Overhead environments and open water scuba divers

[bowlofpetunias]

Here's a link to the Accidents and Incidents thread:
http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/accidents-incidents/425341-four-dead-italian-cave.html

Thanks for the link
A quick read indicates that we are indeed comparing apples to oranges! The Italian dive was a Cave System. Looking Glass and Fishrock are splits in rock islands neither has any chance of silting. Looking Glass is not really overhead environment as the top of the cleft is above water all the way if my memory serves correctly (it has been a long time since I did a couple dives there). Light penetrates the entire cave. Impossible to get lost.

Fishrock has a deep entry via a Chimney opens into a huge cavern and thence to a huge opening at the shallow entry. Interestingly it was first discovered and explored by Breath hold divers! They found the chimney... went through and found the place where there was an air pocket where they got more breaths and explored from there. Later they found the shallow entrance (14M) and explored the cave using another air pocket when they started recognizing things they had found before they linked it together. IMHO they were crazy! There is an area about 50M long that light does not penetrate so lights and back up lights are required.

It seems to me that we are so short of caves here we call things caves that barely qualify... lol if you can stick your head under a ledge and it opens up it gets called a cave even if you can't fit swim all the way into it! I also checked and the dive shop that takes divers out to Looking Glass does not have Cave or Cavern courses on their list of available courses either!

It is environments like ours where true caves are rare, Cave Systems non existent and training courses unavailable where getting word out about some criteria such as Lynn is suggesting is vital! It isn't a matter of convenience so much as time and cost. I can not afford to take the time off work and pay several thousand dollars to qualify myself to do a type of diving I have no intention of pursuing. I can however apply Lynn's criteria and my own additions of no entanglement hazards to any potential dive site. I will not be bullied or embarrassed into doing a dive I am not comfortable with. I spoke to 20 or more other divers who had dived Fishrock and got experience diving before I did it the first time. In all honesty most of the times we go there I just play around at the shallow entrance in the light penetration Zone getting shots there. I just don't see the point in going into the dark area where you can't really see much anyway!

When we have people ask us about Fishrock I try to give them a VERY clear idea of exactly what they can expect. I make sure they have had a chance to look at the readily available map of the cave before they consider it. I also make it clear that we are happy to dive near the entries and not penetrate if they prefer not to enter. There is a lot to see without going into the cave anyway.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

Think of a cave, in its simplest terms, as something that requires a navigational decision ... which way am I supposed to turn? If you make the wrong decision you may run out of air before you can correct your mistake and find your way out. People most often die in caves because they went the wrong way.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[stairman]

I dont know why a line wasent run with line arrows pointing out for this group that got lost. Also encouraging them to frogkick thru instead of openwater flutter would have helped save the viz. Even without lights line following is a no brainer. Diving is common sense but when the SHTF, often our train of thought isnt so clear. Practiced what-ifs for one failure or another is important so they become more automatic. Penetrating with 1/3rd of their starting gas, and 2/3rds for the exit may have given them the time they needed to find their way out but again , not having a continuous line to openwater was their demise and a neglegence lawsuit should be headed their way.

 

[Diesel00]

Diving in a cave with overhead rock and possibly having to wiggle myself through a small opening is not my idea of having fun. I will just stay out of these situations. If I really want to see I can watch videos and look at pictures. So the divers that love cave diving have fun and be safe.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

Diving in a cave with overhead rock and possibly having to wiggle myself through a small opening is not my idea of having fun. I will just stay out of these situations. If I really want to see I can watch videos and look at pictures. So the divers that love cave diving have fun and be safe.

I used to say the same thing ... but I discovered that my idea of fun changed over time. Key thing is, don't just jump into something new and assume you know how it is ... if you want to try something new, learn about it and if it needs specific training, get the training. Doing it that way tends to expand your definition of fun ..

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[tstormdiver]

Cavern training is very common here but its Florida. I wouldnt justify a big expense for something I didnt do either.

When I took my cavern/ overhead course, I took it in our local quarry. Of course it was known I was going to continue on in my training. I had no problems transitioning from what we did in the quarry to the real thing in FL. We used the wrecks there as actual overhead & used the rocks & blacked out masks to work on line skills. In KY there isn't much in the way of underwater caves. If someone want to do the training bad enough, they will find a way.

 

[Qnape]

For me it comes down to what I'd tell my daughter. OW divers do not belong anywhere there is overhead. That includes swim throughs, ginnie cavern, cenotes, wrecks...all of it. It's a very simple answer but the one that I would like her to follow until she is trained appropriately.

My daughter was 15 and a pretty new diver with perhaps 50 dives when we first passed by the cenotes driving down the highway from Cancun. She wanted to take one of the guided tours and see what everyone told her was so special. I said sure, lets do it, but next year - and we'll take a full cavern course so we can do it safely. She was not pleased - but waited. We took the course with the best instructor we could find, and worked hard for it. Aside from anything else, it made us better divers in a lot of ways - and we then went back to enjoy the caverns for a week the following year. If you want it badly enough, you can find a way; we did from NJ.

I had obvious parental concerns helping to drive me - She is 18 now and on her way to college to meet new dive buddies, and sooner or later, I knew she was going into those caverns. I knew she should be trained first, our instructors told us we should be trained first, and I am sure she also knew. I know that I NEEDED her to be trained first - a compusive parental imerative. One way or the other, maybe vacationing with friends in a few years or whenever, she would enter those caverns with or without training. Where else might she then dive without appropriate training?

Her friends told her she didn't need the training for cenote tours. Dive ops told her "no problem - no special training needed". Our cavern instructor changed her mind.

Where does a simple trust me guiding, cross over into a much riskier, blind trust entry into a dive the diver should not be attempting yet?

And, how does the diving world reach the average, occasional diver, possibly on their once in a lifetime exotic dive, with this message about that difference ?.

This is the crux of the problem as I see it as well. Divers are taught to seek advice and / a local guide to help them when they are in unfamiliar waters. We are trained to seek out and trust the advice of the local guide. It is easy to slide down the slope and be led into conditions in which we don't belong. Most will know on some level that they should not be there, few will turn around and say "not me".

As long as local guides and dive ops actively promote dives that knowingly lead divers beyond their training, they will find willing customers - unfortunately.

I just don't see how to reach divers en masse to get them to resist dives they are not trained for but are being told by local guides and in some cases others are just fine, "OW safe" whatever. In some ways, the truly effective lengths to which the cenote guides have gone to make the dives safer for OW divers creates confusion - it's OK here but not there? Trying to get any message across is a never ending task because by definition it will mostly be newer divers who are most susceptable to peer pressure and other factors that help lead them to dive outside their training. And most of them won't have daughters diving with them, and a wife behind them asking - "you're taking her where???"

Thank you for this thread, I hope newer divers take the time to consider what they might not know yet, and if it helps even one decide not to go on that wreck penetration dive for OW divers or safely escorted cave tour, fantastic. It won't reach them all.

 

[shoredivr]

I can not justify a trip to another state to take an expensive course to dive a cave that has dozens of divers go through it pretty well every week, year round year after year!

double post

 

[clownfishsydney]

Hate to say it, but most of you should never travel to Chuuk or the Solomon Islands or Vanuatu, or Papua New Guinea or Philippines or other locations with WWII shipwrecks as all are overhead environments. You should also never dive Fish Rock in Australia, Cathedral Caves in Tasmania (Australia), the scuttled warships all over the world, many of the dives in Sydney Australia, Palau and Guam which have tunnels and swim-throughs.

Of the 3,290 dives I have done to date, I estimate that probably 1,500 or more have involved overhead environments of some sort. I do not have cave diving certifications or anything similar. Get real, there are hundreds of "overhead" dives that are perfectly safe.

What is a problem are experienced divers doing dives beyond their ability and dive masters and instructors who are totally experienced and should not be leading divers. I have never heard of any accident like this where the person leading the dive is experienced.

Also, for those talking up Sheck

Exley, remember, he died scuba diving when he made a mistake. I would not hold him out to be a person to look up to about how to dive correctly.​

 

[stairman]

Hate to say it, but most of you should never travel to Chuuk or the Solomon Islands or Vanuatu, or Papua New Guinea or Philippines or other locations with WWII shipwrecks as all are overhead environments. You should also never dive Fish Rock in Australia, Cathedral Caves in Tasmania (Australia), the scuttled warships all over the world, many of the dives in Sydney Australia, Palau and Guam which have tunnels and swim-throughs.

Of the 3,290 dives I have done to date, I estimate that probably 1,500 or more have involved overhead environments of some sort. I do not have cave diving certifications or anything similar. Get real, there are hundreds of "overhead" dives that are perfectly safe.

What is a problem are experienced divers doing dives beyond their ability and dive masters and instructors who are totally experienced and should not be leading divers. I have never heard of any accident like this where the person leading the dive is experienced.

Also, for those talking up Sheck

Exley, remember, he died scuba diving when he made a mistake. I would not hold him out to be a person to look up to about how to dive correctly.​

Well then dont. Sheck got hung up on breaking depth records with experimental manifolds and tons of calculations to deal with. No computers back then and certainly none to those depths. He was a pioneer in the sport of cave diving and got hung up on bottomless blue holes that did get a bit crazy but its what he wanted to do with his life and that makes it his buisness. Sheck bashers suck!