You must admit that any diving has its risks and unique skills and that some arenas have much more potential risk than others. There is no way around it, one must give acknoledgment where it is due for those that engage in the more complex diving ,,,,, where a cool head and a magestry of skills are the fence deviding those that have one safe surface for every dive and those that dont.
Not everyone thinks cave diving is the pinnacle of SCUBA!
- Thread starter Snake101
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-hh
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Okay, I'll take a stab at it ... at least through the analogy(!).
An old dive buddy of mine is former RAF Toranado pilot (ground attack, so not a 'fighter jock') and today is a commercial British Airways 747 pilot day-to-day...but he is occasionally tapped to pilot the BA Charter flights carrying the Queen. Does that 'precious cargo' put his 747 at the top of this list?
-hh
You know, I think this thread has gone rather amazingly astray from the original poster's intent. As I read his post, he wasn't saying that cave divers aren't the very finest, most skilled, bravest, and most amazing divers of all (because, of course, we are 
). He was just saying that cave divers are simply obnoxious about insisting that EVERYBODY should dive in caves, or at least should WANT to dive in caves. And I think we are probably guilty as charged, just as we are all probably guilty of thinking that everybody should dive, or at least WANT to dive. I know I have caught myself trying to convince someone who has said they're claustrophobic and diving doesn't appeal to them, that diving isn't a claustrophobic experience and they will too love it.
When it comes to the skills question, I think most people who take cavern or cave classes find their precision challenged. I think many cave divers who undertook a GUE technical class would find their stability in midwater challenged. There are lots of different diving skills that are pertinent in different environments. My highest respect goes to people who are both proficient cave divers and experienced and proficient technical and wreck divers. They have to have it all.
). He was just saying that cave divers are simply obnoxious about insisting that EVERYBODY should dive in caves, or at least should WANT to dive in caves. And I think we are probably guilty as charged, just as we are all probably guilty of thinking that everybody should dive, or at least WANT to dive. I know I have caught myself trying to convince someone who has said they're claustrophobic and diving doesn't appeal to them, that diving isn't a claustrophobic experience and they will too love it. When it comes to the skills question, I think most people who take cavern or cave classes find their precision challenged. I think many cave divers who undertook a GUE technical class would find their stability in midwater challenged. There are lots of different diving skills that are pertinent in different environments. My highest respect goes to people who are both proficient cave divers and experienced and proficient technical and wreck divers. They have to have it all.
elan
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-hh
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And you dare to ask that question on a public forum haha
Actually, I thought it was a very good illustration that there's different metrics of 'goodness' to consider.
Decades ago, looking up to (what we now consider to be a "mere") Dive Instructor was because as a rule, they were quite good all-around: a good diver + good teacher + good mentor...call it a "Grade A" in each of the columns which existed on a diver's Report Card.
However, as scuba diving grew and developed speciality disciplines, there became more columns to grade one in on that Report Card. As such, the inevitable disagreements arose: was having an "A" in technical diving skills more important than an "A" in teaching students? What about an "A" in filmography? And so forth.
Coincidentally, a story from a friends' FB feed this morning:
"
On the first diving morning of a live-aboard trip out of Cairns (in Tropical North Queensland, Australia) a few years ago - on a day when the sea was flat calm, blue, warm and welcoming - one of the passenger/divers, a visitor from the UK,
loudly announced - little realising where we all hailed from - that, "none of you Aussies know what real diving's all about." The question was asked about where he regularly dived? "A place called Stoney Cove", he announced. He did rather wonder why we all fell over laughing .. until it was explained what it was we had fled."
The above post was accompanied by a couple of yellowed newspaper articles discussing the high fatality rates of Commercial Divers in the North Sea Oil Fields (2 per month) and plans for the UK to start to regulate that industry....yeah, typical Aussie understated humor: this wasn't a few years but a few decades ago. So just as we can recognize due respect for a 2-20 hour cave dive vs the generic Recreational Diver, the guy who's doing saturation dives at 600fsw in the open sea and in between, spending 10-20 days in a tin can pressurized to ~15ATM also merits recognition too. YMMV on which one rates "higher on the pinnacle" because they're really climbing on entirely different mountains on different continents.
-hh
Bob DBF
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Yeah, those were the good old days before Sheck examined the huge number of cave diving deaths to find the commonalities so that training could all but eliminate them. For a number of years the world averaged about two cave diving deaths a year, but now we seem to be getting back to the good old days when people didn't see it as anything special again. "Just divers" are flocking to the caves again, and the number of deaths has skyrocketed in the past two years.
-hh
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Well, just how much of that is really due to exactly what the topic of this thread has been about: practitioners who self-promote their elitism and obnoxiously tell everyone "you should become a cave diver too".
The same thing happens with the marketing of sports cars, or any other aspirational 'branding': some of the buyers lack the necessary driving skills and yet because they could afford to buy the car, believe that they're now capable ... and end up wrapping that Corvette around a tree.
And because DEMA learned that there's money to be made from these niche communities, we've seen this trend of 'TECH' gear now pushed out for several years, right down to OW-I Students. The novices buy the marketing hype and end up convincing themselves that simply buying the 'right gear' got them ~90% of the way to having the skills to use it.
-hh
PfcAJ
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"Cave diving is cool! Come learn how to do it!" I don't think inviting other people into your hobby is elitism.
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