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I feel that cave diving is the only way to really hone cave skills. Having ambient light allows a diver to kind of cheat when communicating, navigating, and manipulating equipment (stages, line, lights, etc).
Perhaps I misunderstood his ultimate goal.
I think the most valuable lesson a diver should get out of a cavern course is an understanding of why one should not go into caves without proper training and equipment. That alone makes it a valuable course. The cave courses after that are designed to prepare one for cave diving, and there is no point in taking them if that is not the goal.
While I agree with this, I'm with Lynne. There's no point in someone who doesn't live near caves/caverns to take the course if the intent is to get the skills. I teach the same skill set plus some other skills that are more focused on OW in my Intro to Tech course. Why add the overhead to it to add more stress if the intent is not to dive in a cavern?
It was a tongue in cheek comment you two
However, I don't think there's any standards on the degree of precision a student must have through the nss-cds or the nacd even at the full cave level. With the NSS-CDS training director taking students zero-to-hero never having dove SM before, it's almost a running joke around cave country. .
I can't judge the situtation where the instructor carried an individual "zero to hero",because I have seen some squared away divers who were more than ready to handle this,but I have seen the instructor stop at intro,and say you aren't ready to go on. If it is the running joke,was somebody there to observe it (the cave diving rumor mill is notorious)? I am not going to judge other agencies,but there are weaknesses in all of them. I will give credit to the CDS and NACD because they have a long mentoring process to become a cave instructor,plus the CDS has some stringent conservation guidelines built into their standards.
Didn't make it past Apprentice ... not so much because of a skills deficiency but because my instructor felt I needed some experience at the Apprentice level to learn how to make better decisions. I agreed with his analysis.
Let me begin by stating that I find the term "poodle jacket" to be pejorative...
If this line of thought holds true, how does it apply to other forms of training? If you look at military and commercial pilot training, there is a ton of money spent on flight simulators that develop a pliots skill before they hand them the keys to a multi-million dollar plane. The same is done with commercial shipping. They use a system called a Visual Bridge Ship-handling Simulator. For the divers that live out of the local area for access to caves, we need other avenues to continue to keep our skill levels to what they should be to reduce our risk level once we do have the opportunity to travel for a cave trip. For the divers that live in the north Florida area, I have to wonder how they would practice their skills to dive outside of their local areas to reduce the risk factor.