Is cave diving safer than Open Water

[J-Vo]

Can we all agree that there are more hazards involved in a 60 minute no decompression dive in a cave, than a 60 minute no decompression dive in open water?

I'll tone it down, I would feel safer on a 60min NDL dive in Eagles Nest than a 60min NDL dive off the wall in Cozumel. There are way fewer hazards out of my control in the cave.

Now, does the cave have more risk? Probably, but I'm trained to mitigate that.

 

[ginti]

On our last trip we had a discussion comparing cave diving to regular open water diving.
Cave diving has a deadly reputation, but, in all honesty, I've never been scared of it. I did cave dive twice in small sea caves and found it a pretty chill experience. Open water diving in the same sea outside the cave, on the contrary, tends to freak me out even after completing my 100th dive.
So my arguments were that cave diving is generally safer because it lacks the hazards of the open ocean: strong currents, storms, boat propellers, dangerous marine life, unreliable visibility, weird water conditions like downcurrents, etc. An overhead environment can be an advantage because it prevents you from shooting to the surface in a bout of panic. So, if done properly, cave diving in a spring is safer than diving in a sea because there are fewer things you cannot control.
I realize there are hazards specific of cave diving like silt outs, but, as longs as you can breathe and stay on the line, you always know the way out. In the meanwhile, in the open ocean, you may be caught in a strong current and drift away and never be found again.
Another advantage of cave diving in terms of safety is the fact that cave diving courses put great emphasis on safe diving techniques and are thus much harder than your typical OW where they take you down to 100 feet after your 6th OW dive for your AOW course (which I find ridiculously dangerous).
Anyway, I would live to hear your opinion on what you personally find safer and why?

I see your point, but wait a minute.

Very advanced, deep, ow dive in the middle of the ocean could potentially be more dangerous for well trained divers because after 6h+ underwater you don't know the conditions at the surface. But we are speaking abou another level of diving (to give you a range, I would say 300ft+ or something similar, although risks obviously increase step by step with depth and bottom time)

100ft ow vs cave? Not even comparable, caves pose many, many, many more risks

EDIT: not speaking from personal experience, I don't go deeper than 180/190ft ow. But I do multistage cave diving and it's far more risky and dangerous than rec diving.

 

[happy-diver]

Anywhere with less divers is less risky

 

[kensuf]

Generally nothing in the caves that can eat you. That’s a big plus for me!

You should watch this documentary about cave exploration in Mayan ruins.

47 Meters Down: Uncaged (2019) ⭐ 5.0 | Adventure, Drama, Horror

1h 30m | 16

www.imdb.com

 

[Capt Jim Wyatt]

The risks are different. I am not qualified to assess which one is more dangerous an environment.

I am qualified assess which one is more dangerous and caves are more dangerous.

 

[tursiops]

People want to point out all kinds of ways that the simple question posed is actually a very complicated question, because (for example) how do you compare a 300 ft deco dive in a high-current open ocean with an easy jaunt in a well-lined tourist tcave? They are missing the point. When a question like "Is cave diving safer than Open Water" is posed, the unspoken context is, "all other things being equal." So you cannot compare the easy cave dive with the difficult OW dive; rather, you choose the dive (let's say, NDL, no current, not deep) and say the only thing we change between dive A and dive B is we do dive A in OW and dive B in a cave. Now, is B safer than A?

 

[Capt Jim Wyatt]

So you cannot compare the easy cave dive with the difficult OW dive;

A dive in the ocean to 300 feet deep is an overhead dive if it requires decompression stops. It is a virtual overhead dive.

 

[Manatee Diver]

You should watch this documentary about cave exploration in Mayan ruins.

47 Meters Down: Uncaged (2019) ⭐ 5.0 | Adventure, Drama, Horror

1h 30m | 16

www.imdb.com

I warn people about the cave sharks, but no one listens.

 

[tursiops]

A dive in the ocean to 300 feet deep is an overhead dive if it requires decompression stops. It is a virtual overhead dive.

No one is arguing.

 

[arew+4]

No one is arguing.

All dives in open water are open water dives.