Training in Mexico

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Originally Posted by phillip1

Not knowing the way out and trusting a line marker 100% was the cause of the triple fatality at Mayan Blue years ago.

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And a main cave line starting beyond natural day light

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Originally Posted by phillip1

was the cause of the triple fatality at Mayan Blue years ago

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Actually double fatality

Source SG book

D.

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Originally Posted by phillip1

And what is wrong with any of that? If a student cannot handle those events on a controlled training dive then he or she should not be cave diving at all.

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Tell that to the family of the guy who died in Blue Grotto with his O2 turned off while he was being supervised by an instructor.

Oh my gosh... I never knew!!

I was trained in Florida and it's a miracle I've survived this long diving even in Mexican caves with such inadequate training!

And I've actually had the reg pulled out of my mouth, a fin fall off, and the mask pulled off my face, but didn't realized that without having done it in class I probably responded all wrong! I just depended on the fact that such things are no more than a minor nuisance after you've got a little experience and comfort in the water and not some major goddamn rite-of-passage that an instructor absolutely must inflict on students.

I'd better redo my cave training in Mexico when we're down there next. And I guess my wife and I should cancel our Florida trip in a few weeks since I have no business cave diving.

Incidentally, the two shared traits I have noticed of every Mexican trained cave diver I have ever met (and often decided to stop diving with):

1) An absolute certainty of the superiority of their training to the point of cockiness (bred, I believe, of the no mask hoops they were made to jump through) despite sometimes major deficiencies.

2) Responding to the phrase "dissimilar gas matching" with a completely blank stare


EDITED to add:
Important that I note that it isn't that I believe that Florida-trained, Polish-trained, Australian-trained, etc. are superior in any way to anyone else. What I believe is anyone saying, "I'm better than those other people" for pretty nearly any reason whatsoever is a jerk move.

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Originally Posted by oya

Incidentally, the two shared traits I have noticed of every Mexican trained cave diver I have ever met (and often decided to stop diving with):

1) An absolute certainty of the superiority of their training to the point of cockiness (bred, I believe, of the no mask hoops they were made to jump through) despite sometimes major deficiencies.

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And absolutely none of the Mexican cave divers I have ever met exhibit this attitude. What I do read on this forum from time to time are posts which clearly indicate a bias against Mexican cave diving practices. I wonder if it's a racial/cultural thing, unfamiliarity, whatever. It's not rampant, just just every once in a while.

I did my training in MX with three different instructors and have never encountered anything even remotely like what was described at the beginning of this thread. I'm sure there are excellent and not-so-excellent instructors in both MX and Florida caves.

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Originally Posted by kensuf

Tell that to the family of the guy who died in Blue Grotto with his O2 turned off while he was being supervised by an instructor.

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That's an odd definition of "supervised". ;)

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Originally Posted by halocline

I wonder if it's a racial/cultural thing, unfamiliarity, whatever.

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Most of those I've met who have insisted, "Mexico is the ONLY safe place to train," (as the original poster suggests) have been Americans, like me.

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Originally Posted by halocline

I'm sure there are excellent and not-so-excellent instructors in both MX and Florida caves.

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Without a doubt!

You guys are scaring me. I better book my ticket down to Mexico so I can have the pros rip my regs out and steal my flippers.

I'm really skating on thin ice with my substandard Florida cave training. When I drown I guess now I'll know why

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Originally Posted by kensuf

Tell that to the family of the guy who died in Blue Grotto with his O2 turned off while he was being supervised by an instructor.

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I just quoted this because...well it needs to not just be said but heard. These two deaths both seem to share some characteristics

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Originally Posted by bamafan

Phillip, a prime example of how sanitized things are over here there is a belief by the CDS that there shouldn't be any gold line T's. They just went and removed a killer T that was almost 300' deep and over 2000' back in Eagle's Nest because some unexperienced diver might get confused. The type of training you are talking about probably gives most of them a heart attack.

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It isn't the NSS-CDS that doesn't like T's in the gold line. It is the line committees for several caves, and they are made of a lot of different divers from multiple agencies. I am sure you know there are T's in the gold line in JB, because the old line committee members aren't on that committee. Edd Sorenson is the safety officer for the NSS-CDS, and he believes in T's in the gold line. It is probably best not to have T's within Intro/Basic range, since they aren't allowed to make navigational decisions. FWIW, there are T's in the gold line in Little River, and have been for many years.

Also, it wasn't the NSS-CDS that removed the T in Eagle's Nest. The NSS-CDS doesn't interfere with the established lind committees, to much politics involved.

At one time, before the line committees, various factions would change a line in a cave one week, and another faction would change it back the following week. You never even knew where to expect the line to start. One week the line in Devil's would start at the lips, the following week, it would start at the Hill 400 jump.

If enough people want T's in the gold line, petition the line committees for a particular cave to add them. I for one would like to see a T at the popular circuits where people are failing to run a jump line because they don't want to do a second dive to retrieve it. A good example it at the Maple Leaf in Devil's Eye for the bone room circuit.