chevv58
Registered
As my good friend jayblhkg put it, in ways I can finally understand;
"It's like having two girlfriends."
"It's like having two girlfriends."
Wreck Diving VS. Cave Diving
- Thread starter chevv58
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JimC
Contributor
I have a wife and a girl friend - and I couldn't agree with you more.
They are amazing and different, but at heart they are the same evil beast.
They are amazing and different, but at heart they are the same evil beast.
Curt Bowen
Contributor
JimC:
Yes, but you can be good at one and suck at the other
*Floater*
Contributor
Curt Bowen:
Why? I'm new to this, but want to acquire both cave and wreck training so this is a serious question. The basic skills needed in both, or what I imagine would be needed in both, seem similar to me?
JimC
Contributor
Curt Bowen:
The basic skills are similar, but they each like different ones more than others.
hoosier:
I'm not curt but...while they are similar in that they both involve an overhead the environment is completely different in all other respects. Just a few differences off the top of my head...
While inside the wreck is overhead, the wreck itself is usually in OW. OW that can be pretty fickle when it comes to waves, current and boat traffic. The OW portion of the dive can be significant and I've never heard of anyone getting blown off of a cave. Consider also that in some areas, wrecks in significant current are dived from a "live boat"...sort of a a drift dive and a wreck dive combined.
Wrecks can have cables, wires, sharp edges with decaying and collapsing structures where caves are usually pretty stable with many edges nicely rounded by water flow.
Many caves (though not all) have enough flow to clear away silt once it's stirred up where some wrecks may stay silted out for days once messed up.
While there are complex cave systems and cave divers dive things like flooded mines that can be very complex, you can almost count on complexity in many wrecks.
Popular caves often have permentant lines for navigation where most wrecks don't. Even running a line in a wreck has different considerations because of those sharp edges and things that potentially move.
In most cases decompression is conducted outside of a wreck in OW where in a cave it's common to do most of the decompression in the cave. In a cave, you can't always ascend directly from one stop depth to another and there mayt be less of a chance of a square dive profile in the first place. You could potentially even have to do decompression between deep and shallow portions of the dive on the way in...you can only go where the cave goes and it can make for some pretty strange dive profiles.
I suppose we could go on but that should be enough to show how completely different they can be.
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I was pretty much reffering to the addiction of either. I have really only been diving for a couple years now. But, have gained considerable bottom time. I started out studying tech diving, so, that was my goal. So, after a summer of diving the wrecks in Lake Michigan, a buddy pursuaded me to go down with him to Florida to take the INtro to cave course. By the way; evne if you have no interest in cave diving, a cave course with a reputable instructor will just make you a better diver in general. Really, it was the best instruction I have ever received!
So, I was in love with wreck diving, now I am fighting the addiction with cave diving.
So, I was in love with wreck diving, now I am fighting the addiction with cave diving.
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