When is a cave a cave?

[AndrewA]

I have neither Cave nor Cavern certification but am a technical diver regularly diving wrecks in the 40 to 60 m range. I know nothing other than what I have read about caves in Florida or Mexico BUT there is no way I would consider entering any cave system without proper training.

 

[Meng_Tze]

The basic definitions of cave and cavern are:

Cavern is the overhead environment where daylight can still be seen. A cave is when you cannot see daylight anymore. So in reality a cavern becomes a cave at night.

It is tempting to think that a few yards are not going to hurt to go into a cavern. But think about the following : you can silt up the place. Even though you may still see daylight, stress will set in. There are situations where the daylight gets so diffused, or blocked out by the silt that you have no reference anymore for the exit. If on top of that the exit is not a straight way out, you are now climbering around in a stressed situation, without a clear reference on a finite supply of gas............btw, climbering around will exacerbate silting up. Stress can also disorientate you, leading you to swim the wrong way. This wastes gas and time.

There are special finning techniques to prevent silting up. Without those, all cave(rn) entries will be silty. There are techniques to read the cave and prevent exerting yourself to minimize gas consumption. There are gas planning rules to ensure all members of the team can come out safely. There are techniques to ensure there is a continuous line (and how to handle that in flow) to the surface. Getting entangled in line while silted out and having you gas depleted by your buddy add to the stress.


My advise, and I am not just sating this, is to get proper training. Overhead diving, especially caverns, seems deceptively easy. Things can go bad, and then fatal in a matter of seconds. Then you just wait to run out of gas.....

 

[Doc Harry]

How stupid would two conventionally equipped AOW divers would be to venture several yards into a cavern such as the one in Vortex Springs???

Let me know before you go, so I can get a life insurance policy on you.

 

[bletso]

Go for it! I mean, hell, what could go wrong?

CAVE DIVING - Not Just Your Ordinary Dive

There have been over 20 fatalities in Vortex over the years. It is concidered by many a 'friendly ' cave. There really is no such thing when the brown stuff hits the fan. BTW, the article was about Vortex.


Dale

 

[Atomic_Diver]

 

[txapacheguy]

how many dives do you have?..... you should wait a while before jumping into Technical Diving, there has been Numerous cases of divers who went "to far to soon" and have paid one pretty penny for the out come, Cave diving is My favorite sport, and is my passion, and i would hate to hear of another inccident where a diver with too much bravado, "big boy" syndrome, or macho/ it won't happen to me attitude, gets killed by their ego driven mind. Cave(rn) diving should be done for the purposes of Beauty, Exploration of the unknown, adventure, time in a peaceful enviroment, and not for just because its challageing and you want to push to the extremes, thoes attitudes are what get divers killed... cave(rn) diving is a lot more dangerous than O/W in more ways than one ways, even fully trained Divers still die every year from Diving in overhead enviroments, just less than 2 weeks ago a Full Cave diver died diving in a Cave (and he was only 500'-700' from the entrance of the cave), and was in what is now considered one of the safest places to cave dive, my advise to you would be, if you want to explore a cavern, no matter where you are you should get a Full cave diving instructor as a guide, to be there incase of an emergancy....

dive safe, dive educated,

Atomic_Diver

To everyone who has made any legitimate response to my post so far... THANK YOU!!! The last few pages of commentary were exactly the information I was looking for, but could not seem to find except in bits and pieces. We will NOT be venturing into any caves or caverns anytime soon without an instructor. To answer the question pertaining to our dive experience, we are both at less than 15 dives right now... My wife is not quite ready to venture into wreck or cave diving right now, so we will probably continue to build our experience and improve our skills. I would love to get the training to dive caves, caverns, and wrecks, but just do not have time right now to do it right and see the training through to the end... Again, many thanks to everyone who contributed to this thread. I appreciate all of the opinions and information. Safe Diving!!!

 

[karstdvr]

I would like to say as the manager of the spring you are going to visit, do not take the chance. There is enough to see without going into an overhead environment. Drop down to the bottom of the cavern rope, but DO NOT let go. You can see what it looks like and still be in open water. I have had to fly too many people out of here for the same thing you are planning.
It is my experience that once you go in, you will keep saying to yourself, I will just go to the corner and turn around. Then you get to the corner and say I will just go a little further. Before you know it, you are at the grate looking at a stop sign with 250psi and realize you just killed yourself. Please get proper training!


Shane Schiller
GM Vortex Spring

Thanks for the comment Shane. Before Shane took over, Vortex had the distinction of being the most dangerous cave in Florida because of all the OW fatalitiesand that is on the OW side of the grate.

 

[diver 85]

Git wit it---it's nothing, @ least the Vortex Spring I dove years ago........Oh, be careful of the eels, they may bite----lol......


seriously, go for it....you're a certified diver.....

 

[ucfdiver]

Git wit it---it's nothing, @ least the Vortex Spring I dove years ago........Oh, be careful of the eels, they may bite----lol......


seriously, go for it....you're a certified diver.....

Seriously, did you mean to hit submit? I really don't care if you want to off yourself, but this crap is causing caves to get closed for the rest of us. Consider those of us who have taken the responsible route before you decide to be to promote untrained overhead diving, an activity proven to be deadly.

Cavern courses can be had for < $500, is it REALLY worth the risk?

 

[Dive-aholic]

It's great to see you've made the decision to stay out of the overhead. Thank you! Have fun diving. Like Shane said, there's plenty to see without leaving open water. Vortex is very silty and I have come out of that cave and seen the silt stirred up by OW divers. They endangered me! But I bet that thought never even entered their minds. Get the training when you have the time and when you have your buoyancy down pretty good in a horizontal orientation.