Cenote Dives

I got up early on December 27 and the kids slept in.  I grabbed my dive gear and  walked over to  Pro Dive, located at a resort right beside ours on the beach and  after checking in I then got in a van to Chikin Ha.

No Chicken at Chikin Ha, but there was a cenote.

Time to dive a Cenote for the first time. This would be a guided cavern dive.   A cavern dive means you're in an overhead environment but still within range of seeing the natural light from the entrance in essentially a straight-ish path from the entrance. There were three other divers and the guide for a total of five in the group.

The plan was for the first dive to take the line on the left (starting form the bottom left of the diagram of the diagram to the rainbow cenote, surface in the rainbow centore and come back along the line.  Dive 2 took line 2, the one on the bottom to the right for a longer dive.

This was done on single tanks.  One wrinkle emerged as one of the divers had a full-face mask.  If he had an out-of-air problem, the only one who could donate air to him was his spouse who had a special hose for that purpose.  This presents some problems in terms of redundancy . Worst comes to worst you can always rip the full face mask off, shove a normal regulator in his mouth and then give him your spare mask (you do carry a spare mask in your right pocket, right?).  The problem of course is the fellow had 60 dives to his name and I'm reasonably sure he hadn't done mask removal drills since he was certified and having someone freak out in an overhead environment would suck.

We had a very detailed safety brief and a condensed cavern diving class - keeping the guideline in sight at all times; keeping your fins up and don't kick up the silt; how to use the flashlight for proper signalling; diving thirds (1000 psi out, 1000 psi back and 1000 psi in  reserve); and emergency procedures,  all the stuff I knew but was completely new to the other divers in the group.

We dove in a single straight line. The guide led, and I got to be tail-end charlie for having the most experience in an overhead environment, and the guide could tell I knew what I was doing.

We all showered as required, and then kitted up and headed to the entrance.

Going into the cavern was neat. Heck it was otherworldly. The water was crystal clear and the flashlights gave some good illumination.

 

Some areas were a bit of a tight fit but nothing too serious.

We then reached the Rainbow Cenote:

We surfaced in the Rainbow Cenote

Simply breathtaking.  We looked around for a bit and then descended back down to return to the cavern entrance.

We then changed tanks, had a snack, and got ready for Line 2, which would be a longer dive.

Line 2 rocked.

Lots of rocks.

We also got to experience the halocline.  A halocline is what happens when fresh and salt water meet.

It looks like this when you go through it:

Do  not adjust your set.  The picture is actually in focus,  but the mix of the salt and fresh water makes for really interesting distortion. Rather neat making our way through it.  Crystal clear on either side of the layer and then this cloudy mess in between.

We then headed back towards the entrance.

 It was an amazing experience,  a first taste of Caverns Measureless to Man. I want to get cave certified to be able to experience this some more, which is going to be a heckuva lot of work. Apparently Mexico is a great place to get cave certified,

Mexico has some awesome cenotes for diving, and ProDive offers a great cenote diving experience.

Mexico in addition to great Cenote diving also has cute Cenote dogs.

Lots of stray dogs around Mexico, and a bunch hung around this cenote.  This little fella was pretty skittish but eventually came to get a snack from me as I donated some meat from my sandwich to him. Poor fella didn't look like he was getting regular meals.

It was a great day,  met some great fellow divers, and it was well worth it.

Cenote Line 1 Dive: 39 feet max depth, average of 23 feet and 39 minutes in 77 degree water.

Cenote Line 2 Dive: 42 feet max depth, average of 24 feet, and 49 minutes.

How About "No" For An Answer?

NBC Miami: Diver's Father Wants Tampa-Area Eagle Nest Sink Cave Closed After Deaths

After the completely self-inflicted, negligent and totally avoidable deaths of a father and son cave diving, the surviving grand-father and father of the duo wants the cave closed to all divers.

A Florida man wants the state to close an underwater cave system after his son and grandson died there in a diving accident on Christmas Day.

Chester Spivey Jr. says the 300-foot deep Eagle Nest Sink cave in the Chassahowitzka Wildlife Management Area is too dangerous for diving. Thirty-five-year-old Darrin Spivey and his 15-year-old son, Dillon Sanchez, were found dead Wednesday.

No the cave should not be closed, and No, it is not too dangerous for diving by trained and experienced divers.

It is however too dangerous to un-certified and untrained divers as in this case.

Understand that when these two proceeded un-certified and untrained to get into the cave system they had to pass by this sign:

Warnings do not get much clearer than that.

When you're dumb enough to ignore them and proceed past that sign without training and knowing how to handle the cave, you're proceeding at your own risk and it is likely that you will indeed die. Even a seven-year-old on reading that sign knew it meant you don't go past it.

We don't permanently shut down highways when idiot fathers get drunk and kill themselves and their kids while DWI because they ran off the road at a curve. We don't close down bridges because people jump off of them. Similarly we shouldn't close a cave system because some idiots sadly decided it was a good location to commit suicide.

The father/grandfather is clearly grieving their untimely and unnecessary deaths, and likely very much in denial that his offspring sadly died of a case of terminal stupidity.

However, he, like far too many others, instead of placing the blame correctly on the person(s) making poor decisions when a tragedy strikes, is seeking to shift the blame to an inanimate object.

Hopefully saner minds prevail and the cave will remain open, and their deaths can be used as a lesson for others to learn to not go into caves without training, the appropriate gear, and a dive plan.

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.

Cool Flash Mobs In Unexpected Places

You've seen cool flash mobs in France, in Moscow, in Israel, at universities throughout the US.

All of those are very nice, but not nearly as cool nor technically challenging as this one.

This may very well be the first Cave Diving Flash Mob:

Way cool.