cenotes experience/certification?

[Pez de Diablo]

Dennis,

What do you think about the cavern at Carocol? Seems like I read somewhere that you were on one of the Labna Ha expeditions... so I'm guessing that you would be intimately familiar with this site. I'm guessing that you will confirm that this is a "legit" cavern, but I was also wondering if the limited light available in the main "room' might make it easy for a newbie to feel disoriented. What do you think?

Never been on a Labna Ha expedition - out of my price range. I have only dove at Carocol once, no idea about the cavern zone. I didn't pay any attention to it.

Limited light, always contributes to disorientation IMO and through a thorough briefing you try to minimize it. It happens on night dives and it happens in caverns most people are fine with a good briefing.

Bottom line: Cavern diving isn't for everyone. If you don't feel it's right for you don't do it and don't give in to peer pressure.

Today I overheard a couple of people discussing what second stage is the alternate air source and what one they use to breath off of. If you don't know this, please don't cavern dive.

Inexperienced divers and a poor guide are a recipe for disaster.

 

[Pez de Diablo]

Point is that if you get in any kind of trouble, especially if you are found at fault in an accident, well, you don't want to be in Mexico. An instructor (fully insured) can guide you through a cave much better, and safer, than any so called "guide"...

First, Instructors are not required to carry insurance in Mexico.

As a Canadian here, I still carry insurance that covers me whether I am guiding in a cave, cavern or instructing in open water. I do not know one national that carries insurance. This isn't to say that no national does, but I would speculate that it is rare.

Steve Ash, et al,

I think Steve Ash has some good points as well. I just wanted to throw out a different perspective to his comments.

 

[Humuhumunukunukuapua'a]

Thanks for all the replies. Hubby is bored with Cozumel diving, although he loved the C-53, which we hear is now closed since Wilma, so I was trying to find something that might hold his interest. Being slightly claustrophobic, I don't think I would handle caves/caverns/cenotes well (It took everything I had to stay calm in the C-53 when someone else was holding the flashlight), but I'm sure he would be fine.

Why not just go...you know...somewhere else?

Lotta fish in the sea as they say...

 

[GreenDiverDown]

Never been on a Labna Ha expedition - out of my price range. I have only dove at Carocol once, no idea about the cavern zone. I didn't pay any attention to it.

It never occurred to me that you had to PAY to be part of an expedition. I just assumed it was a volunteer or invite kinda deal.

I'm sure that the cavern zone is quite boring for cavers... I can see how someone that guides the tourist day after day might get a little complacent. OTOH, for newbees, it can be quite intimidating.

Limited light, always contributes to disorientation IMO and through a thorough briefing you try to minimize it. It happens on night dives and it happens in caverns most people are fine with a good briefing.

Yes, the main room at Carocol is VERY dark and the bottom is very heavy with silt so that the entrance to the cavern becomes very shallow. The result is that the passage ways leading off into the cavern are very dark and it seemed to me, at least, that throughout most of the dive I could not see any natural light. I guess, for that reason alone, it seemed more like a cave than a cavern.

BTW... I loved it. It was probably one of my most wonderful dive experiences... ever.

 

[Pez de Diablo]

It never occurred to me that you had to PAY to be part of an expedition. I just assumed it was a volunteer or invite kinda deal.

That's kinda how I feel too.

I'm sure that the cavern zone is quite boring for cavers... I can see how someone that guides the tourist day after day might get a little complacent. OTOH, for newbees, it can be quite intimidating.

Not at all boring. I have been doing it for 1 1/2 years and still loving it. I can pick from a number of different caverns to dive, so I mix it up. Even the dives, that I have done hundreds of times, I still love them. I am always seeing something interesting or seeing the cavern in a new "light." As the seasons change so do the caverns, the sunlight streaming in is at a differnent angle making new and interesting shaddows. I have also met some wonderful people.

Here are a couple of shots from today:

 

[daniel f aleman]

First, Instructors are not required to carry insurance in Mexico.

All instructors with NACD or NSS-CDS are required to carry insurance no matter where they live, no matter where they instruct. Proof of insurance coverage is manditory to receive a yearly renewed "active status" rating from both agencies.

 

[GreenDiverDown]

Your pictures remind me of what I missed at Carocol... the streams of light cascading down into the cavern. I've been in dry cavern's where this was just awesome. The kelp forests also have this at times... that's why they are my favorite places to dive.

Now... I DID have my 21W Sandrof can... which did a remarkable job of setting things on fire. But the effect was a little different... really cool... but different.

 

[MikeFerrara]

Actually, you probably are. Florida caves are lined along the same standards. There's usually one gold line and jumps are configured pretty much the same. Mexican caves are different. It's very possible to find a gold line that splits into several different routes without real good line markers. If you don't know the system, you can easily get lost. This happened just recently with 2 divers dying. I haven't dived Mexican caves but know Florida instructors who won't dive some of the Mexican systems without a guide because of the way they line them.

Cave divers don't trust a line that they don't verify themself. If you don't like the line that's already there, run your own. If you don't like the way a line is marked, place your own markers. Some popular Florida caves have gold line and even line committees to maintain them but other caves don't have any line at all. There may be some "standard" and then again, there may not be. Even in Peacock there are sections with either no line or nothing but the original exploration line...and not all of it in very good shape.

My cave training was in Florida but most of my cave diving is not in Florida. I also dive a flooded mine in Missouri which is a maze of tunnels and huge rooms with lines running everyplace, everywhich way and tons of intersections with some of the line just laying lose. You're responsible for your own navigation and you don't just mindlessly follow a line that some one else placed. Intersections (T's, Y's or whatever) should always get marked by the dive team (if not each individual diver).

There was more to the situation where the two divers recently died down in Mexico...two teams, sharing jump reels, divers apparantly taking pictures and ignoring navigation and gas plans...a bunch of stuff that's just as dumb in Florida as it is in Mexico. It sure wasné because Florida cave divers aren't taught how to dive on Mexican lines. that's the craziest thing I ever heard and half thge line in Mexico was probably layed by Florida cave divers. There's plenty of Florida trained cave divers who dive caves all over the world without a guide.

 

[MikeFerrara]

All instructors with NACD or NSS-CDS are required to carry insurance no matter where they live, no matter where they instruct. Proof of insurance coverage is manditory to receive a yearly renewed "active status" rating from both agencies.

Maybe but other agencies only require instructors who are residents of certain countries to carry insurance.

 

[Dive-aholic]

Cave divers don't trust a line that they don't verify themself. If you don't like the line that's already there, run your own. If you don't like the way a line is marked, place your own markers. Some popular Florida caves have gold line and even line committees to maintain them but other caves don't have any line at all. There may be some "standard" and then again, there may not be. Even in Peacock there are sections with either no line or nothing but the original exploration line...and not all of it in very good shape.

My cave training was in Florida but most of my cave diving is not in Florida. I also dive a flooded mine in Missouri which is a maze of tunnels and huge rooms with lines running everyplace, everywhich way and tons of intersections with some of the line just laying lose. You're responsible for your own navigation and you don't just mindlessly follow a line that some one else placed. Intersections (T's, Y's or whatever) should always get marked by the dive team (if not each individual diver).

There was more to the situation where the two divers recently died down in Mexico...two teams, sharing jump reels, divers apparantly taking pictures and ignoring navigation and gas plans...a bunch of stuff that's just as dumb in Florida as it is in Mexico. It sure wasné because Florida cave divers aren't taught how to dive on Mexican lines. that's the craziest thing I ever heard and half thge line in Mexico was probably layed by Florida cave divers. There's plenty of Florida trained cave divers who dive caves all over the world without a guide.

I agree, just because the line is there doesn't mean it can be trusted. You have to learn it first. My point was that I've heard of caves in Mexico where you'll come up to a "T" that branches off in 5 different directions. Mark it, swim on, and come across another "T" that branches in 6 different directions. That's a little different than what's found in Florida, and I don't think those extra Ts were laid by Florida divers (although I could be wrong on that). I've had limited experience in cave diving so far, but what I've seen and heard is that most of those "T"s would be jumps or gaps in Florida, not tied directly to the gold line like in Mexico. It could be dived safely, but it could become very confusing too.