Question Do you cave dive exactly the way you teach people to cave dive? Do you cave dive the way you were taught?

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Lost Line Drill.
I hate that drill. It takes up way too much time for something that, in reality, the lesson is, "DON'T LOSE THE LINE!!!!!!!!"
Dive in a way that your line awareness is never in question.
How much time would that be? I did 1 field drill, and we spent 1 out of 21 dives in my C1 class doing this drill. It took around 30 minutes total for my team of 2 in the cave - with one "dry run" with vis/light, and one blackout lost line drill each.

I actually really liked this drill. It was one of the things I had been slightly worried about before the class, but I had a few takeaways that I appreciated:

- losing the line is stressful/NEVER lose the line
- the line SHOULD be very close, unless you royally screwed up
- learning the cave is important, look around
- when dirt hits the fan, calm down and be methodical, trust the protocol

It was uncomfortable even though I knew it was just a drill, especially after missing the line on my first try and spooling back to the tie-off and finding out I was slightly disoriented and at a different angle then I expected, but at least in the training scenario I managed to stay calm and work it out. I anticipate a real lost line to be much worse mentally, so of course I don't know how I would react, but in other oh snap moments I've had, I've fallen back on my training, so I think I have a fair chance of working through it - but most of all I'm more aware than ever of where the line is at all times, because I never want to be in that situation on a real dive.

TLDR:
It didn't take that long in my class, and it taught me two important things: respect for the line - never lose it, and a protocol I can fall back on to stave off panic in a worst case scenario.

PS.
I have heard other instructors say cave classes often spend too much time on failures (which are exceedingly rare with well maintained equipment) and too little time on blackout drills (no viz happens all the time to various degrees)
 
I have heard other instructors say cave classes often spend too much time on failures (which are exceedingly rare with well maintained equipment) and too little time on blackout drills (no viz happens all the time to various degrees)

I am definitely not one of those instructors.

If a diver who is not actively exploring is routinely encountering visibility so limited that absolute fluency with zero-vis procedures for longer than a few body lengths... that diver needs to seriously re-evaluate their buoyancy.

If you don't bother the bottom, it won't bother you and in many thousands of hours in the water and observing lots of divers around me every day I find that zero-visibility is not a thing that everyone needs to be prepared to deal with at any moment's notice.

Gear fails, though.

I've seen brand new hoses explode. I've seen second stages fall off. I've seen fittings come loose and wings fall apart.

I've seen lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of gear failures. But rarely have I seen true zero visibility for more than a few feet.

What everyone should be way more fluent with of the two...

Is neither.

Yes, we need mastery of both. But the biggest shortcoming I see is just normal diving practices. Teamwork. Communication. Linework. The stuff we ALWAYS do. That almost everyone has some shortcoming on during every single dive.

That's what the most time should be spent practicing and discussing during class.

Not some nonsense you need to do once for your instructor because it's a lonely, scary skill that, ideally, you are never, ever going to do again and barely remember the steps of if you do.
 
In an eighty-year-old WWII Indo-Pacific Wreck, you will ALWAYS have deteriorating visibility, just from bubble percolation and/or your own movement through ships spaces, such that worst case you will egress in zero viz, or a following team will traverse through a corridor in “raining particulate”. Line laying skills, drills & contingencies are the most important practices to learn and apply inside the 3D maze of a tech wreck penetration.
 
If a diver who is not actively exploring is routinely encountering visibility so limited that absolute fluency with zero-vis procedures for longer than a few body lengths... that diver needs to seriously re-evaluate their buoyancy.
The instructors I was referring to are active explorers, so that - in combination with the GUE mantra of beginning with the end in mind - might have played a part. With my very limited experience, all I have is conjecture, but I am guessing that percolation in less traveled passages, restrictions and maybe especially other divers/teams are very real risks of encountering bad viz or no viz. Newer cave divers might be less likely to encounter those kinds of passages, but they might also have a higher likelihood of screwing up the viz in a stressful situation, or of being in a part of a cave frequented by other rookie divers. Like you say, we were also told that in most cases no viz is highly localized, but knowing that you can make a complete exit of the cave blind would only make encountering any amount of no viz less stressful.

If you don't bother the bottom, it won't bother you and in many thousands of hours in the water and observing lots of divers around me every day I find that zero-visibility is not a thing that everyone needs to be prepared to deal with at any moment's notice.
Unless other divers in the cave disturbs the bottom. It seems prudent for me for anyone entering a cave to be prepared to deal with no viz.

Gear fails, though.

I've seen brand new hoses explode. I've seen second stages fall off. I've seen fittings come loose and wings fall apart.

I've seen lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of gear failures. But rarely have I seen true zero visibility for more than a few feet.
Absolutely. I didn't mean to imply that no gear fails, or that you shouldn't be trained to handle it. But multiple failures, or a failure leading to complete loss of gas (like a manifold failure) seems to be very rare. The point that was made, was that over a collective 90 years of diving and thousands of cave dives, they had encountered only a handful of failures like that. Failures leading to the loss of one post, like hose failure, were more common. Low/no viz were according to them much more common than any failure.

Yes, we need mastery of both. But the biggest shortcoming I see is just normal diving practices. Teamwork. Communication. Linework. The stuff we ALWAYS do. That almost everyone has some shortcoming on during every single dive.

That's what the most time should be spent practicing and discussing during class.
That sounds very much in line with what I was taught, especially if you add Finning Techniques, Trim and Buoyancy to that list. I was told many times that if a new cave diver gets in trouble, it's probably because of a breakdown of the fundamental skills. So to be fair, it's probably more accurate to say the message was:
Many cave classes spend too much time on complex failure scenarios and not enough time on the fundamentals of cave diving, including comfort with no viz.

Not some nonsense you need to do once for your instructor because it's a lonely, scary skill that, ideally, you are never, ever going to do again and barely remember the steps of if you do.
Hmm. I can only say that for me personally, it really reinforced the respect I have for line awareness. You might think it's nonsense, but I think psychologically experiencing "being lost in a cave without a line" even in a drill is something that can't be replaced with stern warnings or teaching strict protocols. And for an instructor, I could even imagine it being a decent screening drill, as you might argue that someone panicking or not being able to keep a cool head during that drill might not be ready for cave diving.

As for not remembering the steps, again I'm not so sure. Of course nobody knows how they will react in that situation until it happens, but excluding a mindless panic, the steps are quite simple and logical. The tie-offs are pretty obvious, to have any sort of reference, and then search in a pattern that fits the situation. What would I forget? Placing a cookie on the assumed exit side when you find the line? Stowing the light? Those are the only candidates I could think of, and while they might increase the risk of mis-navigation or entanglement, neither seem to make or break your chances of survival.
 

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