Not everyone thinks cave diving is the pinnacle of SCUBA!

[AfterDark]

You're 200 feet back in the cave, kicking along and enjoying the scenery. Looking at your SPG you decide it's time to turn around and head out. But when you turn around you realize that the flutter kick you were taught in your OW class kicked up the silt behind you ... and your way out looks like an opaque wall. Having not been trained, it never occurs to you to zero the line before swimming into that mess. And having never experienced anything like it before you don't realize just how it'll be until you suddenly can't see a thing. Completely blind, you lose your direction. You bounce off the walls a few times, making the soup even thicker, and realize that you don't know whether you're going into or out of the cave anymore. You can't see your gauge, but you know that the single tank you're wearing has to be getting low. Furthermore, all this stress is causing you to breathe heavier than normal. There's no option to surface. There's nobody to help you. You don't know what to do.

How calm do you think you're going to be when it suddenly occurs to you that unless by some miracle someone comes along to help you, you're going to die here?

Panic is the body's natural response to being faced with a problem you don't know how to resolve. It's an instinct we're all born with. On land, it provides a last-resort method of keeping us alive. In the water, it's a death sentence.

I can pretty much guarantee you that every untrained cave diver (and most trained ones) who ever died in a cave was in a state of panic as they sucked that last breath out of their tank ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

Zero vis; just another RI shore dive no big deal.

 

[JamesK]

Zero vis; just another RI shore dive no big deal.

Exactly! Oh wait, you can just surface, you are not in a covered maze.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

Zero vis; just another RI shore dive no big deal.

That's a good example of what everyone who's been there is trying to say. It IS a big deal.

Rhode Island ain't much different than Puget Sound ... where I've logged about 3,000 dives. We get really heavy plankton blooms here in summer ... just like you do. Our bottom silts up easily ... just like yours does. We learn how to deal routinely with low-vis conditions ... just like you do.

A silt-out in a cave is completely different. If you've never experienced it, you can't even imagine how different.

Zero vis is when you can put your gauge up within an inch or two of your mask lens and still can't read it. You bounce off of things you can't see. Turn whichever way you like and you bounce off something else. Try figuring out which way your bubbles are going, and follow them up ... like we do in open water ... and you can't ... there's 70 feet of rock between you and the surface. There's only one way out, and by now you don't have a clue which direction it is. You could easily wander down a side passage thinking you're on your way out and never even realize your mistake until you take that last breath off your regulator.

I guarantee you it's NOTHING like Rhode Island. And it IS a big deal ... even to a trained cave diver. The difference is the trained guy came in equipped with a safety reel ... and the knowledge to use it. The trained guy knows how to find a tie-off. He knows how to locate the line ... and because of his training he doesn't waste time and gas trying to figure out that's what he should be doing. And once he locates the line, he knows how to determine which way is out.

The untrained guy doesn't know any of that ... no matter how much he's "read" on the intenet. Because you can't learn that stuff by reading ... you have to experience it ... usually multiple times. A good class gives you a place to do that without putting your life in jeopardy.

Nobody ever learned cave diving by reading about it. The very notion is absurd. Anybody who thinks they can prepare themselves for cave diving by reading books or internet forums is suffering an extreme case of hubris.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[JamesK]

Nobody ever learned cave diving by reading about it. The very notion is absurd. Anybody who thinks they can prepare themselves for cave diving by reading books or internet forums is suffering an extreme case of hubris.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

Ben McDaniel did!

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

More trained cave divers die in caves than open water divers.

I keep reading this claim ... but statistics don't bear it out. A report published in 2009 indicated that of the 368 cave deaths recorded in the USA between 1969 and 2007, 74 were people who were known to have had cave training, 208 were people who were known to have no cave training, and the remainder were unidentified either way. The report concluded ... not surprisingly ... that the leading cause of death in cave diving is lack of training.

http://speleosub.ch/PDF-dateien/CaveDivingFatalities_bis2007.pdf

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[JamesK]

I keep reading this claim ... but statistics don't bear it out. A report published in 2009 indicated that of the 368 cave deaths recorded in the USA between 1969 and 2007, 74 were people who were known to have had cave training, 208 were people who were known to have no cave training, and the remainder were unidentified either way. The report concluded ... not surprisingly ... that the leading cause of death in cave diving is lack of training.

http://speleosub.ch/PDF-dateien/CaveDivingFatalities_bis2007.pdf

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

Let's not confuse people with an agenda with facts.

 

[Superlyte27]

I keep reading this claim ... but statistics don't bear it out. A report published in 2009 indicated that of the 368 cave deaths recorded in the USA between 1969 and 2007, 74 were people who were known to have had cave training, 208 were people who were known to have no cave training, and the remainder were unidentified either way. The report concluded ... not surprisingly ... that the leading cause of death in cave diving is lack of training.

http://speleosub.ch/PDF-dateien/CaveDivingFatalities_bis2007.pdf

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

Sheck's book that listed the 5 leading causes of death in a cave were listed in the order of occurence.

Training
Guideline
Air
Depth
Lights....

You'll notice the leading cause of death (If you read the book) was that lack of training was the single greatest cause of fatality. That hasn't changed.

 

[nimoh]

That's a good example of what everyone who's been there is trying to say. It IS a big deal.

Rhode Island ain't much different than Puget Sound ... where I've logged about 3,000 dives. We get really heavy plankton blooms here in summer ... just like you do. Our bottom silts up easily ... just like yours does. We learn how to deal routinely with low-vis conditions ... just like you do.

A silt-out in a cave is completely different. If you've never experienced it, you can't even imagine how different.

Zero vis is when you can put your gauge up within an inch or two of your mask lens and still can't read it. You bounce off of things you can't see. Turn whichever way you like and you bounce off something else. Try figuring out which way your bubbles are going, and follow them up ... like we do in open water ... and you can't ... there's 70 feet of rock between you and the surface. There's only one way out, and by now you don't have a clue which direction it is. You could easily wander down a side passage thinking you're on your way out and never even realize your mistake until you take that last breath off your regulator.

I guarantee you it's NOTHING like Rhode Island. And it IS a big deal ... even to a trained cave diver. The difference is the trained guy came in equipped with a safety reel ... and the knowledge to use it. The trained guy knows how to find a tie-off. He knows how to locate the line ... and because of his training he doesn't waste time and gas trying to figure out that's what he should be doing. And once he locates the line, he knows how to determine which way is out.

The untrained guy doesn't know any of that ... no matter how much he's "read" on the intenet. Because you can't learn that stuff by reading ... you have to experience it ... usually multiple times. A good class gives you a place to do that without putting your life in jeopardy.

Nobody ever learned cave diving by reading about it. The very notion is absurd. Anybody who thinks they can prepare themselves for cave diving by reading books or internet forums is suffering an extreme case of hubris.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

all good points, I would add that the cave trained diver is not in a panic, since they know what to do, and as such they are not going through their gas at 5x the normal rate.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

Sheck's book that listed the 5 leading causes of death in a cave were listed in the order of occurence.

Training
Guideline
Air
Depth
Lights....

You'll notice the leading cause of death (If you read the book) was that lack of training was the single greatest cause of fatality. That hasn't changed.

Another big difference between cave diving and OW diving is that when a fatality happens in OW, you will rarely read about what actually caused the accident. When a fatality happens in a cave, the causes are diagnosed, analyzed, and published. It's far easier to get real information on cave diving accidents ... because it's in the interest of the agencies promoting cave training to have those causes understood. Agencies promoting OW training don't really want to talk about fatalities ... because it goes against their promotion of diving as a fun, safe activity. So ... as we see in almost every thread in the Incidents and Accidents forum ... what we're usually left with is speculation about what might have happened.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

---------- Post added February 26th, 2013 at 08:38 AM ----------

Sidebar ... is it just me or has anyone else noticed that this thread started in the Advanced forum, got moved to Basic, and now has been moved back to Advanced?

Not complaining ... just rather odd. Given the initial subject matter, I'm thinking the next stop will be Whine & Cheeze ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[AfterDark]

Exactly! Oh wait, you can just surface, you are not in a covered maze.

Well except for the few hundreds times I was inside a wreck, yeah. The point is if a diver is comfortable with zero vis, that is one less factor working against that diver in a bad situation. I've seen more than one diver in OW get turned around in zero vis and start to panic. I've been diving limited vis all my life it's just another happy day to me.