Cave diving and Wreck penetration (similarities)
For the divers that do both what would you say carries over from the cave to wreck penetration.
Ex. as a wreck diver we always run a line but never use a jump line in a wreck. I have also read a lot of cave divers drop stages off in the cave unlike myself I never drop my deco bottles.
really interested in more procedure than gear.
I can't speak to wreck diving as I really haven't done any. I typically drop stages/deco bottles in a cave but in ow I always keep them with me (not saying wreck is ow by any meansjust saying you end up in it other than deco ceiling). Unless someone has an emergency and grabs the stage it will be there, I've never had one not be where I left it but I'm sure many have. You may find some useful information in this thread... http://www.cavediver.net/forum/showt...ighlight=Wreck
Derek
Thanks for the ink just what I was looking for. I have done plenty of wreck diving and some Ice diving but looking into some cave stuff for next summerOriginally Posted by Pullnglide
I can't speak to wreck diving as I really haven't done any. I typically drop stages/deco bottles in a cave but in ow I always keep them with me (not saying wreck is ow by any means
My limited experience with wreck diving is the actual penetration part of the wreck is generally the easy part and the deco is the hard part. In cave diving it is generally the other way around. In wreck diving your bottom time is going to be more limited because you generally don't want hours worth of deco in the open ocean. In a cave the conditions generally won't deteriorate any where near as quick as can happen at sea so multi hour deco isn't as big of a concern. Now somewhere like Truk Lagoon is an exception because the conditions are so mild.
I have had the chance to do some wreck penetrations, and have talked to some die hard wreck divers, and some of the stuff I have seen/heard can be harder than cave diving. A lot of particle accumulation that can get stirred up into solution due no flow, which causes zero viz and unable to wash out disturbed silt due to lack of flow. Wrecks are constantly deteriorating and shifted by bad weather which can cause new hazards from dive to dive. I have had multiple invites for the Doria, and never ever felt due to my cave diving experience that I was ready to push the inner confines and highly respect those people that do long penetrations due to the hazards involved.
"Not all change is improvement...but all improvement is change" Donald Berwick
Cave diving is done in a static environment, wreck diving is done in a dynamic environment...
Safe diving,
Rich
I dove wrecks long before becoming a cave diver.
Some of my thoughts:
-as stated, wreck diving is a more dynamic environment, especially open ocean deco. Ocean deco can be a real challenge in rough seas.
- generally, wrecks are more silty and it is typically a much finer silt. It is easier to stir up as the passages are usually much tighter and it lasts longer because of little to no flow in a wreck.
-Wreck penetrations are typically of a much shorter duration then cave penetrations. This does reduce deco, but OTOH there are a lot more deep wrecks than there are accessible deep caves.
- Entanglement from objects and lines getting cut by sharp metal is a much higher concern for wreck diving. The thickness of the line you use is a much higher concern.
- Most of my wreck diving was in the northeast. The water is COLD! I have done very little cave diving with water temps below 50 degrees F. I have done hundreds of wreck dives in water 45 degrees F and below. Heavy gloves and hoods and thicker drysuit underwear restrict mobility and add to the task loading. Reduced vis and cold temps also reduce my narcosis threshold.
- probably more then 95% of cave dives peformed today are in caves that have existing line in them where as it is very unusual to find a pre existing line in a wreck.
When I took my cave classes I already had well over a thousand dives including 300+ wreck dives. I was already trimix certified, most of my dives had been in a drysuit and I was very familiar with deco, table and computer use. I was accustomed to carrying one stage and a deco bottle.
Cave diving helped me clean up my act. I didn't have as bad of an equipment configuration as the poster childs of the northeast wreck divers in the 80's and 90's, but I was miles away from a clean Hogarthian rig.
I wasn't use to diving larger passages where bouyancy was more critcal. I would suggest that my attitude about wreck diving was similar to diving a silty sidemount passage. Siltouts were common then not.
"Is this thing on?"
Rig cave dive wreck.... Always thought that made sense.
I actually took the cavern class to become a better wreck diver then saw the gallery passage at Ginnie and knew I needed to see what was down there.
While I love wreck diving, cave dives are much more my norm since they're closer to me. Still love the historic aspect of diving a cool wreck like the U-853 or the bomber in Lake Mead.
wreck vs cave
I've got 400 dives, more than 90 percent of which are cavern or cave. I did my first real wreck dive this past week. It probably would be considered a beginner dive by most experienced wreck divers. (an hour long dive on the Spiegel grove covering most of the third floor level machine shop and hallways, with about 10-15 minutes of deco.)
I guessed, and was right, that the profile was almost identical to a typical dive at Little River. After talking to and diving with a few wreck divers I can offer these opinions:
I think that cave training does prepare one for wreck diving at least to a point. I would have been in a lot more danger attempting that dive without full cave. I think that cave training is more highly evolved than wreck training. I think that wreck diving is more accepting of progressive penetration and not running a line. I think lines are a relatively newish technology in wrecks and were shunned at first by the wreck community, while cave divers have "made it their religion" (to quote Shadow Divers.) I think that the wreck diving community is also more accepting of penetrating without a specific certification than the cave diving community.
While no hard rule could be applied to every diver, I think that I would be more comfortable hearing that a full cave diver dove in a wreck without wreck training than a wreck diver dove in a cave without cave training. That depends on the diver and their abilities and training though. I also think that a "padi wreck specialty" is a very different animal from real wreck training. Real wreck training I suspect is harder to find than real cave training.
Do I think full cave training prepared me well enough for the dive that I just did? Yes. Am I ready for the Doria? Nope, not yet. Not by a long shot. That's the trick, you have to know what you are capable of and ready for, and you better hope like all hades that you are not wrong.
All the above are opinions, and most likely will be disagreed with by some or all. I'm ok with that.
Chad
I think lines are a relatively newish technology in wrecks and were shunned at first by the wreck community, while cave divers have "made it their religion" (to quote Shadow Divers.) I think that the wreck diving community is also more accepting of penetrating without a specific certification than the cave diving community.
In the Great Lakes we were running lines in the 70's. They were on wire frames, welded into an "H", clipped to the weight belt. It's pretty hard to keep the line clear on a wreck in limited visibility (18 inches), so we learned to memorize where we were and decompress in open water.
Over half the guys I dive with now have no cave or overhead training. None of the old guys did. Some could move through a silt filled room like a ghost. Up here if you own a boat and gear, no one is going to check your C card before you dive.
A lot of classic wreck skills are dying with us old guys. Most of us just accept it and let it go.
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