This post really encapsulates most of everything I would say:
O2 Bottle for Cavern, Cave or Deep OW
Cavern is meant to be an introductory safety course to the overhead environment, teach people about the risks associated with the cave environment, the basics of how to run a reel, team communication, some propulsion techniques, and a few basic emergency skills.
There's a thing called task loading, which happens to all of us when we have to think about performing a task rather than being able to do the task automatically because we are so experienced that we can perform it via muscle memory. Running a reel, maintaining proper trim and buoyancy, and simply monitoring your gas limits while being in the overhead environment adds a fair bit of task loading to people new to the environment.
Task loading leads to perceptual narrowing. I like to describe task loading and perceptual narrowing in IT terms; we all have a finite amount of bandwidth between our ears (capacity). We consume that available bandwidth every time we have to think about how to do a task. When we are consuming that capacity, we have diminished our ability to observe other things around us, we call that perceptual narrowing. When you have perceptual narrowing, you literally become oblivious to things around you, such as your buddy telling you they are low on air, or the fact that your feet are laying in the ground kicking up silt. Perceptual narrowing can get you into deep trouble.
Decompression diving, holding stops, working with stage bottles, and the like also adds a fair bit of task loading for people new to those skills.
By keeping cavern diving as a non-deco dive, you're reducing the unnecessary task loading and risks of perceptual narrowing. View cavern diving for what it is -- a set of training wheels as you work towards developing and mastering the basic skills of cave diving before going on to the next step.
