Forget the CDS for a moment. Is there a problem with the level of cave training?
Chris intentions were good with his survey. Before we find a solution I believe that consensus of a problem and understanding the problem is needed. My perception is that overall cave diver training is on an increasingly steeper slide downward in quality. I also believe that this downward slide will eventually lead to loosing site access, negative public perception, and possible government intervention and/or control.
Now having put this issue on the table it needs to be backed up with substance. I no longer teach diving and the reason is that I came to believe I could not make what I felt was sufficient impact on new divers through teaching. The cause for this shift was the influx of so many new technical instructors that had less expensive classes, that took less time, and passed most of their students the first time through. My classes were more expensive not because I depended on them for a living but because the time and effort required to do them deserves a reasonable ROI (Return on Investment). They took more time because they were taught to a level that ensured that the student understood their limitations and why they should seek additional training after gaining experience at their present level instead of just meeting minimum standards. Many required more time to acquire the skills and understanding than the standard time frame of the class.
Ten years ago when talking to a diver fresh out of completing cave training (full cave) they easily could explain why they carry line arrows and non-directional markers. Over the last ten years the trend has gone from finding the odd few that didn't know to now a majority don't have that understanding. Today most have difficulty planning a simple circuit such as P1 to Peanut via the Cross Over tunnel. Lately I have had conversations with instructors that could not plan that circuit properly. This is not exaggeration or second hand stories, this is from conversations and questions I have asked directly.
Since getting out of teaching I have also refined how I guide. Now my guiding is also mentoring and I turn down all other guiding unless it is geared towards mentoring. I also have narrowed down the mentoring to two main areas which are actual SM passage and extended range CCR. I don't advertise and turn down the majority of requests I receive. This leaves a rather small population of potential divers to work with which trend towards having more experience than a newly certified cave diver (full cave). Today virtually every person that I do work with in a guiding/mentoring capacity needs to learn using directional & non-directional markers, tie off techniques, jump techniques, etc. before we can start working on the stuff that they are paying me to help them with. I won't go into a SM jump has a high potential for being silted out due to the small size of the passage with a diver that can't easily and properly deploy their reel/spool, tie off, and find their way in zero visibility. If they can't securely put the jump in to ensure we have a continuous line that isn't going to come loose or be confusing on which way to exit then they surely won't be going into tight difficult passage with me.
Now most have seen in other posts that I have turned instructors in for standards violations. Don't bother asking because I am not going to call out names for the person or the agency. Besides violating TOS it is also bad form. I am not the scuba police and there is a process to handle these issues. If the agencies that set the standards are not going to do the job I will not be Don Quixote or go vigilante. That being said the standards violations that I have seen, and many many more that I have heard from students, are IMO criminal. We have instructors regularly taking students into cave passage without a line and doing drills. Instructors taking students on blind jumps. Instructors teaching above ratio which BTW all org.s for all technical diving max out at 3 students in the water period. If there are 4 students under water with one instructor if is violating standards. Instructors allowing students to enter systems without running a primary reel from open water. I can go on and on, the reality is that this has become the norm for to many instructors and students don't know what they don't know. This is on top of how quickly and with how little prior dive experience students are being accepted to begin their cave training and instructor candidates are being accepted to become cave instructors.
When I started cave diving instructors were not allowed to commercially promote themselves. If someone was seeking to dive in caves and sought out teaching then instructors stepped forward and provided their services. Today cave instructors actively recruit and promote that divers get into and start cave diving. It may be a fine line however IMO that line is distinctive and should be firmly held.
The issue that we have is that the vast majority of divers have no idea if their training was good, bad. or ugly. The way the training is now it also has divers regularly diving over their training and promoting others to do the same. Most Basic Cave divers are quickly diving past sixths, often doing jumps, and a rather large number are even doing circuits. Lets not even get into how many are doing all of those things and will not continue through their training because the fact that their card expires really doesn't mean jack because they are rarely checked and when they are most don't pay any attention to the expiration date on the card.
The IUCRR unfortunately has not kept up to date with statistics and trends. Just looking at the out of date data clearly shows that the tide has turned completely from the most incidents being untrained divers to present day of trained divers being the leader in incidents. We have more divers seeking training and have done a good job of informing the OW diver of the dangers with going into a cave without it. If there were no problem with our training then the number of trained divers dieing in caves would not increase with the number of people being trained. I know this sounds counter intuitive but in general this is how it it should work. We would have a few medical issues and a few outliers every year but regardless of how many are trained those numbers would hold within a normal range over the years. The reality that we have reduced the number of OW diver incidents to a level range while more OW divers get trained as well as more and more technical divers which more easily have access to caves without cave training should show that the range can be held. It is not and that to me clearly shows there is a problem with training.
So what do others see? What are your thoughts on training? If there is a problem with training what are they? Calling out names or agencies is counter productive IMHO. Lets first get it out in the open what we are seeing and what is happening. If it was you that went through it then stand up and put it out there. If you have seen it do the same. I believe that we at least need to discuss this topic and hopefully get some consensus regarding if there is a problem and what types of problems there are.
