"Hard" or "easy" are simply perceptions. What may be hard for one person might be easy for another. IMO, there are "no excuses" exercises and concepts that a student or new cave diver MUST absolutely understand and demonstrate. Among these are:
1. Attitude - probably the signal most important factor and the keystone that supports all other factors. There are many cave divers, even talented ones, that possess attitudes that disturb land owner relations and endanger the safety of themselves or others. Most training standards suggest failure for improper attitude and lack of maturity.
2. Awareness - environment, equipment, team and self awareness are all important for safe cave diving - especially of team members signaling, "Emergency!" I have failed 2 students for their inability to develop this skill despite attempts to build instant awareness of emergency light and touch hand signals.
3. Acceptable trim, buoyancy and propulsion - none of these need be "perfect." In fact, practicing such skills ad nauseam prior to cave training may detract from understanding the relationship between these techniques as they apply to the environment. Often "perfect" divers believe they are diving better than they are, but their techniques are actually disturbing silt or damaging the cave environment. What looks good on video in open water may be problematic in the real world environment of the cave. One learns to adjust these factors while learning to dive better. These skills need to be good, but not perfect. The environment will teach you how to adjust or modify these factors as necessary. However, if there is enough of a deficiency that standards, diver safety or environmental protection are jeopardized then the student is not ready to "pass" that level.
4. Gas management - absolutely must be understood during dive planning and execution with like and dissimilar tanks. The rules of sixths, thirds, stage use, etc., must be applied correctly for each level of training, the environment or conditions.
5. Understand and obey the 5 rules:
- Be trained for cave diving and never exceed your level of training
- Always maintain a continuous guideline to open water (or safe exit)
- Always reserve at least 2/3 of your gas supply for exit
- Always carry at least 3 lights
- Never dive deeper than 130 feet on air or have an END of greater than 130 feet on mix
There are other factors that an instructor needs to consider, but these are the "deal breakers."
Even the best student may become rusty without proper skill maintenance. Depending upon the ability of a student upon completing a course, the amount of diving to improve or maintain ability is inversely proportional to talent. A talented student may perform well even after long absences. A student who needs work will almost certainly suffer without routine cave diving. The quality of the student isn't always a reflection upon the quality of the instructor. The phrase "Every dive is a cave dive," is meant to encourage cave-trained divers to maintain the skills, knowledge, and attitudes needed for safe and skilled cave diving. Even those students who are dialed-in when it comes to skills can do the most ludicrous things.
In years past, the majority of cave divers were locals who were primarily cave divers. The diving industry wasn't promoting cave diving. Today, thanks to the Internet, agencies pushing cave diving, and even message boards like ScubaBoard, more and more divers are seeking learn the skills taught in cave classes or add cave diver certifications to their scuba resumes.
As an instructor who pushes students to excel at drills far beyond the minimum, I can say that such drills are a double-edged sword. First, without mastery of the foundations of cave diving all the extra stuff will be for naught. So, an instructor and a student really need to work together to dial-in the basics before getting creative and go spider walking on the ceiling while buddy breathing from an oral inflater or something crazy. Sometimes students who have excelled at training and have had everything including the kitchen sink thrown at them make the mistake of believing the ability of their diving skill somehow trumps experience.
A cave diver trained anywhere is just as much a cave diver as any other cave diver. A cave diver trained by Cristina Zenato or Brian Kakuk in the Bahamas is just as much a cave diver as one trained by Jim Wyatt or David Rhea in Florida or by Steve Boegarts or Danny Riordan in Mexico or by Cedric Verdier in France.
Each environment offers different challenges to skill. In Bahamian caves, a diver will need to employ solid shuffle or modified flutter kicks for far greater distances than in Florida. Muscles and skills will need to be developed so the diver doesn't cramp in those conditions. A Florida cave diver may have weaker abilities to perform such skills. Conversely, a cave diver from the Bahamas may find diving in high flow caves to be a challenge and the requisite skills will need to be developed. Even if you are trained in an environment, without practice your skills will atrophy.
- Too much scootering will reduce swimming propulsion skills
- Too much swimming will hamper the ability to scooter artfully
- Too much high flow diving will allow slop low flow caves won't tolerate
- Too much low flow diving will allow the techniques used for high flow to rust
No matter where you cave dive, you'll need to find the best ways to maintain your skills, balance your abilities, and you'll need extra education and guidance when changing environments that you haven't visited.
PSAI requires 12 full cave dives after apprentice if moving from zero to hero. In the hands of a talented educator additional dive time will be beneficial. In the hands of a poor educator added dives will only mean more time in the water with little to any improvement. When I teach, I balance high and low flow training. I think most instructors do this conditions permitting. Why would a diver from Grand Bahama need to visit a flow cave if his intention is to dive Grand Bahama? To say that he couldn't earn his NSS-CDS card, for example, without traveling to Florida is silly. If he travels to Florida, I'm sure he'll be smart enough to get a guide or seek instruction in high flow diving. Most cave divers have the proper attitude toward safety. Those who don't often end up in the IUCRR accident reports. You can regulate all you want, but regulations often can't fix stupid. Personal responsibility is the hallmark of a true cave diver.
As a diver whose buddy often needs to meet a dive quota, I can say that quotas tend to push divers into diving when they don't feel like it or into making dives they don't want to make. In that sense, quotas create the potential for accidents as much as they strive to keep divers diving to prevent accidents.
There are always problems with any proposed solution. I don't think current training is the problem, the problem is what divers do after their training. If we look at the PSAI Rules of Accident Analysis there are 10 rather than 5 including:
- solo diving
- poor skill maintenance
- poor equipment maintenance
- aging diving population
- new technologies
A very small number of deaths occur to untrained cave divers in recent history. Before training was available, many more untrained divers perished in caves. Today, trained cave divers are exceeding training limits, suffering health issues, diving solo, not keeping up with gear or skill maintenance or using rebreathers, scooters and gases to go "too far, too fast."
Some people cave dive for recreation. Others cave dive to become the next explorer. Others make their living from cave diving such as through instruction, film-making, or scientific research. Everyone within the community can learn from everyone else. No voice should be discounted. Finding caves off the beaten path is often a matter of who you know and what you know about research and not necessarily related to your diving skill.
Good post.
