| Cave diving |
| Sunday, August 19, 2007 |
Cave diving is among the most dangerous and deadly forms of scuba. But as these images show, it is also one of the most rewarding. As you dive in a cave, you are often hundreds or thousands of feet from air, you must use the air you have only (an overhead environment). Also it is typically pitch black, so if your light sources fail you will be lost. Divers also use lines to help keep them from getting lost.
When divers use common sense and follow important safety rules, diving these overhead environments can be nearly as safe as diving in open water. However, when divers fail to follow these rules, the results are often tragic. Since 1950, nearly 400 divers have perished in Florida's caverns and caves. The vast majority of these divers had no formal training in cavern or cave diving.
In the 1960s and 1970s, cave diving pioneer Sheck Exley conducted a careful study of cave diving fatalities. What he discovered was that, in virtually every instance, the victims' demise could be attributed to one or more of just three direct causes. Later, National Speleological Society Cave Diving Section (NSS-CDS) Training Chairman Wes C. Skiles identified two additional factors that, while not directly responsible for divers' deaths, nonetheless contributed substantially to most such fatalities.
Together, the findings of Exley and Skiles form the basis for what cave divers know as the Rules of Accident Analysis. These five rules form the basis for all modern cave diver training. They are something of which every diver who visits this unique area should be aware.
* 5: Use Three Sources of Light
* 4: Remain Within the Safest Possible Operating Limits for Your Breathing Media
* 3. Keep Two Thirds of Your Starting Gas Volume in Reserve to Exit the Cave
* 2. Maintain a Continuous Guideline to the Cave Exit
* 1. Be Trained for Cave Diving, and Remain Within the Limits of Your Training |
posted by High Power Rocketry @ Sunday, August 19, 2007  |
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| 17 Comments: |
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A friend of mine loves to go cave diving. He works for an airline, so he's gone caving all over the world.
I was in my first cave a couple months ago while in Costa Rica. (Venado Caves)
Not scuba, though, although I did have to wiggle through long, tight tunnels half-filled with muddy water. A wild experience.
Maybe sometime I'll try the scuba version...
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You'll notice here that the man cave diving is white. No self respecting black man or woman would swim, much less into an underwater cave. That's what the grotto at the Playboy Mansion is for.
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Woozie there must be black divers, maybe a few cave divers, but yes there are very few. That is a sad thing.
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Honestly its one of the few sports where white guys might win :)
Haha just playing white power.
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Wow! Those are some awesome pics!
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Yeah, superb post. Have you done much spelunking, R2K?
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Hardly at all! Just a few visits to minor caves, no deep cave work, and certainly no cave diving. Some day maybe, but maybe not so much for the cave diving. Sorry to put it this way, but it is the worst way to die - hopelessly lost in a cave silt out with 25 minutes of air left to let you think about it. The horrors include - a guy who stripped off his scuba gear after sucking it dry and plowing his head into a clay wall, maybe trying to dig his way out... Even two guys who, and this may just be legend, appear to have struggled over air maybe even knife fighting to steal the air from the other, and one guy appears to have stabbed himself in the gut (maybe as part of a planned suicide if not a reaction to getting lost).
Contrast that with the incredible pictures I posted, it is such a hard issue. Cavern diving maybe, that is diving near the light zone.
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Never dived myself, might some day.
But I'll let the caves to others..Most humans left caves thousands of years ago, probably for a good reason ;)
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Yeah if you guys like these I have a different set of very nice cave images, I will post them in a few. But I think you all will be very happy about my next post, just wait for it. Get ready, but wait.
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beautiful pictures - and unique. It'd be tough to top those. I saw an episode of Shadow Divers where they dove in some caves in Latin America to look at some Mayan artifacts, very impressive!!
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One of my team-mates at work has done a fair bit of cave diving. He's told us of a few stories. It sounds exciting but quite scary.
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Well that sounds good, where does he dive may I ask? Florida?
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That is super cool, and the pics are amazing!!!!
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You are gonna get so many Google referrals from gay pervos searching for "cave diving".
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Dont lie, that is how you found this post...
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A friend of mine loves to go cave diving. He works for an airline, so he's gone caving all over the world.
I was in my first cave a couple months ago while in Costa Rica. (Venado Caves)
Not scuba, though, although I did have to wiggle through long, tight tunnels half-filled with muddy water. A wild experience.
Maybe sometime I'll try the scuba version...