Cave diving isn't particularly hard, but it does take conscious effort at times. I watched some ocean divers getting cave training this last week. They kept letting their knees drop, so their trim was wrong, and they began to exert too much effort to swim forwards, and stirred up more silt.
Proper trim isn't hard, but it does take some conscious effort to learn good habits.
Caves have a surprising amount of life in them, sometimes. I have been photographing crayfish for the last year, and every system has slightly different crayfish. I just saw my first baby crayfish last week, and it was amazingly beautiful. Smaller than my pinky finger fingernail, next to a crayfish the size of my thumb.
There are isopods and amphipods, and fish. There are silt worms and bacteria colonies.
Every cave has unique architecture, and many exhibit huge contrasts between different parts of the cave. I absolutely love the "cracked floor" with miniature canyons in the Hill 400 section of Ginnie. The wide bedding plains at Jug Hole fascinate me. The 80' drop from 60 to 140 in a huge vertical tunnel at a cave I won't name publicly blew my mind, as did the turtle shell I found 400' back in the system.
Anyone who thinks caves are boring...well then, fine, thank you very much for staying out of the caves. Less traffic equals less damage, and I'd hate for the caves to be wasted on someone who doesn't appreciate them. If you don't see the beauty though, I'm convinced you aren't doing it right. I don't know what gets in the way, maybe the overwhelming task loading?, but I find caves so much more beautiful than the expanse of the ocean floor.
In caves, there are no sharks to eat me, no corals to sting me, no waves to make my fellow divers sick, or to hide me from the boat when I surface. No need to blow something up at 80 to make sure the boat sees me. No problem holding a 10' deco stop. On land I am claustrophobic and scared of the dark, underwater I love nothing more than to wedge myself in a tight hole, turn out my light, and wait for other divers to pass. Seeing the cave through other's lights opens it up in a whole new way for me.
This thread has me excited to be leaving for cave country in 4 hours
