Statement from the Chairman regarding the Eagles Nest incident.

[Kelly Jessop]

legislate personal activities. Heck, I will even argue in favor of allowing men to choose to wear pants around their knees with their boxers showing..

If you run for congress under this platform,I would vote for you. A lot better than some of the legislation that is being handed us to better our lives.

[Line Squirrel]

Does anyone here remember when Tyler Moon was charged with assault for pulling an openwater instructor and her openwater students out of a cave?

Yea, that's the incident that came to mind when I posted my question.

[SR]

Maybe we should start adding a BRP (Body Recovery Prevention) session to our workshops. Have an acted out session of a Cave Diver trying to talk a group of unqualified divers out of cave diving. This would be followed by a discussion of what worked and what didn't, other ideas etc. Maybe even someday where you could practice trying to talk a group out of diving above there limits. I think people would be more willing to act, better able to act having seen and processed the interaction. It would also help us understand the limits of what we can do.

[Ken Hill]

Good comments Forrest.
State parks have been forced to release much of their part time help,so in the off season there is less visibility,and budget cuts will assure that during the year too. This makes it very tempting to break the rules because the park management isn't in constant supervision.But,rangers can ask people to stop,but have no enforcement capacity (no guns,cuffs etc),so they have to call DEP law enforcement,which could be 50+ miles away,and not able to respond quickly. The good news is most people don't know that,so saying I am going to call the Ranger can elicit the response you want.

Kelly,
The states budget eliminated DEP Law Enforcement and assigned/merged their duties into Fish & Wildlife, who were already over extended. As I stated in other posts the FF&W officers are hunters, sportsman and outdoorsman and many are divers and can spot something out of the ordinary. I'm thinking the Sheriff's role in enforcement may be increasing because of mutual aid agreements.

[fno]

Every situation and site is going to follow certain rules. In the case of NSS-CDS properties when I was Program Director, I instructed all of the property managers to call the local Sherriff and have violators of our access policies charged with trespassing immediately. This could be sorted out by the NSS-CDS at a later date if the circumstances proved to be OK. The main focus of course was non-members accessing the sites, the secondary reasoning was to limit the accessability of non-certified divers also accessing the cave. This mainly works at Cow, and thru the guides programs at Mill Creek and School Sinks. Cathedral is too remote for reasonable oversight of this problem. One of the early policies for Cow stated that one member of a dive team had to be a member of the NSS-CDS. This lasted only long enough to discover that many non-members were tagging along and more than a few of them were not certified to dive in caverns or caves. The reality of the matter is that the property owner has the only legal means to prevent access to a cave by un-trained or non-certified divers. In the state parks, the ranger has no law enforcement responsibilities. If they observe a violation of the park rules, the guest is usually asked to leave. If that goes nowhere, then a wildlife officer, sheriffs deputy, and or state trooper is called in to handle the situation.

[swadiver]

I agree with Joe completely, but some people you just can't reach.

Many years ago, in the mid 80's, my future wife, her friend, myself and Steve Irving were doing a series of dives at Little River. we arrived on sight and geared up, but noticed a lone individual drinking beer outside his vehicle. he approached us at one point and indicated he was going to dive the system. it was obvious he was not a trained cave diver, so we all attempted to discourage him and point out the dangers and the need for proper training, equipment and experience. he obviously was not listening to us, but there really was no more for us to do or say.

we finished our dive that day and the individual was still on sight, still drinking. we left and returned very early the next morning to find his vehicle there but no sign of him. assuming he was passed out in his car, we proceeded with dive. well, it was obvious he ignored our warnings, because we found him about 300 ft back in Little River, expired, with a single empty aluminum 80 on his back, and equipped as if he was going on a shallow reef dive in the Keys. Steve and I ended up doing the recovery of his body.

There will always be individuals that will do irrational things and no amount of talking can change that. that being said, I still think we need to be as proactive as possible in attempting to educate these types of individuals. even if it ends up in saving only one life, it's worth the effort.

[cerich]

I'm confused... doesn't the CDS in NSS-CDS stand for CAVE DIVING SECTION?

I thought it had been determined very adamantly that this was NOT a cave diving accident. Why say anything?

OK, joking aside, I believe we as a community can exert more peer pressure on non certified divers than maybe we think we can. A "corporate culture" that stresses the importance of training and the consequences of a lack of that training will resonate if followed consistently.

[Sly-vester]

Social pressure can do a lot of things look at littering and cigarette smoking.

[cerich]

This lasted only long enough to discover that many non-members were tagging along and more than a few of them were not certified to dive in caverns or caves.

The money shot.... The truth is many in the cave community don't give a #### and take people diving above their level of training all the time. In just the last year alone I know of quite a few instances of this, one I refused to loan a person gear so they could accompany a cave diver to just "look" in the cavern zone.... i have spoken to the particular cave diver a few times in the past, on dead ears, I'm just "too DIR".... which is a joke, go ask JJ if he thinks I am..LOL. The first time when I found he was taking a apprentice level diver with no tech training on full cave multi jump deco dives to gain experience. Oh, her BIG NAME apprentice instructor also had no problem with it either, he knew about it and I was a arsehole for saying anything to the apprentice diver, who won't talk to me to this day. It's worse because nothing bad happened so I was really wrong to say anything is how that mental gymnastics works,

Another I know of involved a prominent member of our cave diving community taking a person who was not Trimix trained on a dive in the nest. That was covered up by more prominent members of our community post haste and i was a arsehole for mentioning it... that's OK.

So, we can argue all freaking day about if this was a cave accident or not but at the end of the day the truth is far too many in our community take cave diving safety and what we teach/are taught as somehow being over the top, yet when somebody (or people) are dragged out of the cave dead we all stand and scream "they violated the rules!" when EVERY day many of us do the same and many more of us sit there quietly because we don't want to be the arsehole.

[Ken Hill]

It shouldn't go unmentioned that the upstream entrance to Cow was discovered by two untrained OW divers. As I recall the story Lamar Hires challenged their presence in the basin and they went on to show him the opening which is the one in use now. Lamar went on to provide them cave training at his expense.