How much experience does one need before attempting Cavern/Intro to Cave?

[Dayo Scuba]

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Join Date: Jan 2006
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If you think you are ready to take a cavern class then you should. If you take it with one of the instructors that teaches technical courses and does a good job, you may find it to be a very humbling experience. I have always recommended students taking a cavern class as it teaches proper buoyancy and trim and good diving practices. Find a real hard-ass instructor, it will be worth it as you go forward in technical and open water diving. Remember most diving accidents occur when one over steps there training, with that said stay out of caves, caverns and wrecks until you are trained or the next post about you could be in the Incident and Accident Posts

 

[bamamedic]

I know, I know...guess I really didn't see the caverns as much of an overhead environment...to me they didn't seem any worse than the schoolbus swimthrough at ABWA. I have since learned otherwise. Being that I've gotten chewed out by nearly every diver I know (My OW instructor's exact words were..."it would be cheaper to just take a gun and shoot yourself"), I guess there was more danger there than I realized. Truthfully, I still don't see where the dark silty schoolbus swimthrough is any more dangerous than a gravel bottomed cavern, but maybe that's because I should probably be staying out of both! LOL

Anyways, thanks for the advice, y'all.

 

[TSandM]

There's a significant amount of inconsistency in what is taught about overhead environments, and what people actually DO. I remember being somewhat amazed when the dive op took us into the Cathedrals in Lanai. They are huge lava caves. Admittedly, there are multiple exits, and LOTS of slots that allow light, but you ARE in an overhead environment, and no direct ascent is possible. Yet recreational divers without any special training do these dives every day.

The two big dangers of overhead diving are getting lost, and the need to solve problems underwater. You're unlikely to get lost inside a schoolbus, or in the Ginnie Ballroom. You might be able to silt out the school bus to where you couldn't see at all, but it's small enough that you should be able to grope your way out. You couldn't silt out the Ballroom. But in either environment, you could encounter a situation where you could be in a world of hurt or stress. (For example, a freeflow you can't stop, or getting your mask kicked off.) You don't have that final, desperate option of bolting for the surface, so you are forced to solve the problem underwater. Neither is difficult to solve, given good skills and a calm, observant buddy, but if you haven't practiced air-sharing (and maintaining your buoyancy well while doing so) or deploying and clearing a backup mask, doing so in an overhead could be the precursor to panic. Bolting upward when there's a ceiling above you is a recipe for disaster.

There's nothing about cave training that's rocket science. It's just taking diving skills and improving them to where you are unlikely to cause yourself grief in a confined, delicate and potentially silty environment, and polishing emergency procedures to where, if there IS an issue, you have a better likelihood of being able to solve it calmly and make your exit.

As I seen said a lot of times, "Anybody can penetrate a cave. The big thing is being able to get back OUT."

 

[bamamedic]

Thank you, TSandM. That makes a whole lot of sense.

 

[Dive-aholic]

I have always recommended students taking a cavern class as it teaches proper buoyancy and trim and good diving practices.

I disagree with this. A cavern class is not the place to learn proper buoyancy and trim. A cavern class is where you learn how to handle a reel, how to work with lines/tie-offs, etc. How to do blacked out exits. How to do OOAs, etc. Buoyancy needs to be good before you get to this point because now you're adding a bunch of task loading to everything.

guess I really didn't see the caverns as much of an overhead environment...to me they didn't seem any worse than the schoolbus swimthrough at ABWA...

A school bus is small. Yes, you can get stuck in it, but it would be really difficult to get lost in it.

A cavern can be large and easy to get lost in. Lots of caverns also lead to caves, which can be very tempting to enter and very easy to get lost in. Like I said, let's do some dives together and once you're ready we'll take a tour of the JB cavern. You'll see exactly what I mean there.