cenotes experience/certification?

[jayjoans]

I'm in Cozumel right now, sitting in the Casa Mexicana lobby at their hotspot, and 5 hours ago we got back from diving the cenotes.

The experience was once in a lifetime, meaning I probably would not pay to do it again. Our group of 6 really enjoyed it, it was something new and different, but in our collective opinion it got a little boring after the first 20 minutes or so. They are truly beautiful caverns, and interesting, but lack of sea life, color and changing terrain make it hard to compete with the reefs of Cozumel. The fresh water diving was great, deduct 40% of the salt water weight you carry. The water is colder, about 78 degrees or so, but all of us felt the cold more than we thought we would.

We had 2 very experienced cave divers take us, there are no more than 3 divers per guide. They both had on doubles and were very specific about teaching us the proper way to dive the caverns. THESE ARE NOT CAVE DIVES. You are in the daylight zone at all times, not traveling more than 200' from daylight. I think 200' is the limit, and I would guess in Dos Ojos we were no more than 50' from daylight at any given time. In the "Bat Cave" dive (again, not technically a cave dive) we were in a little deeper, but the Bat Cave dive was WAY better than Dos Ojos. Maybe because there were more overheads and it was certainly darker. Never at any point would it have been totally black had we turned off our lights (which you never do, in case they don't turn back on)

After diving the reefs in Cozumel for the last week I found myself habitually looking in crevices and holes for the first 20 minutes or so, but there is nothing there in this fresh water dive. 2 of the divers in our group are 12 and 14, and had no problem at all with neutral buoyancy and keeping themselves off the walls and out of the silt. It's a really slow, calm, clear interesting dive.

While we were down there was a guy speeding around and snapping pictures of us, after the first pic he got a bit annoying, no doubt he was going to hit us up to buy the shots after the dive. This guy must have taken 5 pics of all 6 in our group. Afterwards he offered us a CD with the pics on it for $35, I told him I'd pay $20, and it turns out that this CD is REALLY cool. He has the lighting all dialed in and the angles to show you against the stalagmites and stalagtites, in addition to 2 short MPEG videos of your group swimming through. (I'm not a shill for this guy, or I wouldn't have told you what I paid The family back home will really be impressed.

 

[Dive-aholic]

I'm not positive, but I believe standards are to enter no more than 130 feet from the surface. If the cavern entrance is at 50' depth, then you can only penetrate 80'. Beyond that exceeds the "limits" of a cavern dive.

Caverns and caves are not for anyone, fortunately. For me, the caves don't need sea life, they have their own color and personality. I like reef diving, but I'd rather be in a cave. Besides, you don't have to rinse your gear after freshwater diving.

 

[Pez de Diablo]

Where does one get "cavern guide training"?

How does being with a certified guide make it safe?

It sounds like the ultimate "trust-me dive". Don't all cave courses warn about trust-me dives? Aside from being a trust-me dive it sounds like a monster oxymoron...safe while knowing nothing, having never demonstrated the skills that every one has agreed should be required for cavern diving as long as you're doing a trust-me dive (which you shouldn't do unless you really know what you're doing) with some one who knows how.

I call bull shiit.

Mike,

To start off, you know I have the utmost respect for you. I asked you to recommend an instructor for my cave training, I value your opinion. Now with that stated, I have also decided to try and make a living guiding non trained cave divers in the cavern and also training ow divers to become cavern divers (currently on the road to becoming a cave instructor).

Currently there is a program that trains full cave divers with a min 50 cave dive and are also DM's or OW instructors to safely conduct/guide cavern dives for open water divers. The program was developed by cave instructors (I am pretty sure Fred Devos, Bil Phillips and Scott Carnaghan to name a few).

Some of the limits are:

Continuous guideline to the surface
Min 60' viz
Always maintain visual contact with sunlight.
rule of 3rds.
Nothing small, that wouldn't allow for 3 divers to swim side by side.
No further than 200' from open air.

Typically my briefings take minimum of 45 min, we cover topics such as fin technique, cavern etiquette no touching, no silting, no gloves, no knives, light handling, line awareness, communications, air management, air sharing, formation types - just to scratch the surface. Then Everyone does a buddy check, weight check and then we spend time checking out trim, buoyancy, finning, communications and light management. It's at this point when I have to tell some people that they cannot do the dive because of skill level and that once I have the group back, we can do a clinic to help improve their skills. I then help them out of the water until I return. Just because you are an open water diver doesn't mean you have the right to do the dive. I am not the only guide that follows this rule.

As far as it being a trust me dive....

In the highly unlikely event that something should happen to me, swim to the daylight.

Is it possible to lose viz due to a silt out? Not in the caverns that are recommend in my neck of the woods. The bottom composition is heavy and even on high use days at the most popular cavern, Dos Ojos it doesn't happen. I hate to say it could never ever happen, but then I say that I will never be hit by a bus and we all know that there is a slim chance that we are hit by a bus.

The one way that a guided cenote (cavern) dive is a trust me dive is this: When you signal me and indicate that you have reached your first 1/3rd, do not be alarmed if we don't physically turn around. As indicated and most likely shown on the map of our dive, we are following on a loop and we may be beyond the 1/2 way point. So again, you need to trust me if we don't physically turn around because we are all ready heading back.

Cenote diving is unique and very beautiful and I would recommend it to anyone interested. I would never push someone that doesn't feel comfortable to do the dive and I have said no to a few people that I didn't think had the skills and I have had a few people thumb (end) the dive because it wasn't for them.

Guided Cenote dives can be very safe if the proper rules are followed, a complete briefing and review being done before the dive. Do your homework and choose a reputable guide. Just like most of us stay away from the cattle boat operations for reef diving, stay away from the shops that book for 4 dives in a day, the guides (though competent) don't have the time to work with you and may tend to push where they shouldn't.

Dennis

PS, Some thread around here I have listed some of the things you may want to look for in a guide if you feel this type of dive is for you.

 

[MikeFerrara]

Mike,

To start off, you know I have the utmost respect for you. I asked you to recommend an instructor for my cave training, I value your opinion. Now with that stated, I have also decided to try and make a living guiding non trained cave divers in the cavern and also training ow divers to become cavern divers (currently on the road to becoming a cave instructor).

Currently there is a program that trains full cave divers with a min 50 cave dive and are also DM's or OW instructors to safely conduct/guide cavern dives for open water divers. The program was developed by cave instructors (I am pretty sure Fred Devos, Bil Phillips and Scott Carnaghan to name a few).

Some of the limits are:

Continuous guideline to the surface
Min 60' viz
Always maintain visual contact with sunlight.
rule of 3rds.
Nothing small, that wouldn't allow for 3 divers to swim side by side.
No further than 200' from open air.

Typically my briefings take minimum of 45 min, we cover topics such as fin technique, cavern etiquette no touching, no silting, no gloves, no knives, light handling, line awareness, communications, air management, air sharing, formation types - just to scratch the surface. Then Everyone does a buddy check, weight check and then we spend time checking out trim, buoyancy, finning, communications and light management. It's at this point when I have to tell some people that they cannot do the dive because of skill level and that once I have the group back, we can do a clinic to help improve their skills. I then help them out of the water until I return. Just because you are an open water diver doesn't mean you have the right to do the dive. I am not the only guide that follows this rule.

As far as it being a trust me dive....

In the highly unlikely event that something should happen to me, swim to the daylight.

Is it possible to lose viz due to a silt out? Not in the caverns that are recommend in my neck of the woods. The bottom composition is heavy and even on high use days at the most popular cavern, Dos Ojos it doesn't happen. I hate to say it could never ever happen, but then I say that I will never be hit by a bus and we all know that there is a slim chance that we are hit by a bus.

The one way that a guided cenote (cavern) dive is a trust me dive is this: When you signal me and indicate that you have reached your first 1/3rd, do not be alarmed if we don't physically turn around. As indicated and most likely shown on the map of our dive, we are following on a loop and we may be beyond the 1/2 way point. So again, you need to trust me if we don't physically turn around because we are all ready heading back.

Cenote diving is unique and very beautiful and I would recommend it to anyone interested. I would never push someone that doesn't feel comfortable to do the dive and I have said no to a few people that I didn't think had the skills and I have had a few people thumb (end) the dive because it wasn't for them.

Guided Cenote dives can be very safe if the proper rules are followed, a complete briefing and review being done before the dive. Do your homework and choose a reputable guide. Just like most of us stay away from the cattle boat operations for reef diving, stay away from the shops that book for 4 dives in a day, the guides (though competent) don't have the time to work with you and may tend to push where they shouldn't.

Dennis

Thanks Dennis.

I had read that they were working on standards for guided dives and for the guides but I don't remember seeing what they came up with.

Done the way you describe, it sounds like a mini cavern class and sounds like a reasonable introduction. The lack of line drills (practice) on land and in OW still tugs at me a little though.

I don't for a minute think that you would knowingly place a diver in an unresonably dangerous situation or willingly tear up the cave. By your cautions to those selcecting a guide, I get the impression that you don't think all guides are as thourough as you are. A diver could get stuck with a hack for an OW guide or instructor too but I would think that a hack in a cave could be worse. The problem for the untrained, of course, is knowing one from the other. I think divers should be careful in their choices of OW instructors and charters but I guess I'd quadruple that warning for overhead environments.

Do you think there are enough hacks that an OW diver who doesn't know much about cave diving might have trouble avoiding them? If I just google me up a guide what do you think I'd get? That's probably an unfair question but lots of divers won't put much more into it than that.

 

[MikeFerrara]

Mike,

I tried sending a pm but your box is full, what shop do you teach out of?

Sorry. I made some room in my box.

I'm not teaching right now but when I was teaching out of a shop, it was my own shop. I taught as an independant before and after I had the shop. When I first started teaching I taught for a shop but I didn't like it.

 

[boydski]

we all know that there is a slim chance that we are hit by a bus.

I don't know Dennis, I've seen the way some of the busses and taxis drive down there, and I think of the highway as being much more dangerous than the Cave!

Just kidding.

Dennis runs a first class operation in Mexico. If you're interested in SAFE cavern tours, I would not hesitate to recommend him. I've seen some other operators take people in caverns that had no business being there ( i.e. terrified, rototilling, etc.), but that is an exception and not the norm.

 

[ShakaZulu]

Is it open at the "ceiling"? So, it's not really overhead because you can ascend?

I've been curious about this too...

Really, not where I went..........some places were open, but there was a lot that wasn't, as I found out the hard way, when I lost my group. One of my best dives though.

 

[Pez de Diablo]

<snip>
Done the way you describe, it sounds like a mini cavern class and sounds like a reasonable introduction. The lack of line drills (practice) on land and in OW still tugs at me a little though..

Well, then it would be a cavern course You have a valid point but because of the bottom composition and the visibility I feel that for a guided cavern dive in my neck of the woods the OW diver can safely do the dive with no line drills. Sometimes between dives, we pull out the reels and do practice, but only with those divers that show an interest - it's not standard.

I don't for a minute think that you would knowingly place a diver in an unreasonably dangerous situation or willingly tear up the cave. By your cautions to those selecting a guide, I get the impression that you don't think all guides are as thorough as you are. A diver could get stuck with a hack for an OW guide or instructor too but I would think that a hack in a cave could be worse. The problem for the untrained, of course, is knowing one from the other. I think divers should be careful in their choices of OW instructors and charters but I guess I'd quadruple that warning for overhead environments..

Use common sense, a reputable shop with a reputable guide. A common theme on Scubaboard when looking for any instructor is the quality of the instructor - not the agency. I think cavern guides fall into the same category.

Do you think there are enough hacks that an OW diver who doesn't know much about cave diving might have trouble avoiding them? If I just google me up a guide what do you think I'd get? That's probably an unfair question but lots of divers won't put much more into it than that.

Well, lets hope that the worst hack meets the minimum standards set out by GUE or NACD or the NSS CDS for cave training. If you pick a guide because of price or off a street corner, be very careful as there are no dive police and I have seen some really stupid stuff. However one of the best things I see down here is peer pressure, if a guide sees another guide doing something stupid we do our best to let them know it. Sometimes its not polite and I just knowing that I would also feel the same pressure from my peers is enough for me.

Dennis

 

[Pez de Diablo]

Is it open at the "ceiling"? So, it's not really overhead because you can ascend?

I've been curious about this too...

It is a dive in an overhead environment. Period. The maximum distance from an ascent to OW is 200' much further than most people can swim holding their breath. But close enough to share air and safely exit the cavern.

Dennis

 

[MikeFerrara]

Well, lets hope that the worst hack meets the minimum standards set out by GUE or NACD or the NSS CDS for cave training. If you pick a guide because of price or off a street corner, be very careful as there are no dive police and I have seen some really stupid stuff. However one of the best things I see down here is peer pressure, if a guide sees another guide doing something stupid we do our best to let them know it. Sometimes its not polite and I just knowing that I would also feel the same pressure from my peers is enough for me.

Dennis

Do you think that ethics tend to be higher in cave diving than in other parts of the dive industry? I know I've seen more of that kind of peer pressure in cave diving. I don't know if it's because cave divers, in general, care more about the sport and the caves or if it's because we always seem to have to worry about losing access or both. At least that's what I see here in the states. The cave training agencies don't seem to do business like many of the recreational training agencies either. In the case of the NACD and the NSS, I think it helps that members can vote.