Unqualified Divers in Caves--especially ones like Eagles Nest

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Late to this thread but agree with the lack of respect for overhead environments by certain shops. It seems that the limitations outlined by agencies (depth, overhead, etc) aren't necessarily followed by instructors when they are actually teaching as some shops are more worried about giving people a fun dive/taking people to see cool things so they are more likely to return and recommend others.

Example 1: I completed my class/pool sessions for open water with one shop, but then flew south to do the actual OW dives as it was winter. Training dive #2, my second ever dive in open water, instructor took us down 100 feet to a wreck. At the time I thought it was the coolest thing ever and post dive and post trip was happy, but looking back, I'm terrified by how many things could have gone bad on a wreck at 100 feet on my second ever time in OW. I had no idea what I was doing. All of our buoyancy was all over the place, kicking stuff up, crashing into things. I was probably narc'd from anxiety, excitement, and mental overload. No business being down there.

Example 2: Up here, many shops will roll nitrox, drysuit, and AOW all into one package and teach them all at the same time. My first time in the water with a dry suit my instructor takes us down to around 70 feet since it's AOW, the deepest the students had ever been. we looked like trapped underwater buoys bouncing up and down 10+ feet at a time, constantly adding/dumping air from the suit, attempting to control our buoyancy. At the same time as this, we are fiddling with computers and learning what nitrox will now look like on our computer while actually diving (ppo2, etc). Huge mental overload. Looking back completely unsafe to throw nitrox, a dry suit, and new depths in a cold dark quarry and novice divers all at once. But the shop was pressured for efficiency/time and touted being able to certify divers in all these 3 specialties in only a short weekend. Rather than focusing on training us properly and safely, we spent the entire time quickly checking everything off as fast as we could so we could fit everything in.

Example 3: When I first started diving I had a fear of overheads. As a new diver, as much as I wanted to explore overheads even if I wanted to just "peek in a little," i didn't. Partly because I thought there was a scuba police that would come take my cert away, and partly because I was taught never to do that initially and was terrified of them. But as my training went on, I found it more and more common for instructors to signal me to follow them through short overhead pass throughs in quarries (old trucks, big cement tubes, etc) even though I (and now I know they) were not trained to do that. Being a student and not wanting to say no and wanting to do what the instructor says, I'd follow them. Slowly, deviance from the norm became accepted and looking back I found myself allowing overhead environments to creep into my diving even though I wasn't trained for them. Mainly because I had done them so many times with instructors as just regular dives and the fact that they were overhead was never brought up or a concern. I had a very large false sense of security about them since nothing had ever gone wrong even though I was not trained at all about what to do if something did. It was only later when I was actually trained for overhead environment/wreck diving that I realized how risky what I was doing before was.

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Looking back on all this stuff when I started scares me now, and makes me reassess if my current diving practice is allowing creep of things I'm not trained for because of potentially bad examples around me. I feel that a lot of shops/instructors out there become more concerned with ratings, business, referrals, and money and relax too much on safety. At a quarry around me, I regularly see instructors take students in the process of completing their OW training dives through a sunken 747 approximately 50 feet long entrance to entrance, complete overhead without a way out except those exits on each side of the 50 feet. People do it all the time like it's no big deal. Students come out of the water ecstatic at what they just did and talking about how much fun they had. No clue about how dangerous going into an overhead untrained is.

It's so easy to be peer pressured into diving a site or enviro or conditions you are not prepared for. I could easily see how a cavern diver could get sucked into diving a site he's not prepared for because he's with 3 other experienced friends who have been there many times. Thinking about some of my own technical dives, even though I try to be very conscious about risks and am usually overly particular about safety, I can think of a few times that I probably should have said no to a dive someone else really wanted me to do with them. Sometimes it's really hard to be humble and properly assess what your own limitations and weaknesses are.
 
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Any Cavern diver with doubles entering the eye/ear area would definitely look suspicious.
I think you're missing my point. In my world, (small) rec doubles are very common even on dives that don't require more gas than a single. There are some good reasons for using a small rec twinset instead of a single. Even if you don't reckon on using more gas than can easily be carried in an Al80.

As I said, the number of tanks on your back is really quite irrelevant in my part of the world.
 
I have been told that these are getting common among cave divers in N Florida. And my cavern instructor thinks it's a terrible trend that is going to lead to a fatality.
 
I think you're missing my point. In my world, (small) rec doubles are very common even on dives that don't require more gas than a single. There are some good reasons for using a small rec twinset instead of a single. Even if you don't reckon on using more gas than can easily be carried in an Al80.

As I said, the number of tanks on your back is really quite irrelevant in my part of the world.

No, I understand your point. Rec doubles are very common in the US as well and I completely support them. Our comments are Ginnie specific; a cavern diver in doubles near the eye/ear would get some attention, especially if they were alone.
 
Let me preface this by saying I'm not a cave/cavern/wreck diver, but when I was younger I was a rock climber, and I think there might be some value in a grading system similar to the one that climbing uses. I'm going to over-simplify the system, but when the first person successfully climbs a route, they give the route a rating, and that rating is based on the move of greatest difficulty in the route.

Ratings range from 5.0 to 5.15, with 5.15 being the most difficult, so a route that was simple (5.0) until you had to jump backwards with a drop that would likely result in death if you missed it (because your protection was likely inadaquate, or would likely fail), would be rated somewhere in the 5.14 area. If the same route deviated so you could miss the death defying jump by doing something technical, but not necessarily life threatening, that other route might be rated a 5.8 or 5.9.

The value of the rating system was that climbers know what their ability level is, what gear is going to be necessary, and the level of "maximum danger" that the route should pose. When I was at my best, I was a 5.9 climber, and I knew that 5.9 was all I could do. I was generally comfortable at 5.8, and 5.7 was just fun. I also knew that 5.10 was probably going to get me hurt. My buddies also knew that I was a "five nine" climber, and this is where the difference, I think, might be useful.

In diving, we talk about being certified more often than we discuss skill. A skilled technically trained wreck diver (who's never been in a cave), might be a 5.11, but possess sufficient skill (and training) to penetrate 5.11 cave, if there was general agreement on what the ratings meant and what skills and equipment were necessary to execute a 5.11 dive safely, in the same way a 5.9 climber like me might be willing to follow another 5.9 climber up a route that was familiar to the other person.

The upside of such a ratings system is that if we all (generally) agree that I have ability level x and I'm not exceeding that, I'm probably not going to kill myself or someone else. Equating this to diving, it might be that a 5.0 dive would be something like snorkeling near shore, and a 5.15 dive is something only a few people in the world are skilled enough to do. So a 5.5 penetration might be a cavern with a large entrance, and no potential for ever silting out, but if you are stupid enough and do the dive without some piece of equipment, it might still kill you, the way free climbing a 5.5 might.

But having those ratings might help prevent some of the normalization of deviance, from pushing the limits. A rating system that tells you that the "most difficult move" is beyond your ability or equipment might prevent a 5.4 diver killing himself because "it seemed safe" or some such rationalization, because we have a rational, well thought out way of communicating the necessary skill and equipment that may be required to safely accomplish that part of the dive.

The signs that say "You're going to die if you dive here." don't have much effect on the diver who has already survived a dive at that location (even if the previous dive wasn't in the worst circumstances), but I'd be willing to wager that a rational rating system that would tell someone that a 5.10 dive was going to require a line to the surface, and redundant air to execute safely, that might give some pause.

For what it's worth, I think that listing the names and dates of death for divers at a particular location might have a stronger deterrent effect, than "Yer gonna die!"
 
Question, has the message of cave diving of don't enter the overhead unless trained become diluted due to our inconsistencies.
The message has not been "diluted" because of inconsistency. It has been "eliminated" by inconsistency.

OW students are told must never, ever on their lives enter an overhead environment without proper training. Then they go on their first dive trip to a place like Cozumel and do a swim through on their first dive. Or maybe they go to South Florida and go into wide open shop deck. Those dives look perfectly safe to them, and they really are pretty darn safe. The whole "just say no to overheads" rule is now blown, with nothing to take its place.

That is why I created a PADI-approved course called "Understanding Overhead Environments," which details the differences among overheads and shows why you need special training to enter some when you don't need it for others. When I have taught it, the students say that it has truly taught them why the fact that they can do a short swim through in Cozumel does not mean they can do something more advanced.

"Just say no" has never worked anywhere--look at Bristol Palin.

This has been discussed before many times. Unfortunately, sites can change based on conditions -- little river may be a "category 1" dive on one day (low flow, good visibility), a "category 3" dive on another day (high flow, moderate visibility), and a "category 5" dive on another dive (siphon, tannic water). And who would be the person rating the system?
This sounds exactly like river rafting, but somehow they manage to do it.

Post #124 talks about rock climbing levels. In fact, pretty much every activity that does things like this has a rating system. The process for making them works the same in all areas of endeavor, including rating essay grades for SAT exams. It's not hard to do. I used to teach how to do it, in fact. It would be easy in caves.

I tried to get one started a few years ago, and it taught me that cave diving will never have one because all the most senior cave dives, the ones who would need to come together to create the system, all dismiss it out of hand as impossible.
 
For what it's worth, I think that listing the names and dates of death for divers at a particular location might have a stronger deterrent effect, than "Yer gonna die!"

I like this idea. I'm not a cave diver, but as an analogy, I have always found all the altars/memorials/etc. we can find on the sides of roads on some part of the world for each deathly accident much more impressive than just ads/signs showing or being told "dive safely/don't drink and dive/etc. or you're going to die".
 
A better idea would be to develop an online registry of caves and sinks. Describe the limits for each... OW to here... cavern to here... Only full cave past this point... etc..

this is your cue boulderjohn- a guidebook!!
 
Serious question for you.

If there was a sign that said something to the effect of:

"THIS IS AN ADVANCED CAVE DIVING SITE. IF YOU ARE NOT CERTIFIED AS A CAVE DIVER, YOU SHOULD NOT BE HERE. IF YOU ARE A STUDENT AND YOU ARE NOT A FULL CAVE DIVER YOUR INSTRUCTOR IS IN VIOLATION OF THE TRAINING STANDARDS FOR THE FOLLOWING AGENCIES:

AGENCY A - 1-800-800-1234
AGENCY B - 1-888-888-1234
etc..

PLEASE NOTIFY THE AGENCY"

Would that have an impact?
what come first the cert or the training - i.e. how do you get cave trained without going into cave? or is there a lesser cert that allows entry under supervisor
 
what come first the cert or the training - i.e. how do you get cave trained without going into cave? or is there a lesser cert that allows entry under supervisor
Cave training is done in a cave, but some (most) caves are inappropriate for training.
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/teric/
http://cavediveflorida.com/Rum_House.htm

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