Is cave diving safer than Open Water

[NW Dive Dawg]

My opinion is that I guess it depends on the cave. I think that a clearly marked, lined and previously mapped cave dive in benign high vis warm water conditions is far safer than a cold water, low vis, high current deep dive to an entanglement rich wreck dive in the Pacific NW........ I think that in most scenarios that I could tag along and be totally OK on a cave dive as long as I have the exact same equipment as the pro's. But I don't think the reverse is true.

 

[ntlhui]

Are there metrics we can use?

We can compare consequences - cave diving is undoubtedly more dangerous than open water, since the consequence of things going wrong is much worse.

It would be interesting to compare other metrics. Maybe people smarter/more knowledgeable can find the appropriate numbers:

• Per capita rate of incident (# of incidents per diver per year, e.g. equipment failure, etc)
• Per capita of injury/fatality (# of injuries/fatalities per diver per year)
• Rate of incident for cave trained divers vs rate of incident for open water divers

 

[schuylerclark]

I think one should be careful not to conflate the likelihood of an accident with the seriousness of an accident. Which is worse: a 20% chance I'll stub my toe, or a 0.0001% chance that I'll die? All other things being equal, I'm pretty sure I'd pick the toe-stubbing every time.

 

[shark_za]

Not even in the same ball park, not even the same sport

 

[Superlyte27]

My opinion is that I guess it depends on the cave. I think that a clearly marked, lined and previously mapped cave dive in benign high vis warm water conditions is far safer than a cold water, low vis, high current deep dive to an entanglement rich wreck dive in the Pacific NW........ I think that in most scenarios that I could tag along and be totally OK on a cave dive as long as I have the exact same equipment as the pro's. But I don't think the reverse is true.

Yikes!
Yeah, that’s how people die.
Class, remember Sheck’s accident analysis that determine 5 rules of cave diving. The rule broken that led to the most fatalities was LACK OF TRAINING.

 

[arew+4]

How many active "intro to cave" or higher divers are there? How many die cave diving annually?

How many active OW to AOW divers are there? How many die Open water diving annually?

For this I would exclude cardiac deaths from this analysis because the "Cave" population is going to be in better shape on average due to the rigors involved.

 

[Vicko]

Depends.
One of the people looking for really deep caves in Europe told me that he would never dare to do a 100m exploration dive in open water, to much moving factors that he can't have any control over.
In a cave you can drop stages, set safety divers, habitats and the cave itself will not change unless something catastrophic happens.
So once you have a considerable deco ceiling diving in caves becomes "safer" than doing the same profile in open water.

 

[Divin'Papaw]

Depends.
One of the people looking for really deep caves in Europe told me that he would never dare to do a 100m exploration dive in open water, to much moving factors that he can't have any control over.
In a cave you can drop stages, set safety divers, habitats and the cave itself will not change unless something catastrophic happens.
So once you have a considerable deco ceiling diving in caves becomes "safer" than doing the same profile in open water.

You are comparing two types of technical diving ... deep open water and cave. Those types of diving are so different as to be almost incomparable to recreational (within NDL) open water diving.

To your post, deep open ocean diving, deep freshwater lake diving, cave diving, wreck penetration diving ... they all have their own risks and it is hard to say one is more dangerous than the other. But one thing is patently obvious ... they are all TECHNICAL dives and MORE RISKY and therefore MORE DANGEROUS than recreational open water diving.

 

[Norwegian Cave Diver]

Risk assessment is a personal threshold for what is safe and not safe - for you.
Some people think scuba diving is too risky for them, and they would be correct. I have seen people put a mask on and say no I cant do it, or put a regulator in their mouth and face in the water and say no I cant do it.
For an OW or AOW diver we understand the risks of 60 - 100 foot depths and also understand that if you have a problem go to your buddy, or whoever is closest to you and solve the problem or go to the surface.
Cave diving is quite easy. Follow a line, turn around at a given amount of gas remaining and exit. BUT... if something goes wrong in a cave the exit could be 1.5 hours away, the chances of the diver with a problem getting out alive decreases exponentially, why? - because the second diver may not want to increase their risk of dying to help the other diver who isn't dead - yet.
For open water divers (not including wreck and deep trimix divers) your dive conditions are so simple in comparison to a cave there is almost no comparison.
IMO.

 

[halocline]

I don't think the OP understands what cave diving really is. He talks about 'feeling calmer' in a 'sea cave' environment than in OW but evidently has little or no concept of the inherent dangers or even the actual environment of underwater cave systems. I suspect if he had some experience in actual cave diving he would quickly change his perspective.

The only way to make a credible claim that one activity is 'safer' than another is through statistical data. I spent a couple of minutes on a google search for 'cave diving fatality rate vs open water' and came up blank. Since I don't really care about it enough to work harder, I'll leave it to someone else to find actual statistics. It's a tough thing to quantify because there are so many variables.

Or you can just state the obvious, yes cave diving is more dangerous than OW diving.