Angst: Cavern & Intro Divers with Deco Bottles - why?

[Jax]

First - yes, I know the depth and no deco limits on the Cavern / Intro divers.

However, I was really surprised to see what I can describe only as 'bitterness' that some divers expresses simply because Cavern / Intro divers carried deco or stage bottles into a cave. Perhaps it didn't help that the divers in the story silted the bajeezus out of the cavern area.

Please help me understand - was the angst simply because the divers brought the tanks, or because the divers were actually violating the rules?

I, for one, like to bring a deco bottle on all my dives for no other reason than training practice. For me, practicing the proper gas switch techniques, executing drills while wearing the bottles, is very helpful since I don't get a lot of actual deco dives in. It doesn't hurt to do my safety stop on a slightly richer mix, either.

Just wondering if I should expect to be accosted by irate cavers while I'm practicing.

[moody]

Not sure which incident in particular you are referring to but I could understand the annoyance of people if you don't have the training to match the dive you are attempting or the equipment you are carrying and the end result is silting out the cavern/cave environment. I know of many instructors who when they hear one of their Intro students are making jumps in a cave will call the student up and say "what the hell, you can't be doing that". Nobody wants to see a cave fatality or damage to a cave which I think are serious considerations and for the most part the community is self policing, and to me this sounds like just that. I would hope that nobody would accost anybody as there is no call for that for that sort of behaviour. But if you only have your Cavern or Intro and decide to muck up the cave with trim and buoyancy issues because you are now diving with stage bottles then I don't think it's such a bad thing if someone comes up and has a quiet word. I remember the first few times I went into a cave with stage bottles, I was a complete and utter mess, I silted out more than one cavern but I was doing it within the confines of a course so with the help of my instructor and co instructor we got it sorted out pretty quickly. Just my 2 cents of course.

[K Mejean]

The angst is because no one wants to go in after the body when they decide that they can go just a little beyond their limits because they have all this extra gas. While it is totally feasible to think that they will never make such a stupid mistake they are human and we humans tend to do stupid things sometimes. Carrying extra bottle just adds to their task loading when what they need to be focused on is learning how to function properly in an overhead. It doesn't take long before they start trying to calculate deco procedures from things they have heard or read and before you know it we have another fatality. It's a slippery slope and when they get dead we all pay the price.

[Jax]

So the greater fear is of the slippery slope, not so much the actions of bringing the bottles?

(Never mind the silting part - someone ought to be bonked for that! Hopefully I won't get bonked tooooo many times. )

[LCF]

You know, a couple of friends of mine, who are tech trained and regularly tech dive, just did the equivalent of Cavern/Intro. They raised what I thought, and still think is a very legitimate question -- what's wrong with taking an O2 bottle and dropping it at 20 feet, and just spending five minutes or so on it at the end of a dive? A lot of the caves in FL are deep and you can be close to NDLs on dives there, and among folks I know who ARE tech trained, it isn't all that unusual to carry some O2 on OW dives that push NDLS, and spend five minutes on it just because we're old and we like being safe. This doesn't mean exceeding Intro/C1 limits at all in terms of the cave dive; it's just a trained person using O2 because they think it is helpful.

[DA Aquamaster]

I agree with Lynne's voice of reason response. I don't disagree with a slippery slope concern but it can still be over applied.

[divindoc]

+2 on LCF and DA Aquamaster's responses. Advanced Nitrox/Deco procedures would complement this level of training, and allow for a safe and rational use of 02 to deco (or do a safety stop) on. Can't say that I think dragging a stage along is a good idea - took me until after Full Cave and a stage course before I did that, and that seems to me to be a logical progression in training.

OTOH, Cavern/Intro divers getting on 02 at too high a pp02/level of exertion may have fatal consequences - to state the obvious, it's all about the level of training.

[DA Aquamaster]

That's a good point as well. Standards don't allow deco at the cavern or intro levels - but many cavern and intro divers are already AN/DP or Trimix certified before they take cave training. In that regard, taking a deco bottle to 20' in the cavern makes a great deal of sense and is not inconsistent with their training. And as noted above, many of us not exactly young anymore divers don't mind doing a little O2 cleanup on a close to the NDL dive.

And on the other side of the coin, deco is a reality for divers taking full cave in N FL, but deco isn't taught in the course, or at least should not be. So an intro diver should pick those skills up between intro and full if they don't already have them prior to intro.

But I suspect that does not always happen and that there are full cave divers sucking O2 during their full cave courses (and after) who never got an AN/DP cert.

If we are gonna jump on intro divers with AN/DP certs and O2 bottles in the cavern, we should be jumping on full cave divers lacking AN/DP who do any deco at all just as hard.

[a64pilot]

Well the question was Cavern and Intro and deco bottles, although I was tri-mix certified before I started cave training I did not carry my deco bottle, thought about it as a what if, but turning at 1/6 never got me close to a deco obligation and if it does you have either the best SAC rate I've ever seen or you don't understand surface interval or your deeper than you should be. Didn't carry line arrows, cookies or jump reels until Apprentice as I didn't have any use for them either, having them makes you look like something your not, and why are you carrying something you have no use for?
If your not cleared to use something, you shouldn't have it on you in my opinion, but I'm not the cave police either so I'm not going to "jump" you for it. May not dive with you though.

[Slüdge]

The incident in question was at Peacock 1. I've made probably eighty dives at Peacock 1, including about seven Orange Grove to Peacock 1 Traverses, and I've never taken oxygen in the water there. YOU DON'T NEED IT! I believe the most deco I've had there was three minutes, and that was from the traverse.

If a cavern diver takes a deco cylinder into Peacock 1, I'll bet you a thousand dollars they're regularly breaking rules.