A ScubaBoard Staff Message...
Okay this has been building with me for a while and I really wanted to voice my concern about this issue because myself and several newer divers that I know have been very annoyed by what I will refer to as the "cave diver attitude".
A bit of background- I am a new dive master that lives in the heart of cave country. I do springs and caverns mostly because that is all that is easily accessible to me. This means that I am frequently running into cave divers both on the surface and below and in the MANY cave dive shops around here.
Often times we will start talking and time after time they ask me if I am working towards a cave certification and when I say "No, I am not interested in cave diving" it becomes their mission to convert me. You would think they were Jehova's witnesses with how they hound me about cave diving. "You will be interested," or "you just don't know what you're missing," or "if you take my intro class I will change your mind," one person even said "you're not a real diver until you've seen a cave," and it just keeps coming.
These are the nice cave divers. I can live with this but you guys should really know that it is annoying. I have seen caverns and a cave is just a lot more homogenous limestone similar to the cavern with a higher risk- no thanks.
The not so nice ones are snooty to the extreme. I stopped at a cave dive shop that was nearby an OW spring that I was diving and had some rented aluminum 80's that I wanted filled. Without being in the shop for more than 30 seconds the lady working there says with her nose held high and referring to our AL 80's, "oh- we are a cave dive shop so there is nothing here for you." That's verbatim. Okay- that's fine. My buddy was going to look at wetsuits (which they had) and I was looking for a decent light (again which they had) and we were going to purchase some tank fills but they obviously did not want our money even though we were the ONLY ONES IN THE SHOP. The shop was the Dive Outpost about a mile east of Peacock Springs on 180th.e
The worst kind is the over-zealous cavers. I get that you do not want to have inexperienced people to die in caves but your responsibility for this stops at the water. During my conversations with cavers I have heard of 3 separate times a caver "dragged" or "pushed" (terms used by the caver) an inexperienced diver out of a cave/ cavern mouth. Once while I was entering a cavern (which I was certified to do) a caver mistook me for an OW diver and tried to block the entrance. Had I not had a slate to communicate with him and he tried to drag me out of a cavern I would consider it kidnapping and press charges as hard as I could. I get the good intentions but worry about yourself and your buddy when you are underwater- not me.
This is not meant to offend cavers but maybe to point this out to them.
My point is that this kind of attitude and behavior is driving people away from the sport. Non-cave/ tech divers should not be looked down upon. I know that I am not the only one that feels this way but has anyone in this forum noticed it?
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