How common are sabotages?

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alewar

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Hi there,

today I was reading about the European Karst Plain Project (ekpp.org) and it turns out that some years ago someone sabotaged one of their push dives in Source de Vis, France. The cave is located in a remote area and they laid their safety scooters, rebreathers and cylinders in the cave the day before the dive. The next morning they found that someone cut the hoses of the rebreathers and cylinders, and messed with the scooters.

Do things like this happen in the cave diving community or was this an isolated event?

Is it customary to always have a support team to watch after the equipment?
 
I can't believe that it would be other divers doing that.... (perhaps I'm naive), perhaps just kids (vandals). Seems like kids might have stolen stuff however, divers would have known that the gear would be recognized other places most likely.

In any case, I probably would have wanted to keep a couple of non-diving people there overnight standing watch as a security measure.
I'm very interested to see what the more experienced folk say, especially those with expertise in that subject. Wouldn't be surprised if there weren't a few here that didn't have first-hand info on the incident.

Steve
 
There was (is?) some hard core in-fighting in the European cave community. To my knowledge that has been the only instance of sabotage. I'm not aware of anything of the sort happening in the US, but I do know that some lines were moved down in Mexico while people were still in the cave. That wasn't malicious though.
 
Wow, never thought people would go to that extent. Incredible what people will do when they get overly competitive.
 
Sad but not outside of the norm in todays society. I could go on and on about that subject.

I would have a problem leaving $15-20k worth of gear anywhere, much less overnight in a cave without supervision. They are lucky they still had it.
 
People get protective of sites they are diving,and yes this stuff occurs. Mexico line arrow wars was a classic example,which went beyond line arrows,and included the lines and talking with land owners to prevent certain groups in.

That type of stuff has occurred here. Why does Peacock have a line committee,because two groups couldn't play nice,and kept moving the main line. I recall the Wakulla 2 project had part of their project delayed because line in Wakulla had been removed or pulled back by the WKPP. I even recall one group planning to do a push dive and their habitat had some fecal matter left in it.

I have had an ongoing project where I share the same resource. I protect their equipment and they do the same for us,plus we have open relationship of sharing data.
 
Depends on who you pi$$ off :D

You will find them (the turds doc describes) everywhere in society. One of my constant worries is that newbie cavers, or rec divers fu$ku9 the line I put in on a day the vis goes to sh1t.
 
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After further reading about the EKPP it seems they were victims of their own success. Apparently they had a lot of talent and money in their team, going as far as inventing the RB80 and selling the rights to Halcyon. They starting pushing the lines in many European caves far outside the reach of the local teams and that made many people furious.

I didn't know there was such a dark side in the cave community. How is that outside Europe? Do teams get a sh!t storm every time they do a push dive in a foreign cave?
 
http://cavediveflorida.com/Rum_House.htm

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