Thursday, December 26, 2013

This Is Why You Do Not Cave Dive Without Knowing How To Cave Dive.

People who aren't trained in Cave Diving should not try to go diving in a cave.

The main cause of death in cave diving is untrained divers venturing into overhead environments and dying there - typically due to silting out the environment and being unable to see the exit or otherwise getting lost and then running out of breathing gas when they don't even know how to make a survivable gas consumption plan and dive plan.

The Detroit Free Press: Father, teen son drown during 'extremely dangerous' underwater cave dive

Reading the article, we find out they had just got new gear and decided to test it by going into a cave. To add to the predictable disaster, the father was not a certified cave diver and the son was not even a certified diver.

The result is a Christmas Day forever ruined for their fiancee and mother.

A father and son who went diving on Christmas Day with new dive equipment were found dead in an underwater cave at a north Florida wildlife refuge.

The Hernando County Sheriff's Office said Thursday that Holly King called authorities on Christmas after her fiancé, Darrin Spivey, and his son Dillon Sanchez didn't return home after a planned dive.

Sanchez had received new diving equipment for Christmas, and the two men wanted to try it out, King told deputies.

The men had told King that they were going to dive the 300-foot deep Eagle Nest Sink cave in the Chassahowitzka Wildlife Management Area in western Hernando County, about an hour and a half north of downtown Tampa.

A Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission sign near the pond entrance to the cave reads: "Cave diving in this area is extremely dangerous — even life threatening!! Do not dive unless you are a certified cave diver!!"

According to the Sheriff's office, Spivey was a certified diver; however, he was not a certified cave diver. Sanchez was not a certified diver, authorities said.

So they ignored the posted warnings, didn't know their equipment, and I guarantee didn't have a guidelines and then headed into one of the more complex cave systems in Florida.

To put it in firearms terms: They went into a gun store, bought a pistol, and then without even knowing how to load it challenged Jerry Miculek to a shoot-out thinking they would beat him. They lost.

Owning dive gear does not make you a diver.

Being a certified open water diver does not make you an overhead environment diver.

Do not go into overhead environments without training in how to handle them, a minimum of three lights, a guideline and a competent dive plan. No cave is worth your death.

4 comments:

Keads said...

Sound advice and a great analogy. How sad. Me? Not getting near it!

Unknown said...

A good novel abut cave diving dangers is:

"Down to a sunless sea"

By David Poyer.

Aaron said...

Thanks for the recommendation, I'll check that novel out.

jon spencer said...

I would say it was more like going to a gun store and buying a knife and then challenging Jerry Miculek to a shoot-out.
This is one of those incidents where all you can do is shake your head and wonder.
Darwin at work, at least for the father.