Ice Diving?

[vioch]

You make a good point however ice diving is even less forgiving than cave diving (in my opinion).

while cave style seems to be appealing its way more dangerous than overhead wreck diving as you have unlimited number of "passages" and ways to get lost and the water is near freezing so freeflow is a real danger.

We do ice dives using cave diving techniques, but i'm the second with the quotes above.
To reduce chance of possible freeflows we dive once per day and dry our gear in warm places in between.
We also do openings in the ice near the shore or wall where it is possible, but not for leaving there gear - to have chance find the opening in case of line loss by returning to shore using compass and travelling on very shallow depth along the shore looking for the openning.
For opennings that are not right near shore (wall) we also shovel HUGE arrows in the snow on the surface pointing to the hole from all angles as an additional safeguard, and again where it is possible saw small (for 1 diver) "safety" opening near the wall or shore. Most of our ice dives are also cave ones, thus nearby wall or shore are usually available.

 

[rjack321]

One issue with "cave style" ice diving is the lack of any passage or features return home with absent the line. In most lakes you're just lost in a sea of mud/silt/sediment if you don't have the line for whatever reason. With this in mind, some sites are more suited to un-tethered ice diving that others. Travelling perpendicular to the flow in the Saint Lawrence River (for instance) is really nuts - and nobodies doing that dive in winter anymore actually.