New Florida State Park Signs

[rddvet]

Don't get me wrong, light freediving can be fun. But seeing people in advanced classes blacking out and one convulsing is very offputting and hard to understand the fun. I know cave diving has it's risks, but if I was passing out in a cave class I wouldn't enjoy it and would probably say screw this. The classes were obviously well controlled, but they looked like barely controlled chaos. Several times the person blacking out was barely hitting the surface. It seems the margin for error was very very slim and the risk of aspiration was high.

 

[tmassey]

It seems the margin for error was very very slim and the risk of aspiration was high.

That’s the part I don’t understand.

I do understand that it is all a matter of degree. Not diving is safer than diving. Open water diving is safer than overhead diving. And I’m a cave diver, so I’m already pretty far along the risk continuum. However...

If, following proper protocol, something goes wrong in a cave, I have a number of minutes and a number of resources to depend on: gas reserve, buddy, *his* gas reserve, etc. Some might say having, say, 10 minutes of buffer is crazy. But that’s *huge* compared to a freediver. They have *seconds* of buffer. The amount that has to go wrong to exceed that is *really* small.

Again, thats the part I don’t understand: a plan that starts with “everything *will* go right, or there’s a very real chance at death.”

Counterpoint:

 

[Scraps]

New signs at various Florida State Parks.View attachment 629772

Nice sign.

Hope they enforce it.

Both groups--OW divers in caverns with no reels or other evidence of a clue; free divers in overhead environments--make me worry that some day I'll regret not saying something to them (even though I know it's not my place, and they'd certainly ignore me).

 

[johndiver999]