Do cave divers need wreck training?

[boulderjohn]

Sounds like people dying because they thought they were smarter than the average bear.. Stay humble...

Jim..

The Rouses had a lot of problems. They were called the Bicker Brothers because of their incessant fighting. On the fatal dive, the two of them bickered each other into doing a dive in poor conditions even though neither one of them wanted to do it. Another factor was money. Chris's business was going through a bad spell, and he decided they could not afford to use helium on that trip.

 

[Germie]

Where I live it is quite normal that if you are an adventurous sportsdiver that you go wreckdiving at the Northsea.
And with the boat I go, people are used to penetrate the wrecks. 1 rule that is told to every diver: take a reel. The wrecks are not so big here. The skipper tells sportsdivers about the hazards of wreckdiving: currents (tidal), sharp parts, unstable parts, etc. The depth is maximum 30m, 90ft. Dive nitrox and stay withing NDL.
You can do a Northsea wreckdiver course here. But the quality depends on the instructor.
From this wreckdiving I went into cavediving as my interests where more than sportsdiving. Now I learned to use a reel, etc (I used a reel before, but did not know about tie offs, so I used it, but not properly). And with this knowledge I changed my wreckdiving. I now do with my cavediving cert and the knowledge of the hazards of wreckdiving told by the skipper my wreckpenetrations to all depths that I want to do.
A good cavern or wreckdiver course will help. But the full cave divers have a lot of advantages. The distances to open water are shorter in wrecks than in caves. Entanglement risks in caves are different from wrecks (cables, steel, sharp edges in wrecks), but you get the same risks in mines. Even unstable parts in wrecks and mines are found.
Here a picture of diving a blast furnace, see the risk of entanglement. And risk of siltout, perculation, etc. It is an overhead environment, no tidals, no currents, no waves, but the rest is more or less the same as in wrecks:

Here another risk of a mine, the wooden parts can be rotten. Bubbles can make it instable (rotting process changes by oxygen/air vs only in water, sometimes wood already rotten before it was flooded because of moisture when mine was in use). The walls can instable as well.

The full cavediver that goes cavediving or minediving has already the techniques, the diver need to recognise the new risks in more instable environments (sharp edges, entanglements, etc). I learned this from a skipper and by reading and going with experienced wreckdivers. The cave course was most usefull for the techniques I needed. When you are no cavediver and want to dive wrecks, I would say do a wreckdiver course or a caverncourse. If you are a full cavediver, know the differences and build up experience slowly. You know the techniques.

 

[tbone1004]

Damn! That was scary ! Definitely got my heart racing !! This little 10 minute video might should be shown in every single Open Water course ( but maybe at the end of it, not the beginning ).

modern video made a couple years ago, similar message

 

[The Chairman]

modern video made a couple years ago, similar message

The original was far better in my mind. I keep showing it to my students.

 

[Diving Dubai]

Actually - sorry to say. Both videos are poor.

I will not dispute the content. However

The original is tired looking. Old 4:3 format, poor presentation (watch the eyes follow the auto cue), poor quality and not engaging

The latter might be better quality @ 1080 - but the intro and acting is so laughable. Again poor production values

Video's (like other media) have to engage the audience with in the first 30 secs. Lose the audience and your playing to blank faces

Go look at any decent You tube channel to see how they manage content, engagement and production values.

Get a decent presenter to deliver the message, shoot decent B roll, utilize the sports great camera operators who know how to shoot and frame. And of course a good director.

Heck get a good Youtuber onboard (I can think of 5 off the top of my head in the US)

Playing these videos in front of an audience maybe better than nothing, but having a decent video will get the message over to far greater numbers of people.

 

[tomfcrist]

I’ve always been a fan of the graphic approach.

Want kids to pay attention to the “Don’t text/drink/have oral sex while driving” speech...show them the dead bodies.

Same applies here.

 

[newmanl]

Personally, I think the short answer to the OP's question is, yes. I think it is safe to say that while there are some transferrable skills (anti-silting propulsion techniques, gear streamlining and reel/line work, for example), there are also specific considerations and hazards unique to both. What I do think is common to both is an element of risk, and the psychological aspects that can drift over time (complacency, normalization of deviance and a decreasing aversion to risk, for example). Again, in my humble opinion, the two main issues I see are - the assessment of risk, which is very subjective and can differ with every diver and dive, and finding the "right" instructor in either discipline (each subject to their own personal assessment of risk). I find in my own diving circles it is the assessment of risk versus a mindset of "best practices" (regardless of agency) that causes groups to splinter.

 

[TONY CHANEY]

The original was far better in my mind. I keep showing it to my students.

Are you talking about the "Got Training?" video that TJ and some others did?

 

[Chris H]

I guess maybe I'm just not hardcore enough, but you can see an awful lot of amazing things on shipwrecks without having to go inside them. All but a couple of my wreck dives have been in the Great Lakes in depths from 10'-275'. I have been in many of them, but some of them don't even offer a place to go inside. The mussels have covered the details everywhere but in Lake Superior, but they have also created 100'+ of visibility in some cases. I would argue that you can be a wreck diver without tearing things out of an ocean wreck, 2 levels deep, in a collapsing pile of metal, on the sea floor. I have no wreck diver certifications, but went through Advanced Trimix to see some pretty amazing wrecks.
I'm also cave certified, and I think that the buoyancy, and general in water skills that I'd learned throughout the years made it easier from me to pass a cave course. I recently spent a week in Akumal, Mexico cave diving, and that experience was also very rewarding.
Dive within your limits, and make sure you are having fun. Sometimes, we make things a lot more difficult than they need to be. Sometimes, it is nice to leave the CCR, drysuit, and bailout bottles at home and take a leisurely swim with the fish in 20ft of water with a wetsuit and your favorite "recreational" setup.

 

[ajduplessis]

Additional training and knowledge never hurt anyone.