to the world that you are part of the cream of the crop. I'm not an elitest, I am not a snob. I was born and raised in Florida and understand aquifer processess and the importance of drinking water protection, and have a healthy respect for our cave systems.
 
But, just to make it clear are we saying touching a cave destroys it? Are we saying there are SCUBA police that dictate gear choice? Are we saying these are not public resources? Are we saying that education is so narrow that there is only one way? I have never seen a yoke knocked off, although I am sure it can happen, but not as easy as stated! All the redundancy must mean nothing and as a Cave diver I don't need a buddy, but thanks for the offer! As an aquifer are you peeing in your wet suit? Just wondering as inquiring minds want to know!
 
But, just to make it clear are we saying touching a cave destroys it? Are we saying there are SCUBA police that dictate gear choice? Are we saying these are not public resources? Are we saying that education is so narrow that there is only one way? I have never seen a yoke knocked off, although I am sure it can happen, but not as easy as stated! All the redundancy must mean nothing and as a Cave diver I don't need a buddy, but thanks for the offer! As an aquifer are you peeing in your wet suit? Just wondering as inquiring minds want to know!

Papa Bear, you seem to end most of your sentences with a ! or a ?. If you could please put some .'s in there from time to time, it would really, really help the wanted-to-be-a-writer-before-I-realized-it-couldn't-support-my-diving-hobby side at ease.

Now, to answer your questions.
1. Touching a cave does wear away the limestone, or sediments. However, the cave was formed by water destroying the rock and sediments. Most touching has such a low "marginal cost" in terms of rock/sediments harmed, that it is less than the "marginal benefit" of allowing a diver access to this wonderful resource. But, the goal should always be to minimize touching and cave damage of other sorts. The issue here is, your statements about cave conservation being a "joke" can be taken to mean that you do not support individual efforts to not damage a cave. Whether you meant it like that, I do not know, but that is how I interpreted what you wrote.

2. There are no scuba police that dictate gear choice. There are "rules" of accident analysis that dictate common sense gear choices. It is generally accepted that DIN regulators are more robust in terms of the impact force required to put them in a state where they do not deliver you air, and I don't see the point in arguing that it's ok to use yoke in a cave environment only because there are no cave police. Two of my very good friends died in part because they felt they could do whatever they wanted, since there are no scuba police.

3. Caves are generally considered to be public resources. However, without restrictions on consumption, people have a tendency to over consume a good. This is a generally accepted principle in the economics world, and can be demonstrated in a multitude of industries, such as fishing. Cave diving certifications used to act as a was to reduce overconsumption of the cave, but we are now certifying so many people that the caves are being damaged. Another example of this is the fact that more fatalities are occurring among trained cave divers. In the past, very few trained cave divers died. However, I fail to see how the public good nature of a cave has anything to do with the fact that you use too many ! and too many yoke regulators in a cave.

4. A good education will show a user multiple ways to do something. However, in many cases, there is only one way that makes sense. For example, every teacher will instruct students to use a hose to deliver air to the second stage. I have already explained to you, as have others, why a yoke regulator is a bad idea in ANY overhead environment. I feel that a yoke regulator is never the best choice for a regulator. There are no benefits to using a yoke regulator over a din regulator. The best education on this matter is seeing a yoke regulator destroyed by a 2' fall.

No offer was made, and you are certainly aware that being a cave diver does not make one unanswerable to the laws of needing-to-breathe-in-an-emergency or the law of hit-a-yoke-reg-and-break-it.

I am not an aquifer myself, and if you do not understand what an aquifer is, I certainly do not feel you belong in a cave environment. I figure the slight amount of urine I introduce into the aquifer is negligible considering the amount of septic tanks draining into the aquifer. :)

PapaBear, I respect you as a SB user, I really do. Can you please answer just one question for me?
Question: What benefits does a yoke regulator have over a din regulator? This is a fundamental, very basic question. In other words, I am asking you, that if we have one laboratory and two regulators and two tanks, and the regulators and the tanks are identical, is there any benefit to doing a dive in the laboratory swimming pool with the yoke regulator and tank combination, as compared to the din regulator and tank combination? An answer that includes a statement such as "yoke are more generally accepted around the world" is pointless, as I am only asking about this specific case, where there are only the two tanks and the two regulators. I am sure that if you can give a mind blowing answer, Rox, Pfc, UCFDiver and Litehedded will get off your back.
 


A ScubaBoard Staff Message...

Please feel free to have a spirited discussion. But this thread has been cleaned up once and now additional posts have been removed for personal attacks and name calling. Let's keep it "friendly" and within TOS.​

 
As far as YOU getting upset I don't give a crap even if you think your the SCUBA Police! Cave conservation is a joke! Sound like a cave hugger to me! Caves get scoured out all the time! Nothing is constant except change! The will be burnt up by the sun in the future! Am I saying co destroy something deliberately? NO! Using something means just that, we live on the planet and we use it! Nothing ever stays the same! We need to be good stewards but use it or lose it! Half Dome will be a beach some day!
After watching the video I do need to say there is a great deal of room for improvement. I won't get into the big stuff like stuffing the long hose and breathing the short one (the air share gone bad pretty much covers that) or kneeling on the bottom, but there are loads of other "minor" things that would not be tolerated in most full cave courses such as light cords that are too long and dragging the bottom, reels hanging too low and creating an entanglement hazard, dropping a light head on the bottom, etc, etc.

I won't argue that caves get used and that more use will naturally lead to more damage. But care still needs to be taken by every cave diver to strive towards zero impact on every dive to keep the damage to an absolute minimum.

Think of it in the same way as weight limits for trucks on public highways. Trucks cause more wear and tear on roads than cars, but they are a neccesary evil to get goods from point a to point b. However an overloaded truck does far more damage to a road than a large number of properly loaded trucks, so we make it illegal to drive overloaded trucks as a means to control the level of damage to highways - and it becomes even more important to enforce those laws as traffic increases on a roadway. That same logic applies directly to increased use of caves.
 
Can we move this thread to tek-to-tek so we don't have to have the moderators editing every other post? I hate when threads get so hacked up they don't even make sense anymore.
 
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