4 and 5 Person Dive Teams......a bad idea

Please understand that the following a purely a hypothetical I have know first hand knowledge of any such event having ever taken place, especially not at Ginnie recently.

Is a 4 or 5 person dive team a bad idea? I think so and something like the following could be a reason......but you decide:

Lets say you are bringing up the rear in a 4 or 5 person dive team and really don't know the people you are diving with very well but are in fact somewhat familiar with them.

You're swimming up a slightly silty area and get caught in the line!!!!! Now with all of the lights, silt and confusion you get left behind and are forced to start hacking away at gold line......forcing a repair and an unpleasant end to your dive and day.

A 4+ person 'team' is called a 'cluster f^^k'... just my opinion... :roll: 3 is the limit for a 'team'... 5 cave divers could be a team of 3 and 2... just diving close together...

Thats kind of what I thought....I wonder if the above ever happened?????

Anyone.......and just to make it even more preposterous lets for arguments sake assume last Saturday, April 6, 2013 at maybe 2PM EST at Ginnie Springs near the hill 400 line.......

A 4 person team isn't.

If you have 4 divers that want to dive you really need to make two teams of 2 divers each. I can recall one specific dive where there were 5 of us. What we did was to separate into two specific teams. The first team in the cave was a team of 3. The second team in the cave was a team of 2. I was tail end Charlie in the second team.

We all talked about responsibilities. Specifically, I was only responsible to my team mate in my team of 2. Sure, if the other team had a problem we would be happy to assist, but we were not part of their dive plan, and they were not part of ours. Sure, we were all going to the same place at the same time, but 5 is just not workable.

In spite of the general idea that we would all generally do the same dive, the truth of the matter is that the first team got well out of sight by about 800 feet. They turned when they were well ahead of us, and we spotted them coming out just about the time we turned. When we exited we were a slinky of the two teams that reached our stops more or less together. Yes, our team was together and the other team was together, but there was some space between the two teams.

I have done several dives with 4 or 5 divers. Every time we have split up into separate teams that intend to go to the same general area at the same general time, but with separate specific plans and responsibilities.

3 divers is the limit, and even then it requires a very specific conversation about how the dive will be conducted with a team of that size.

Mark Vlahos

not sure, here in dominican an open water guide (sometimes not even open water certified yet) can take up to 8 open water divers about 800'+ in a cave, that makes it 9 open water.
thinking in that, a team of 4 cave divers sounds like cool!!.

I think up to 3 is cool, if cave is very big can take 4 but separated a bit in teams of 2

If everyone is squared away with their passive communication skills and buddy awareness then it shouldn't be an issue but it often is. Better to split into two teams and stagger your dives to avoid any issues. The important thing to remember in a multi-person dive team is that your job is not to keep up with the person ahead of you but to keep track of and not run off from the person behind you.

I believe that the problem lies in the fact that cave divers by the very nature of the sport are type A personalities and mostly overestimate their abilities. as a rule... 1 to 3 is the best range IMHO.

It was a four person team involved in the double fatality at Calimba a few years back. On their exit, the leader turned the wrong way at T which they had marked with a cookie on the way in, and the other three just followed along. They swam 1500' the wrong way before turning back, even though the next jump on the way out was only about 60' from the T.

I tell my students team size should be 2 or 3 divers. 2 makes for easy communication and easy to keep track of each other. 3 makes it more difficult but it does provide for more resources should something go wrong. Communication is very difficult, especially for the middle diver. The middle diver has to keep an eye on both the lead and the rear and has to relay communication signals. Not much time left for looking at the cave if the middle diver is with new buddies. Add a 4th diver and now you have 2 middle divers. And I don't believe the 2 teams swimming close together idea really works. I've done that a couple of times and the teams always split up and now you have two split up teams wondering where the other team went and if everything is okay. Besides, not many passages are big enough to accommodate that many divers. I know of a couple of incidents that would not have occurred had someone told them a certain passage wasn't suitable for more than 2 divers. If you have 4 or 5 divers in a group then split up and plan your own dives without trying to keep everyone together. Both teams will have much nicer dives.

I prefer teams of two for most dives but like a team of three for deep dives (Eagles Nest) as it is still well managed in the cave and provides additional bailout capabilities when diving CCR.