Internal Wreck Diving

[Jim Lapenta]

I just received my advanced wreck instructor card this past season from Doppler. With that I feel I am in no way qualified to dive a cave. A cavern maybe but even some of those might be off limits to me.

This is my own personal view based on experience, research, discussions with other cave and wreck instructors, and seeing the results of dives in both areas going bad and why they did.

By the book there are similarities. In the water they are also there. They are not the same however. Caves normally do not deteriorate and change as rapidly as wrecks. A wreck can suffer a major change literally overnight if a section collapses. Caves don't have man made booby traps in the form of wire, cable, and conduits that reach out and grab you.

Wrecks often require a boat to get to them and you don't necessarily have all the resources you may have at a cave site should things go bad. It's unlikely an Edd is going to be a few minutes away.

All that said I am more comfortable with the idea and practice of penetration of wrecks for me than of caves. The one thing that is clear with both is they are overheads. Even so called swim thrus that some see as benign are no place for a non overhead trained diver.

No matter what some guide or instructor may say.

 

[tomfcrist]

Jim I was with you until your last point. As far as I'm concerned, if it is a well illuminated overhead, there is no additional training requirement. It's just overkill. I would concur that penetration through caves and interior passageways on ships is disclosed from that opinion, but most " swimthroughs " I have seen are big enough to drive a big rig through. If you need "special" training to accomplish that safely, you need the same training to do deco or safety stops under the boat...it is after all a true "overhead".

 

[Jim Lapenta]

Tom, I think that there comes a point where we also have to consider the diver. There are some who are being led into these swim thrus that could manage to get into trouble swimming under a 4 inch beam.

 

[tomfcrist]

Tom, I think that there comes a point where we also have to consider the diver. There are some who are being led into these swim thrus that could manage to get into trouble swimming under a 4 inch beam.

True enough, but one might say that those who would be in trouble swimming under the 4" beam shouldn't be certified to dive at all.

If I were a dive guide, which I am not thank god, I would have no problem placing the train wreck of a diver on the proverbial bench vice letting them ruin the dive of the rest of the group. I stopped feeling bad about being brutally honest with crap divers a long time ago...get your **** together, or find someone else to dive with.

 

[Incident]

True enough, but one might say that those who would be in trouble swimming under the 4" beam shouldn't be certified to dive at all.

If I were a dive guide, which I am not thank god, I would have no problem placing the train wreck of a diver on the proverbial bench vice letting them ruin the dive of the rest of the group. I stopped feeling bad about being brutally honest with crap divers a long time ago...get your **** together, or find someone else to dive with.

Too bad there are not more divers/guides/instructors like you who are willing to call people out for crap like dangling consoles, kicking the crap out of the seafloor, diving beyond their capacity, etc.

I see way too many guides and instructors who let stuff fly that shock me.

 

[Jim Lapenta]

I agree. I have had no problem sleeping at night after calling attention to poorly trained divers. Some have even came to me later to "fix them" and the crap they were taught, or more often not taught. I have a real problem with taking untrained divers into overheads that are not clearly defined as such. Never been to Coz but have seen numerous videos of people going through the Devil's Throat. That is an overhead IMO.
I have a few dives on the Duane and Spiegel Grove. There are some deceptively well lit passages that could be viewed as swim throughs. Big side cutouts or windows, cutouts in the ceilings, etc. There are also places in those areas with things to get hung up on. Old light fixtures, pipes, conduit. More importantly there are passages leading from those areas that look quite inviting and easy to navigate. Until you also remember that they are at depths approaching 100 ft. And there are a butt load of them. Passages that may look just as easy as the ones a guide or DM led them through on another trip somewhere and nothing bad happened. Only now they do not have a guide top show them the way and plan the dive for them.
I see that turning bad pretty quickly.
If you really want to do overheads get the training.

 

[eweingarden]

Thanks for all the feedback. When I told the dive guide I wasn't going to penetrate the wreck, he suggested I just stay outside until the rest of the group returned. I was rather amazed that a dive guide would tell someone to go to 100' and hang out by themselves. I don't want to paint with a broad stroke, but the lack of attention to safety left me with a bad taste in my mouth about dive operators in that part of the world.

 

[BDSC]

Thanks for all the feedback. When I told the dive guide I wasn't going to penetrate the wreck, he suggested I just stay outside until the rest of the group returned. I was rather amazed that a dive guide would tell someone to go to 100' and hang out by themselves. I don't want to paint with a broad stroke, but the lack of attention to safety left me with a bad taste in my mouth about dive operators in that part of the world.

Out of curiosity, have you ever gone through a swim through during a dive?

 

[eweingarden]

All of my dives to date have been either a reef dive, or an external wreck dive.

 

[SharkEsq]

I suspect one of the main uses of a recreational wreck class is to flag people that would be problematic in simple swim throughs. In general, if you can see light (especially, light from whence you came, so you know it's at least a human-sized point of egress) and you've got a competent buddy, you're probably OK, as long as you keep your wits about you. And that's pretty much what PADI says.

I took the PADI wreck course (in Key Largo, where I did the Spiegel and Duane), and to be honest, it doesn't really teach you much. But it did allow the wreck instructor to watch me diving in the light-zone, and get a sense for whether I was the kind of person to lose my **** if my tank bumped a door frame, had temporary viz issues from silt, or if got snagged on a cable. So while I may not be substantially more skilled after the course than I was before, at least someone was able to assess my skills and demeanor to see if I was the kind of diver that should stay outside. That being said, you'd need the instructors to actually do that, and tell the folks that don't belong that they need to get some more experience before they try that sort of diving.

Going beyond the light zone, however, seems a whole different ball game.

But, as was said before, if you feel uncomfortable doing something, then it's wise to avoid it. Since that level of surface discomfort could very well lead to panicking where panic is dangerous.