why enter a cave

[tstormdiver]

Now the BASIC Discussion and New Area is inundated with messages from cave divers, BEWARE, you're not trained, bla bla bla. I for one am tired of these public service announcements from Cave divers in the name of safety. IMO if your foolish enough to go caving without training you may die. Its been beat to death, so I have to question are cave divers that bored? Is it they feel the need to pound their cheats and announce their training while telling everyone else how stupid they are to go into a cave? Cave divers are proficient at killing them selves and we do not lecture them when they do. I would appreciate an end to these lectures every time a caver screws up, and in this case that is exactly what happened.

If even 1 life can be saved by warning or lecture, is that not worth it to that person? Their family? Those who have to take risks to go in after & recover them? To the diving community as a whole?

BTW, I'm guessing you have never been on the Cave Diver's Forum. When a cave diver dies,... especially when it was human error on the diver's part, that caused the accident, the victim can be raked over the coals, at times, when going over the accident analysis.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

I would appreciate an end to these lectures every time a caver screws up, and in this case that is exactly what happened.

You never see these lectures in the Basic forum when a caver screws up ... that's what the cave diving forum is for. You see them here when someone who is not a caver enters a cave and ends up dead. The reason you see them in the Basic forum is because it is Basic divers who end up dead.

Caver divers don't need this message ... it's part of their training. If they ignore it, they deserve to die.

Basic divers do need this message ... they won't get it any other way.

Wandering into a cave without training is a dangerous and stupid thing to do. It's how people die. If you don't want to read the message, there's a simple solution ... don't. That's your choice.

The purpose of ScubaBoard ... and this forum in particular ... is to promote safe diving practices among its members. That should include educating people about the potential risks of diving beyond their training. I can recall a time when Pete banned a fellow named Genesis for promoting cave diving without training on this board. Have things so changed now that a moderator can come into a discussion like this and tell people that this practice should be OK?

I have a real problem with that attitude. Dive any way you like. Go kill yourself if that's what you want to do ... just don't do it in a way that endangers others. But please ... don't suggest that people who want to promote safe diving practices are not welcomed in this forum. The day that notion becomes an acceptable policy of this board is the day I decide that ScubaBoard isn't functioning in the best interests of its members ... especially the newer or lesser trained ones ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[Them]

Well, because in those cases, nobody else is going to have to put themselves at great risk in order to haul your dead carcass out to someplace your family members can claim it.

What do you define as great risk? I know of one death just last month of a search/rescue person who was out looking for hiker bodies. It was far from the first, and won't be the last.

I think you are wrong in thinking that's a difference.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

What do you define as great risk? I know of one death just last month of a search/rescue person who was out looking for hiker bodies. It was far from the first, and won't be the last.

I think you are wrong in thinking that's a difference.

You were focusing on people running marathons. When a marathon runner dies, they toss his dead ass in an ambulance and bring him to the morgue. The only danger is negotiating traffic.

When a hiker dies, the degree of danger involved in bringing his body out depends on where he died. You have the option of helicopters and all manner of teams and specialized equipment available to assist in the body recovery. You have all the air in the world ... literally ... to breathe while you're doing it. In cave diving it's often only possible for one person to attempt the recovery, due to restrictions or other environmental concerns such as silt-out. The only air you have to breathe is what you took in with you. If that runs out, you're dead in seconds.

If you want to get an idea what it's like, take a couple of goodie bags. Stuff one full of rocks and the other with a neoprene wetsuit. Tie them together and take them diving with you. Find an old drainage pipe that you can barely fit through and push them through it in front of you. To make it a bit more realistic, run a rope through the pipe first to simulate something you might get snagged on, then put some blackout tape over your mask so you can't see what you're doing. Have fun.

When someone dies climbing a peak, they will sometimes leave the body there. They do so because bringing it out poses too much risk to others. This is an example of a risk that's more comparable to cave recovery, if you're really looking for one.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[DA Aquamaster]

Cavern diving is not all that dangerous. Bonne Terre takes novice divers into their cavern daily and they have a good safety record. Caverns are not overhead environments, and are not much different than a night dive. If you need to surface you can so how is that extreme risk? The answer is when one can get confused and enter a cave, hence the professional guide to prevent untrained folk from entering a cave in the first place.

Now the BASIC Discussion and New Area is inundated with messages from cave divers, BEWARE, you're not trained, bla bla bla. I for one am tired of these public service announcements from Cave divers in the name of safety. IMO if your foolish enough to go caving without training you may die. Its been beat to death, so I have to question are cave divers that bored?

You provide an excellent example of why cave divers need to continue banging on that particular drum.

As noted by a couple people above, your definition of "cavern" is seriously flawed. In addition to the open water distinctions made above, the cavern zone in a flooded or air domed cavern is defined by the ability to see natural light, and unfortunately that distance from the entrance can almost instantly shrink from a couple hundred feet to almost nothing.

Thus, even Cavern certified divers are trained to exit on the line they ran without any visual reference. It has very little to do with what you suggest - getting confused and entering the cave, but rather it can have everything to do with being able to see 100' to open water now, and then 5 seconds later not being able to see the light in your hand as anything other than a dim brown glow.

As noted above all caverns have air spaces at the top and while there are some "caverns" like that in Mexico, most are fully flooded, and in N FL I am hard pressed to think of any toursity cavern that has even an airspace at the top. Twin cave has some reasonably sized air bells, but we all know how close that cavern just came to being fatal for an OW diver, so I would not count on that as a resource in getting out of a cavern.

Similarly, a guide is not always the answer as just this year there have bee guided cavern dive fatalities in both MX and IT, and while it can be argued those guides may have exceeded the prudent limits of a properly guided dive, it does seem to happen with distressing regularity.

Yet you just told the entire board that cavern diving is not all that dangerous. Rather than suggest something derogatory, I'll just point out that you are not qualified to make that statement and maybe you ought to be quiet now.

 

[Them]

You were focusing on people running marathons. When a marathon runner dies, they toss his dead ass in an ambulance and bring him to the morgue. The only danger is negotiating traffic.

I certainly mentioned it in a list of other activities where people regularly die by getting into a situation far riskier to them than they appreciated, along with deserts, boating, and a few other activities that were not meant to be a complete list. It is possible that you picked out the only example on my list where the "leave the body" option has never been exercised.

I think the difference is that cave diving is more personal to you. Nothing wrong with that.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

I certainly mentioned it in a list of other activities where people regularly die by getting into a situation far riskier to them than they appreciated, along with deserts, boating, and a few other activities that were not meant to be a complete list. It is possible that you picked out the only example on my list where the "leave the body" option has never been exercised.

I think the difference is that cave diving is more personal to you. Nothing wrong with that.

Cave diving is relatively unimportant to me ... I live thousands of miles from caves and get to dive in caves once or twice a year. I enjoy it as an opportunity to dive in a different environment, but for the most part it's not something I hold particularly dear.

People who think they have all the answers dying because they decided to do something they weren't qualified to do, and took risks they weren't prepared to deal with ... that's personal to me. I've lost friends that way. It's a bad feeling ... one I hope you never have to experience.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[DennisS]

Why enter a cave?

I could never see a reason. If you like caves, there are plenty with spectacular stalacites and stalagmites, AND unlimited air. In the early 70's I went up to cave country with a bunch of cave divers. Some of us were in a marine tech program with advanced diving but no overhead experience. We would dive up to the cave openings and stop. The cavers would head on in. It had zero appeal to me. Going into a water filled cave struck me as very dangerous with no reward. Why people do it is beyond me.

 

[Them]

People who think they have all the answers dying because they decided to do something they weren't qualified to do, and took risks they weren't prepared to deal with ... that's personal to me. I've lost friends that way. It's a bad feeling ... one I hope you never have to experience.

I wish it was one I had never experienced.

Not going into underwater caves, but in equally stupid ways.

 

[LowDrag]

It's a sign the NSS-CDS commonly donates and posts at the transition into the cave area, giving the unready one last chance to get a grip.

Sometimes I think it might be time to update the number of deaths quoted, that's a fairly dated reference by now.

View attachment 131951

Thanks...that pretty much says it all for me. I don't get why people go into these places without the proper training. I am happy just to watch peoples adventures on YouTube for now. No one here will ever have to read my obit from a cave dive.